Game over man, Game Over!

Yeah, I'm done. I've had it with Zinga and their games. Play for free they advertise, but the reality is that the games are not free. If you want to do anything nifty or cool, you have to pay to get the Horseshoes, Farmville Dollars, Fishville Sand Dollars, etc to be able to get those things.

"But what about all the stuff you can get from your friends? Can't you play for free if you have enough people to join and help you?" In a word "no". In more than one word, the truth lies in the fact that they make it damn near impossible to do any of the cool things even if you have a boat-load of friends.

Case in point...Farmville. I'm trying to make that beehive. I have about half of what I need to make the thing. I've been waiting on the kindness of others to get me what I need to finish the damn thing. I thought that people had just stopped giving me stuff. Truth of the matter is that they are still sending the stuff, but it NEVER GETS TO ME. I have my wife who plays and is a neighbor to me send me stuff. Never get notifications that it was sent. My Step-Daughter? Same thing. Nothing gets to me. I've sent stuff to them as well. Nothing get to them.

Frontiertown. Now here's an interesting twist. They give you quests. When the Independence Day stuff was around, you had to collect poop of varying types to make the saltpeter to make the fireworks. I needed the crap from the horses and mules. "Prairie Piles" I believe they were called. I harvested from my horses and mules. I harvested from my neighbors horses and mules. Late August I finally got the pile of shit needed to make the saltpeter. But while I was finally able to complete the quest, I was not able to get the second quest in the chain since the whole thing was over by that time. Oxen give off a number of collectible things. Rib-Eye steaks for one. Used to get them all the time. I get a quest where I need 4 of them and they are now harder to find than a fart in a jacuzzi.

At least MMORPGs like Everquest, Star Trek Online, World or Warcraft and the others are honest about it. Pay them the monthly fee and you can play and enjoy all the nifty things offered. Sure there are a few premium items that you have to recruit a friend for or pay a little extra money for, but they are few and far between. And even then they are rewards for doing things that help the parent company and don't spam the living flarn out of the e-mail boxes of all your friends and family members.

Here's an interesting article about how the people at Zynga manage to get us hooked on the games and manages to keep us drooling like Pavlov's dogs whenever we hear of the latest trinket or doodad.

Ooh! I love this. Here is something you can install to your favorite web browser to filter out all that goddamn Farmville, Mafia Wars, Zynga crap that floods your page and allows only the stuff that people actually take the time to post through. I just found this while looking for another interesting article to reference in this post. Just now in fact. It's called Fluff Busting Purity Cleaner and it works really nicely.

I can't find the article. It was on www.slashdot.org and it was about a "game" where you get to push a button once per day. If you get other people to be your friend you could push the button more than once a day. It was an article about a spoof that was satirizing the whole dynamic of the Zynga games and how you have to operate in order to play them.

But in the end, I'm done. I've had it. Sold off my fish so no one has to see them die, and I'm walking away. I'm not stopping the games. In fact you can't stop them. Once you play, you're in the system forever. But even if I could, I'd keep them active so people who still want to play can use me as a neighbor. To them I wish them all the luck in the world. Enjoy it if you can.

I however am done. And in the immortal words of PVT William Hudson from Aliens..."Game over man, Game over!"

You shouldn't be polite to those people.

So I'm stopping in a gas station/convenience store to get fuel for my hungry car and a snack for me to nosh on while I'm waiting for my car to have its fuel system cleaned (and boy it needed it). I walk back in and I'm approached by a woman who was there doing scratch-off lottery tickets when I went in and gave the money to authorize the pumps.

Let's back up here a little bit.

I came in and waited in line to get to the cashier. I said "Hi, could I get thirty on pump two please?" Which is just good manners and is something that I know that retail people like to hear. They do like to be treated with courtesy and respect, just as any other human being would. Woman behind the counter takes the money, authorizes the pump and I walk out saying "Thank you".

Back to the woman who approached me.

It would seem that my being polite to the cashiers offended this woman. She quasi-whispered (you know, in the way that is "supposed" to be private but the real intention is to be overheard) to me "You know, you shouldn't be so polite to those people. It's not our fault that they took jobs that require them to serve us."

Wow! The milk of human kindness there went really sour there didn't it.

So I say in my public speaking voice as I was getting the dollar that the pump owed me "So you feel that I should not be polite to those I feel beneath me?" She nods. "Well, that's certainly good to know. Thanks a lot you stuck-up bitch.", and then walked out.

People were actually applauding me.