Laurent Courtines Free Online

I recently attended GDC Online out in Austin, Texas. I covered the
event exclusively on Twitter. You can follow all my genius insight
here twitter.com/courtines This was the first time in a long while I
was active on twitter. Oh sure I check my news and I post on occasion
but this was my fourth re-introduction. Oh? What were the other
three? I'll tell you - 2006 was the first, it was the wild west
then no one knew what the hell was going on. There was
experimentation there was no retweet and this was WAAAY before Oprah,
Kutcher and CNN. It was exciting and while I didn't really know what
we were on to, I knew it was fundamentally important. I yelled from
the top of the mountain and not many people heard me (Not at AOL at
least) I had a joy....However over time, with the battle to help
people understand it's relevancy exhausted me.

The SECOND twitter phase was my first covering of a conference on
Twitter. I am not sure when it was? I think it was 2007. Anyway,
being in sessions and being able to convey what was going on to the
people outside the conference was a wonder. Unfortunately, I was
hindered by the fact that I had shitty tech. I didn't buy in to the
iPhone crazy and had a crap-tacular HTC Mogul. Let me tell you folks,
Windows Mobile SUCKED! And they deserve the predicament they are in
today. I couldn't kick ass as much as I liked.

The third phase was the desktop app phase. First Tweetdeck then
Seesmic and back and forth between them. They both helped fill in the
gaps between the Twitter ecosystem. Following trends in real time,
seeing conversation happen while scrolling down the screen. It really
was a wonder. having two monitors was a MUST and I swear I felt like
I was on Star Trek. Sadly work got in the way. My duties as just a
community man were not enough to justify fiddling away the day talking
online. I knew (and AOL told me by its layoff actions) that just
doing one thing wasn't enough. So I got my selves dirty doing more
and more web production and content acquisition for our games site.
Sadly, playing flash games for testing purposes and running the
resource hogging AIR based Twitter platforms made for Crashy
McCrasherson desktops. Someone had to go, and sadly twitter took a
back seat.

This recent phase (the fourth if you are counting) has been fueled by
two things - a better phone (Droid) - and Twitter's maturity. At the
conference this time, the tweets were plentiful. We had hashtags
going (yes we had them in the past but go with me on this) There were
people in the room that I knew. We had wonderful back channel going.
We made fun of the presenters. It led to meet ups, dinners and all
sorts of things. When I got home, I was trying to explain to my wife
the whole thing. She's a twitter novice, aware of it, but not a
user. She came up with the BEST EXPLAINATION EVER! She said "So it's
like passing notes in Class?" It was a eureka moment. Using twitter
at live events or while watching TV or Sporting events is like passing
notes in class. Except in twitters case, you are passing notes with
millions of people at a time.

We love FarmVille! Its the game that we cover the most and people want the most news and information for.  Its also the most annoying, gets the most complaints and seemingly the most polorizing of all the Facebook games.  People hate it, but they can't stop playing.
If you are looking for reasons or motivations to leave the game, I've compiled the seven deadly sins of Farmville.

1.  Never ends.
Like a passage from the Bible, Farmville is a world without end.  It keeps on going.  We humans are trained for things to have a beginning, middle and an end.  FarmVille does away with that.  You farm will sit there forever until you come back or don't. If your friends have been playing regularly, you can never catch up. There are no rules.  Farmville is the Winchester Widow Mansion of games....you just keep on building

2. It doesn't work.
We continually ask our Facebook fans questions about their favorite games.  The number one issue they have is that the games simply fail consistantly.  Oh did an hour of harvesting? Game disconnects.  Just bought something you saved up for? Game doesn't load.  Need to log in to save withered crops? Game takes ten minutes to load,  Stories like this are consistant for all players and are a never ending source of frustration and anger for poor Sally farmer.

3. My friends hate me.
Farmville forces you to share game events, ask for gifts and generally annoy all your friends to progress.  Its annoying for your none FarmVille players.  If you don't know it now, I'm going to tell you, your non-farming friends hate you for it. I'm willing to bet that many a family dinner will end up in Farmville related fights over Aunt Gertrudes constant brown cow requests.

4. Its not good for you.
Gaming is supposed to be a relaxing diversion.  For most it is, but for some it can be an incidious tenticle down the path of addiction.  Its been written that some online game players will play a single game for 40-50 hours a week.  These folks are putting relationships, health and happiness in jeapordy for time on the farm.  In a recent study,  20% of game players admitted they were addicted.  Think Zynga is going to pick up the bill for that? 

5. Procrastination
We are in a bit of a transitional period in our economy.  People are losing jobs, working less hours or simply have given up looking for work.  FarmVille isn't helping! Facebook games are an easy diversion from the real work you need to do.  Instead of spending ten hours a week on FarmVille, spend ten hours learning new computer skills, you won't be out of work for long. 

6. Its work!
Sure its a diversion but doing well and making your farm look nice takes a ton of work.  Just like a real farm players check their clocks and wake up early just to harvest their fake crops.  Where is the fun in having an appointment with a game? A cottage industry of tools for players have cropped up to manage farmtime.  What? I need to manage my time in a game? Run that by me again? Why am I playing this, sounds like work to me.

7. Reinforces our materialism and wants of things we don't have.
Ok, its a bit of a political statement but so what!  FarmVille reinforces the feelings of what we don't have.  You go through the items and see this or that gorgeous item that will make farming easier and it costs real money.  Its just like walking past the Ferrari in the car lot.  These items pull at our desires wants and needs.  We feel like we're less of a farmer because we don't have this or can't afford that.   We go "visit" our friends farms and we see they have to latest shed or crop duster and we can't help but feel more envy.  FarmVille is purposfully (I believe) playing on our American materialism.  The want and need of things we don't have.  Things that when we get, don't really do that much. We just want the next shiny object.  Ever been to a real farm?  All it has is a house, a barm and maybe a shed. That's the real deal.

Fun little game to play!  Tell me where am I in New York City?  Post the answer in the comments.