Facebook gaming was a small "phase" in gaming but it was really fun and social. I had a blast playing games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, Restaurant City
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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It may have been a small phase, but Farmville in particular made a huge impact on gaming and the internet as a whole. Though not for the better, obviously.
I am not sure. FarmVille seems to me more like the logical (for capitalism) conclusion of decades of enshitification in the casual gaming space.
Games for attention harvesting had been tried before too. MSN Messenger and AIM both had built in social games with ad space back when they were the shit. Windows ME, XP, and Vista even shipped with some of them built in.
Farmville came out in '09, there hadn't really been decades of enshittification of gaming at that point. Their extensive use of invasive player metrics was also groundbreaking and basically the inspiration for everyone going forward, reaching well beyond the gaming spaces.
there hadn't really been decades of enshittification of gaming at that point
I would argue that is exactly what companies like Softkey and PopCap were doing well before 2009.
Microsoft wanted to start tracking logins and program launches well before Windows 8 but were prevented from including things like the .Net Passport in Windows XP due to an injunction in 1998.
Even crap like BonziBuddy was getting slapped on the wrist for collecting information on people under 13 in 2004.
FarmVille was just one of the first to get away with it.
Seeing dead games come back to life for people who have fond memories of them makes me happy. I'm hoping for the same with The Crew which is being worked on by fans to resurrect it.
There's a small resurrection effort for a lot of shut down games and I really do wish them success. I saw one for Firefall, which was something I often wish would've succeeded.