[heinel]

>> but that doesn't mean that there's something nefarious or bad about it. <<

Except in the article it read:

"Gameplay in FarmVille, FishVille, or Café World is based almost exclusively on what social-game designers call a "compulsion loop." Players perform basic tasks — clicking on crops to harvest them, clicking on stoves in restaurants, clicking on fish to feed them — earn fake money, enhance their farm or restaurant or aquarium, and repeat. In Zynga's hands, the art of snaring users with such gimmickry has become, quite literally, a science: Pincus told Time magazine last year that Zynga employs a behavioral psychologist."

I think the absence of something in addition to the compulsion loop is what people are objecting to here. The loop itself is not value, it's exploitation.