Farmville Addiction
The biggest concern of most parents today in the modern world is not drug addiction, not alcohol but something very unexpected and different: it’s the addiction of games. Be it console gaming or computers, the craving for video games and platform gaming sees no age bar and no culture. Gaming has got something for anyone and everyone around and it fascinates people by letting them do all kinds of stuff virtual which they could never manage in the real world. From being a mafia and shooting people on the road to driving a bus at full throttle, from racing up the streets at night to trying to make buildings on a plot, from controlling a 20 feet long monster to riding a dragon, from managing a family to being an outcast, there is nothing the gaming world hasn’t got in store for you.
It’s funny to learn how games actually originated from cathode ray tube-based missile defense systems in the late 1940s and later got adapted as a mode of entertainment in simpler forms. The first commercial available game was Computer Space released in the year 1971 and it laid the base for the flooding of games in the market that followed. Gaming evolved into different modes and genres and today is done mostly on consoles such as Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Wii or on a computer, both on laptops as well as desktops. Gaming today has changed from being a hobby to a full time addiction, and doctors claim that it could get worse if not controlled. Teenagers as well as adults are so into gaming that they completely give up their personal lives, and are just cramped up on their bed or couch playing games all day long. It affects education and work, and leads to various health problems as well, but the passion and charm of gaming is too marvelous to let it go. It gets more interesting when you are competing against fellow humans instead of the computer AI in the multiplayer mode. Over the year the upcoming gaming pubs host multiplayer games where their customers spend over 10 hours a day indulged in awesomeness. The pleasure of gaming is something that cannot be explained, just felt and experienced.
One game that has gained huge popularity in a very short span of time is Farmville, a simple game developed by the brilliant minds at Zynga. It is not the usual adrenalin rush games that give you a gaming high, yet it is enchantingly addictive. The genre of the game is browser based MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online), a game which does not require a dedicated installation and can be played simply on the internet browser you use. The main reason for the popularity of the game is its simplicity and the learning curve is fairly simple.
The 2D game is actually a farm simulation where you get to manage your virtual farm, including everything from sowing to fertilizing to growth to harvesting. You have a huge range of crops to choose from and tons of decorations and buildings to personalize your farm. The game is played online and you have to be logged in to be able to play. You can have a farm next to your friend and you get ally bonus for it. The game progresses as you level up and you get new plants and fruits to cultivate. The game provides a platform for exploiting your desires to be involved in cultivation and gets really exciting as you play with millions of people across the globe. The excitement of the game is such that players even use real money to progress in the game. You can level up either in the traditional way of spending time with the game or by paying up. The game requires a Facebook account and can be played with millions of users online at all times. It is found that certain celebrities are also big addicts of this game, some of them spending up to 4 hours a day playing it.
The game’s addiction is such that people spend hours and hours each day, at workplaces, colleges and at homes, enjoying Farmville. The effect it leaves on the player is perhaps unexplainable and you really have to try out this tremendous game to get the real feel of it.
Or not.
Shahenshah Jaffri
Shahenshah is a computer science engineer who likes to do things differently. He spends most of his time with the love of his life which is his computer, using it mostly for gaming and writing and has a incredible knack for peppering humour into his life.