Newsweek: Social gaming is a 'strange way to spend time'

Even though FarmVille has 83 million monthly players, it's still amazing to see how much the rest of the world has yet to catch on to the fact that, yes, people play games on Facebook en masse and, yes, they're willing to collectively invest lots of time and money to do it.

At this point, this doesn't exactly seem like news anymore; the bigger story is how much social gaming will continue to grow and compete all other forms of entertainment -- not just video games, but movies, TV, music and the like.

To that point: it seems shocking to read an article titled 'Money for Nothing: The serious business of pretend products' on Newsweek.com where the author says playing social game is 'strange' and the fact that people buy items for these games is 'weird.'

If you've spent time on Facebook, you might be mystified by all the people tending to their virtual farms and virtual pets. I know I am. Not only does this seem a strange way to spend time, but here's the even weirder part: a lot of these people are spending real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer, to gain advantage in these Web-based games."not only does [playing games on Facebook] seem like a strange way to spend time, but here's an even weirder part: a lot of these people are spending real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer..."