Word: game
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Playing the Game Increasingly, the velina is a political player as well as a sexual one. Though just 18, Noemi Letizia - whose relationship with Berlusconi spurred feverish speculation in the Italian press this summer - knows how the game works. "[I want to be] a showgirl," she told an Italian newspaper. "I am interested in politics, too ... I'd rather be a candidate for the Chamber of Parliament. Papi Silvio would take care of that." Last year, Berlusconi formalized the politics-showgirls link, appointing Mara Carfagna, 32, a former velina and topless model, as his Minister for Equal Opportunities. This summer...
FarmVille is the most popular game on Facebook--65 million unique monthly players and growing. It is also the furthest place imaginable from the seedy underbelly of the Internet. It's a hamlet where the sun always shines, crops always grow and your friends drop by to do chores accompanied by plinky guitar music. Its astonishing popularity is a testament to the potential of gaming on social networks. Social games promise the golden pork-chop combo of the addictiveness of computer games with the communality of Facebook and MySpace. And they generate some of their revenue from product come...
FarmVille is part of Zynga, the fastest-growing, most buzzed-about social-game company of the moment. In October, Zynga operated six of the 10 most popular Facebook games: FarmVille, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, YoVille, zyngapoker and Roller Coaster Kingdom. Founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, Zynga had 45 staffers by June 2008 and now employs 600, counting contractors. Its most recently launched game, FishVille, hooked 9 million users in a week. Zynga is privately held, but a rival less than half its size was recently bought by Electronic Arts, the GM of games, for $400 million...
...figure that out, we have a useful analogy close at hand: FarmVille. There are two ways to move ahead in the game. One is to grind, as it's known--plow, plant and harvest. Once you've grown, say, eggplant, you accumulate enough points to move up to a wider choice of crops. You invite friends to be your neighbors. You exchange gifts and help out, all of which let you accrue the capital you need to expand your farm, thus making it ever more remunerative...
Pincus calls these the "golden mechanics." He learned them by trial and error, mainly while working on his two failed start-ups, Tribe.net and Supportsoft. He also has a behavioral psychologist on staff. Unlike traditional electronic games, which can't be changed much after they're shipped, Zynga's games constantly evolve in response to users' preferences, so they're more habit-forming. "They're making movies," he says of console-based-game creators. "What we're doing is more like weekly TV programming...