FarmVille - a push towards sustainability?

As some students have already expressed their feelings towards the Facebook game, FarmVille, and how the notifications of each player's activity bothers most users, I wonder if there was a positive idea behind it all or if it is just an online game.

What do I mean by a positive idea or force behind FarmVille?  Here is what I think...

While Facebook is a social network site used by mostly high school students forward, younger and younger users are logging on all over the world.

So why not implement a video game, essentially, to attract these users?  But let's make it a farming game that really does not accomplish anything for the life of the daily user. Or might it?

While I was sitting in my environmental studies class around the beginning of this fall semester, I glanced over to the laptop screen of the student sitting a couple seats away from me, they were plowing their FarmVille fields and planting beans. 

I sort of smirked to myself, how ironic - we are discussing sustainability in our environmental class while this student is farming from their lecture room seat.

That got me thinking, might the creators of Facebook's FarmVille have had a motive behind creating the online farming game?

One way to truly improve planet life, including ourselves, is the great push towards true sustainability.

And one way to become truly sustainable, as I have mentioned in one of my other blog posts, is to farm what we truly need - which means eliminating the large commercial farms across the country and pushing towards several small farms to provide food to our own communities.

Might the creators of Facebook's FarmVille be influencing young users by instilling the idea of farming daily and for themselves?  If only in the form of an online video game, the idea might help to 'get the ball rolling.'

If everyone farmed for themselves or shared with their neighbors rather than relying on commercial farming with produce shipped across the country or from other countries for that matter, our impact - like our carbon footprint for instance - on the planet will decrease.  

So the Facebook FarmVille game, that many say is a waste of time and a hassle when checking notifications, might have a purpose after all.  If only to 'get the ball rolling' FarmVille might influence users to start thinking green, if they have not already.

Some more information?

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

http://eartheasy.com/grow_menu.htm