Unreality Bites

I remember when CD-Roms were all the rage. We'd proudly place those discs in our drives and these CDs quickly became the quintessential computer games of the 1990's. This archaic technology eventually went the way of the dinosaurs and was replaced by the Xbox, the Wii, the Playstation, and voluminous online websites for people who like to refer to themselves as "gamers."

But during the glory days of CD-Roms, one of the more popular creations was a reality game called The Sims. Essentially, you created your own family. You made decisions on their clothing, determined where they would travel, scripted conversations they would have, and even made choices on their schooling and occupations. In this world, you truly played God.

I was given The Sims as a gift once, but never really made it that far. I thought it was nothing more than a big time waster and after all, there was this really cool new dial up service called America Online that I loved exploring, but only after I waited for my dial up signal to make that explosive noise that informed me that I was connected.

So now that we've moved into the new media age, with blazing wireless download speeds, and several options for social media, a new version of The Sims-like technology has taken the world by storm. This is all courtesy of a company called Zynga. Through a relationship with Facebook they are responsible for online games such as Farmville and Cityville which have attracted a countless number of "followers." The popularity of these games moved into the forefront last week as Zynga announced that they were planning on a public stock offering. And the potential evaluation? Several billion dollars!

I asked myself how a company that creates fictitious farms and cities could be valued so high, but then I read more. Zynga made over 400 million dollars in net revenue from people buying items like seeds for their virtual farms. Let me say that again, 400 million!

So we have a shaky economy where people must spend more prudently. And between work, children's soccer and basketball games, ballet lessons, and other social commitments people still found the time and the money to pay for seeds on a farm that doesn't really exist.

For most of us, we struggle daily with just having enough time and energy to deal with the things that matter most. Time with our children, staying in touch with friends, working one or two jobs to make ends meet. While hopefully all along, feeding our hobbies, whether they be softball, fishing, tennis, pottery, dancing, creative writing or whatever drives you. At the end of every week, usually on a Sunday, we say that next week will be different and we'll actually get to these areas of our lives that will make a positive difference. But most of us simply fail again.

Is it possible that we're letting online videogames get in the way? I don't spend nearly as much time on Facebook as many of my friends; especially those who are insistent on telling me where they are all times, which kid just threw up their dinner, or which traffic jam they're immobilized in. But to think that millions of other people still find the time to build computer farms and cities and actually pay for it just blows my mind.

Maybe if we spent more time tending to our kids, our careers, our finances, friends and families, Zynga wouldn't be going public after all. They would just be a fad that would soon be replaced as easily as The Sims was all those years ago.

Sometimes I wonder which truly came first. Did we create Zynga or did they create us?