Facebook Games

If you haven't heard about Facebook by now you clearly are living under a rock somewhere and I'm wondering how you've gotten this far on the internet without at least hearing about it.

Now there are many haters out there for Facebook, but I'm a fan. I love being able to keep in contact with people from back home, especially since I'm living so far away right now. It also has a ton of games on there that keep me from dying of boredom after I finish teaching class but am not allowed to leave the school. They are pretty much ridiculous and a very silly waste of time, but at least once a day I check them.

Attack! is probably one of my favorite games on Facebook. It is essentially their version of Risk and I'll usually spend some time everyday taking over the world against friends and sometimes strangers. There is a small strategy to the game, but mostly it comes down to luck as soon as you've figured it out. Nothing challenging, but really, who doesn't like to conquer the world every now and then?
Texas Hold'em is another one of my favorites on here. Pretending I'm rich, and can actually afford to place $400 bets on things and taking everyone elses money makes me go into full on Mr. Burns mode, "Excellent..." Especially when I find out that I have more money than someone else since it displays your ranking among your friends at the bottom of the screen. It's fun for about 15 minutes, then I find my brain going numb and having to do something, anything else, but then that's all these games.

Scrabble...I actually kinda hate scrabble a little bit...but I believe that's mostly due to me losing 95% of the time...but it's probably the only thing I do on Facebook everyday that gives me the slightest bit of education by helping me to learn what are words. But I still don't know what prads are, even if it is a word...This has got to be the nerdiest thing I've seen on Facebook and I'm actually too scared to fully play it. Supposedly it's DnD...just on Facebook, and it sounds almost exactly like it too. You pick your character, you let the dice roll from an automatic generator and just watch to make sure you don't run out of items or health before you finish your generic quest. That's it, little boring sounding and I'm not exactly sure if it will give me my roleplaying fix that I miss ever since moving to another country. (BTW, if anyone knows of any good online ones for cheap/free NO WOW, I'd be interested).

But what makes these game so compelling for me to play? Why do I go back there every single week day whether or not I'm going to win or lose and waste some precious time? Is it because I'm that bored? Well partially, altough I'm sure I could find something, anything more productive to do with my time. But I think what keeps me coming back to it is the competition of it. I play with friends, I get to beat them and it's really the closest thing we have to playing a game with one another while at work. And no, I still won't play WoW...

Those games where I play by myself and am competing alone...I usually give up about a week or two later, these games where I get to conquer friends, see how much more money I have than everyone else or maybe pray that someday I will beat someone at Scrabble. There really is no other explanation for it; boredom and a combination of a desire to beat all my friends on there keeps me coming back to these games time and time again.