I hear the teenagery ones are starting to view Facebook as uncool. Interesting. Soon it may be sitting in the unemployment line next to Myspace. In the meantime, there is always lots to bitch about. I was thinking about this earlier when I was clicking on a game request for a friend. I feel a certain loyalty to this person and want to help them out . . . even though I don't play the game anymore and find I view it with a certain level of, no, not a certain level, a TRUE deep passionate level of loathing. But that is the nature of Facebook games. There is, after all, a cycle.
Phase One: The Introduction
So you see a posting of what someone is doing on a FB game and, curious, you click on it. Or maybe a friend sends you an invitation. Perhaps they ask you to join. Maybe they just beg you because no one else is playing it. Whatever the case, you decide to take the plunge. You click on the game, allow it to molest your information, and start looking at how to play it. At this point, you level up quickly and you have basically nothing. If the game seems fun, you keep playing. If not, you walk away right then. You're probably better off if you do.
Phase Two: Advancements
Now that you're playing the game, it's time to start getting better at it. You do your little quests. You find out patterns on how to make it all better for you. You send out game requests to others. And while you may make some mistakes at first, very soon, you find you can handle the game pretty well. In fact, you starts seeing the path to mastery.
Phase Three: Obsession
When you wake up in the morning, the game is the first thing you do. Before you go to bed, it is the last thing you do. You memorize hold long it takes you to recover your energy. You put up sticky notes to remind yourself when your crops will be ready. You spend hours and hours decorating, rearranging, plotting. Obsession phase is the most dangers part of a FB game. This is where you can really begin to lose real life things . . and I don't just mean hours. No, when you are in Obsession phase, you will be tempted to buy things for the game with real money. You will be temped to find ways to cheat if you can. You may stop your job so you can spend more time with the game. You may lose your family because the game was more important. And you do not care, because the game is EVERYTHING.
Phase Four: Disenchantment
This phase is where things can get dangerous for the GAME. After all, the game is dependent on how many people it has playing and how much they are willing to spend. FB games walk a fine line, trying to balance "keep the game interesting" on one side and "don't change too much shit" on the other. Most of them fail. Usually on both counts. One day, you wake up and the stuff you were obsessing about is suddenly boring. You don't WANT to keep clicking on that. You don't give a FUCK if the crops wither. You don't CARE if you didn't make any money today. Or maybe you do still care about all of this. . . but the game is making it harder and harder to play. They want you to send out MORE game requests or they add parts that require OTHER game requests or maybe they keep adding stuff that looks interesting . . . but you have to pay real money for all of it. The most tragic and stupid disenchantment happens when the game is fun and you still love it, but they don't put enough into making it stable, so it keeps freezing on you or otherwise messing up. This really screws with your obsession, and it gives you time to think . . .
Phase Five: Loathing
Finally, you wake up one day and you just cannot force yourself to give a shit about this game. You are so frustrated or so annoyed or so BORED with it that you just can't. The idea of playing the game makes your head hurt. It makes you hate the world. You tell yourself you just need a break. You stop playing for a few days, letting your game request numbers grow and grow. Maybe you log back into the game a few weeks later to see if you can stomach it again. Maybe you can . . . for a few days. Then you stop again, and the stops grow longer and longer until finally you just block that motherfucker and never play it again.
Interestingly enough, the same phases that govern the cycle of FB games basically apply to FB itselt. Most of the time, this is the pattern I see in people when they join Facebook. Some of them stay in phases longer than others. Eventually though, most end up in loathing. They don't leave though. Facebook is like Hotel California in that way.
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