Online Social Games

I've played a lot of games over the year.  For the most part aside of slots, most games are social at some level.  As previously mentioned I recently started playing FrontierVille and CityVille on Facebook.  These are social games in that to get the maximum enjoyment from them you need neighbours, lots and lots of neighbours.  Hundreds and gazillions of neighbours.  Each game has a multitude of quests to complete for various rewards.  For example completing some quests in CityVille rewards you with businesses you can't buy.   In order to complete these quests you need neighbours to bug the snot out of requesting various items from them.  If they send you an item they get something back in return.  Adding to the neighbour issue is certain parts of the game can only be unlocked if you have X number of neighbours.  Well that is just fine and dandy if you are the social type interested in giving a gazillion people you don't know access to your Facebook wall.

I'm on Twitter so have a lot of followers that I don't personally know.  I choose to keep Facebook private and intimate limiting access to those people I have an actual relationship with aka family and friends.  Call me anti-social but I want to keep Facebook that way without adding a lot of people I don't know.  Unfortunately that means I won't be able to finish some quests but that's ok.  The neighbours I have on both games are friends and family. 

In pondering my dilemma, I went to Zynga's forums to see what others are doing about this situation.  Apparently many are not happy they have to keep asking friends to click for gifts and few are happy at having to have a lot of neighbours.  So I'm going to do like many of them, enjoy the games for what they are knowing there are some quests I can't complete.  Oh well!  I've managed to get a few items from the forums which is a nice surprise.  I will likely buy a few credits to complete some of things that having neighbours would do but I have no intentions of spending more than $10 in a month.  It's cheap entertainment for the time being.

Garden Gnome
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