Yeah the Farmville vs. Twitter stat blew me away.

He nails the mentality behind this phenomena. Why was Diablo so addictive? Because the pacing of the upgrades was perfect to instill into you that you had performed just enough to merit an upgrade, which you could choose, and therefore make it your own, and the upgrade would be followed by bigger enemies, which inherently means more exciting, and feeds your conception that you are getting “better”, and the slow progression of your investment in the game is never questioned, because it all works out that your investment of time is perfectly matched by your perception of how worthy the game is of your time, and the two scale up together, symbiotically! Lots of games follow this formula, it seems, some more strictly than others, but this is the essential bare bones formula for addicting people to any experience which is purely self-contained and exists only in their mind. I played a couple of facebook games when I first got on, and if you’re okay with that manipulation, it is “rewarding” enough to keep you going. But I’m really hoping that our thirst for “real” stuff leads us back to reality and not further into duplicating it. I dunno.