I know what you’re probably thinking. How is it that I, an admitted Zuma Addict, could possibly fallen into the world of Castleville? Well, like any such story of decline into a dark and seedy world, it all started with a girl. You see, when I mentioned that romance thing a little while back, I was actually being a little 
dishonest with my readership. Well, not so much dishonest as purposely misleading, since I’ve been dating someone for about three months, and she’s pretty awesome. The point, though, is that she dragged me into Castleville, not so much by actually telling me I should play, or even asking me to play. Actually, the only reason she gets blame in this story at all is because she played before I did.
That makes her guilty, extremely guilty.
Here’s the thing about all of the Zynga games on Facebook, you know the ones that are pretty much all “Blankville” or “Something Wars.” They get played so often because they are extremely addicting and, like most MMO RPGs, they have developed their ability to turn you into one of Pavlov’s dogs faster than you can say, “But I don’t need a new sweater for my little avatar.”
Because, you do… You do need a new, non-existent sweater. You have to have it… it comes from Santa.You can’t let Santa down, can you?
Still, I can’t help but think about how much time and energy I have wasted tending my virtual farms, to make virtual coins, so I can buy virtual inflatable penguins. That’s right, you can see it in my little screen cap there. Zynga, knowing my love of penguins, gave me the ability to buy penguins… They just cost 2000 coins of Castleville money, which is something like 20 minutes of clicking on chickens, farms, houses, and trees to earn.
Yes, I have paid 20 minutes of my life to be able to have a pretend inflatable penguin in the pretend kingdom of Mattopia, where I pretend to rule with an iron fist my citizenry. Of course that consists entirely of a douchey woodsman that might very well be a rapist (his quests are about how to coax a woman out of hiding so he can “seduce” her, mostly with booze), and a ditzy, hippy chick.
Oh, and Santa, you can’t forget that Santa lives in Mattopia.
I don’t know about you guys, but I think it should be a crime to push this kind of crack onto unsuspecting Facebookers.
It’s like heroine in the veins of a gamer that has been trained for years that pixels=important.
Damn I need me some purple pixels to feel alive.
I might need to go to rehab on this one.