Farmville

Farmville took the internet gaming world by storm when it was released on Facebook by Zynga. The game offered players an easy to use interface, realistic farming, a large following and tons of features with many new ones added all the time. Now, has Farmville gotten too popular?

• Over 60 million monthly players
• Thousands of fan sites dedicated to the game
• Ebooks advertising the best way to make coins in the game
• Cheats, tips and walkthroughs flooding the internet
• Facebook news feed spam from all the activity the game creates

  Most everyone who uses Facebook will know at least one other person who plays Farmville. It has become the largest, most popular game in history, is said to be more addictive than World of Warcraft, is actually a charity as well, and offers advertising for businesses and organizations that need sign ups on websites. It has become, in essence, an entire Internet platform. All money used to buy more coins or farm cash in the game is donated to charity, according to Zynga, but the game has actually become way too popular for it’s own good. Apparently

• Sleeping habits of teens and even adults have been disrupted by people getting up in the middle of the night to harvest crops
• Emotional breakdowns have occurred when mentally unstable people find out that their crops have died
• A lot of the offers for additional coins are actually undoable, as many offers actually contain malware

Farmville needs to be regulated closely, with less emphasis on doing well, if it is to become less of a health risk to the general population of gamers.