Farmville

The Facebook game Farmville apparently now has 69 million active users per month.

I've never played it, but I just read a review of it here.

The following paragraph caught my attention.

The game is also more than happy to bribe players for participating in its viral spread: cute lonely animals will show up on your farm periodically and as a player you face a dilemma in sentencing them to virtual abandonment and death unless you post on your Facebook wall that you need one of your friends to start playing Farmville and "adopt" the adorable little self-promoter.

Sounds like my definition of gaming hell. It also reminded me of a thought I had around 10 years ago about how in the future, robotic toys would manipulate kids into buying accessories for them. For example, imagine a Barbie doll who sits around crying all the time because she had no new clothes to wear while all of her friends' Barbies had new outfits.