FarmVille

So, FarmVille is a "casual game", Flash-based, that has drawn in a huge number of players. It has a system of rewards and levels, something that Hamlet Au really, really thinks that SL should have in order to cut down SL's high initial attrition rate. It's casual because it doesn't require great skill to advance, just grinding away. One can, though, select crops and fit the varying rates of crop ripening around one's schedule to optimize one's rate of advancement, or take advantage of game features, e.g. confining one's avatar in a tiny space so that you can harvest and plow without waiting for your avatar to walk around.

I have friends who play FarmVille. (I can't play it--to really play it requires a Facebook account, and we all know Facebook's attitude towards avatars.) What do they talk about? About FarmVille forgetting about their last however many minutes of work, having difficulty signing on, ignoring one's attempts to purchase items, not being able to rotate buildings, and so forth. Sounds kind of like complaints about Second Life, only more so... and in FarmVille, all you have is a square plot of ground in not particularly realistic isometric projection. There's a half-hearted attempt to show "neighbors'" farms as being next to yours, but each farm is really like a "room" that one teleports to or from. No notion of geography at all.

I think I'll stay with SL, thanks.