These Games Can Be Addicting

Words With Friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How many online games do you play?  I've pretty much avoided all of them - except for the word games Lexulous, Scrabble, and Words with Friends.

I keep getting notifications from friends on facebook about all kinds of other games, so I know there are plenty of games to choose from and plenty of people playing.  I just try to turn off all those notifications as they come in, because I just don't have time for any more games.  I have a hard enough time keeping up with the word games I am playing sometimes!  I have at least one friend on facebook who never seems to post anything personal, but she's always sending me game requests.  As soon as I turn off the requests from one game (or 3 or 4 games), she's sending me requests from something else.  How many games are there anyway?  And does she ever do anything else?

Image via CrunchBase

I do feel kind of lost when I'm all caught up on my games and waiting on everybody else to play their turns so I can play again - so I understand a bit about how addictive these games can be.  Thankfully I haven't been completely sucked in, not like the lady on the news tonight, or maybe even my friend.  This lady on the news plays Farmville up to 8 hours every day, and spends up to $200 per month on it.  So, pretty much, she does nothing but sit on her computer and play games all day - and she's spending real money on it. 


According to the news story about why we get hooked on online games, it isn't necessarily the players' fault they spend so much time playing.  The gaming industry is hiring psychologists as consultants - to make their games more enticing and more addictive.  They employ the same strategies as Las Vegas - flash and intermittent rewards, all designed to hook you within 20 minutes and keep you playing.

If that's not a good reason to continue turning off all those notifications, I don't know what is!