FarmVille: First Impressions

I just got hooked on FarmVille last week. For some reason, harvesting fruits and veggies is really appealing when it takes only mere hours with no dirt and toil.

First of all, there are no worms - hooray! Second, it's a very friendly game! You are highly encouraged to invite friends to be your "neighbors" and the whole system of everyone mutually helping each other is really nice to see. Restaurant City (my other waning fb addiction) just doesn't have that. Yes, you can trade ingredients to help out others and yes, you can give gifts to other people. But in reality people will only trade if it also benefits them, and gifting costs hard earned coins that could instead be spent on your own success. I have never received a gift in Restaurant City. And ingredients are generally hard to come by (unless you pay with real money... but why pay for pixels when you can get the real thing?).  Basically it's all up to myself to climb up the ladder in Restaurant City and if I'm lucky I might get some help from a friend along the way.

In FarmVille I can plant as many crops as I have space and not worry about money. I get free stuff left and right. People help out my farm and get rewarded, and I do the same. You get free money and items for clicking on others' accomplishments in the fb newsfeed. The best part: I can give other people gifts without using my own money. They're free to give. Amazing. Unheard of. I love the spirit of this game. It's so chill. The community is great. Now I can legitly get excited when I see a FarmVille billboard on the highway.

Now if someone wants to gift me a bunny...