Four Reasons why Zynga are the Devil Incarnate

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

What, this isn’t a confessional? You’d quite like me to get out of your house now? Ok, ok, I’m going, stop waving that knife. TOUCHY.

Anyway, my confession: I’ve gone back to Farmville. And Cafe World. I know, I am a bad person and ought to be punished.

I was late to the Farmville party, but about two years ago I got really into it. I mean, REALLY into it. I loved that game, as dumb as it was (and is). Then I started playing Cafe World, and Fishville, and even Frontierville for all of five minutes.

I packed it in because I had a degree and a dissertation I needed to finish, and I was wasting days of my life pratting about with virtual crops. It’s amazing how much time you save when you’re not on the digital tractor. The other day though, I was bored and needed something to keep me occupied. One click later and I was sucked right back in. That’s it. It’s over. You’ll find me dead at my desk with only pop tarts and a dead farm in front of me. Send help.



So with that in mind, here are the top four reasons why Zynga are indeed the devil incarnate:

Real-time gaming: In theory this sounds kind of cool. If you plant a crop, it’ll take a certain amount of time to grow. If you leave it long enough, those crops will die, losing you the virtual money and real time spent planting them. In reality, this means that you’ll waste time planting them and then spend forever on Facebook clicking refresh and watching the game like a hawk, in case you miss them and they die. And how are we meant to get anything else done now?

Friend bugging: Every now and then Farmville and it’s cohorts will say to you, ‘Hey, look! You can build a barn now! You can put the base down, but if you want the other parts, you need your friends to send them to you. What’s that? Your friends don’t play Farmville anymore because they all got sick of it? Well TOUGH! No barn for you!’



This really sucks. It’s basically dangling in game items over your head and saying, ‘No, you can’t have it until you do our marketing for us’. Why put effort into bringing new players to your game when you can just have your existing players bug their friends for eternity, or when they get un-friended (whichever comes sooner)?

Money grabbing: Zynga do not know subtlety. In game there are two forms of currency; farm coins and farm cash. Farm coins are earned in game by planting crops and harvesting from trees and animals. Farm cash, however, has to be bought. With REAL MONEY. Oh yeah, you get one measly Farm Cash every time you level up, but please. Don’t patronize me.



All the good stuff can only be bought with Farm Cash too. Dammit Zynga! I know you have to make money somehow but by being greedy grabbing [expletive deleted]s? Gah.

Headline hogging: Oh yeah, we’ve all seen them. The kid who ran up £900 of debt on Farmville: http://tinyurl.com/ydnebdc, The woman who shook and killed her baby after his crying interrupted her play time: http://tinyurl.com/69ucqah. For a while, Farmville became the new bad boy of gaming, leaving a trail of lost lives and debt in it’s wake. Or so the papers would want you to believe, at any rate.



The problem is that anyone with a computer and a Facebook account can play it (i.e. everyone), so everyone’s familiar with it and it’s so much easier to point the finger at it and gaming in general when someone who’s already mentally unstable uses it as an excuse for their actions. Cheers, Zynga. You’ve put gaming back 10 years.

PS: You should totally go follow us on Twitter now at @OutbreakZombie. You know you want to.