Big Game Hunting

This item from USA Today, which announces that "For social networks, it's game on," opens with a discussion of the popular Facebook game FarmVille, where players do chores and literally watch the grass grow, as they take a desktop break from their socially networked lives. Although I don't discuss FarmVille in my essay in the forthcoming collection on Facebook and Philosophy from Open Court Press, I see a number of features in the game that are similar to those in the games that I analyze. I, of course, kept expecting that there would be unexpected interactions and consequences from the agribusiness that the game promotes, based on having played environmental games like the McDonald's Game from Molleindustria in which modern farming is revealed as being unsustainable in its waste profile.

Thanks to Dylan Wittkower for the link.