A big theme at the Game Developers Conference this year was the
rise of so-called social games: relatively open-ended games
typically played on social networking sites such as Facebook,
light on story and complicated game mechanics, but full of
highly optimised feedback loops and virtual goods accumulation.
A paradigmatic example is Zynga’s FarmVille, which has attracted
an incredible audience of 80 million players. The success of
social games is forcing traditional developers to reconsider the
way they approach game design and game business. But some game
industry veterans are now raising concerns about the ethicality
of the social game paradigm (Soren Johnson has a good summary,
check out the comments, too). Much of the concern relates to the
idea that social games “exploit psychological flaws in the human
brain” to keep users engaged and paying for comparatively simple
game content. Sour grapes or valid concerns? I’m withholding
judgment, but the discussion prompted me to write a short essay
that puts the