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yakalskovich) wrote2011-06-25 08:02 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2011-06-25 08:02 pm
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What makes me uneasy about FarmVille
What makes me uneasy about FarmVille is not that it's eaten the Nazgul's brain at the moment; worse brain-eatages have occurred, for example when I first discovered the old Discworld RPG back in 2004. The crack that is RPing (in contrast to the more sedate and ponderous nose-powder that is fanfic) so totally took me in for a while, I even did set alarms for it, and that seems to be an alarm sign.
It's not that Zynga, the company that makes it, is probably quite evil, and Facebook definitely is.
It's that there are no seasons!
You can plant whatever whenever you want to. There is no lambing season, no sowing in spring, no asparagus that stops on June 24th latest, no cabbage for winter, no St. Martin's geese, no blackberries belonging to the devil after October 31st...
Okay, making people wait for a result for a year would be counter-productive. But why not set random shorter season? Why not allow sheep tupping only on a Friday, and the sowing of certain crops only during the first week of the month, and so on? What makes real farming in real life what it is is seasons, and FarmVille totally eliminated that.
We first world people are used to having strawberries and tomatoes in the supermarket all the time, to mushrooms all year round, to green beans flown in from Egypt in winter, and to fresh flowers from Nigeria at Christmas. The globalised world is ignoring the seasons, so why should FarmVille reintroduce them? FarmVille farmers don't really want to keep up all night in the lambing shed at the dead of winter; they don't want to harvest a surfeit of cherries that they don't know what to do with, or do nothing between waking and sleeping but pluck apples and make cider in autumn. They don't want to race a thunderstorm for the wheat harvest, or pull a calf out by the feet. It's sanitised agriculture with purple cows.
There would be nothing wrong with it -- it is a game! -- except that it suggests to million of city dwellers that farming is a sanitary, fun business that brings forth bounty without season, without dirt, without suffering.
And that's demeaning to everything mankind did since the neolithic revolution.-
It's not that Zynga, the company that makes it, is probably quite evil, and Facebook definitely is.
It's that there are no seasons!
You can plant whatever whenever you want to. There is no lambing season, no sowing in spring, no asparagus that stops on June 24th latest, no cabbage for winter, no St. Martin's geese, no blackberries belonging to the devil after October 31st...
Okay, making people wait for a result for a year would be counter-productive. But why not set random shorter season? Why not allow sheep tupping only on a Friday, and the sowing of certain crops only during the first week of the month, and so on? What makes real farming in real life what it is is seasons, and FarmVille totally eliminated that.
We first world people are used to having strawberries and tomatoes in the supermarket all the time, to mushrooms all year round, to green beans flown in from Egypt in winter, and to fresh flowers from Nigeria at Christmas. The globalised world is ignoring the seasons, so why should FarmVille reintroduce them? FarmVille farmers don't really want to keep up all night in the lambing shed at the dead of winter; they don't want to harvest a surfeit of cherries that they don't know what to do with, or do nothing between waking and sleeping but pluck apples and make cider in autumn. They don't want to race a thunderstorm for the wheat harvest, or pull a calf out by the feet. It's sanitised agriculture with purple cows.
There would be nothing wrong with it -- it is a game! -- except that it suggests to million of city dwellers that farming is a sanitary, fun business that brings forth bounty without season, without dirt, without suffering.
And that's demeaning to everything mankind did since the neolithic revolution.-
Re: And our minds.
And I thought it was about that quotation going round on tumblr...
Re: And our minds.
againfor a moment, if fen uphold the status quo of myths, that millenia old formula that is only varied but never changed, then its actually the show runners who are revolutionary and trying to make something new, and broad humanity resisting these individuals! Now don't point cathexys at me ;=PRe: And our minds.
What they don't need [any more, soon, at least] are the corporations. Joss Whedon made 'Doctor Horrible' to prove just that point.
Re: And our minds.
(tumblr still being full of KILLWHEDON shit doesn't gel with your theory - but we might agree on the need for individuals on both sides? I'm not alone in my distrust of crowds - lots of individuals agree - "I'm not different")
Re: And our minds.
That's a demand I make of myself, not some entitled demand I make of the world. I am me and need no justification for what I do.-
Re: And our minds.
Re: And our minds.
I seem to insufficiently know that by heart. Somewhere, I still have my VHS cassette (in the original version, with Finnish subtitles, recorded in the early 90s), so I ought to re-watch it before I throw out the dual player thing and get something that only plays DVDs any more.
Re: And our minds.
Don't. I stopped getting what I crave on DVD because I haven't watched my 2000 and some went off already and there will be a new format soon, so I mustn't. *sniffleswantscertainshowsbadly* Unless DVD is blueray too.
Re: And our minds.
Re: And our minds.