Social Gaming addiction is growing at an astonishing rate. FarmVille, a social game run through Facebook, has recorded monthly active users at over 81 million with more people joining every day.  What does this all mean? What is social gaming? What is it to me? What can it do for me? How can I take advantage of it?

For many people, social gaming is a new way to pass some time for free, or at least that’s how it begins. As a college student, I’ve sat in classrooms full of students with laptops. I could not even begin to estimate how many FarmVille, FishVille, Café World, etc screens I’ve seen in the middle of lectures. It is understandable to play a game in the middle of a boring lecture, but these gamers are even playing the day before the final while the teacher is reviewing. Sure there are people who use the game seldomly at proper moments, but there is a trend emerging towards social gaming addiction.

I admit, I am a former FishVille player and an active user of Café World. I began playing each of them because friends did. FishVille became popular at my previous college. I started playing the aquarium based game so I had something in common with the people I used to spend every day of my life with. As for Café World, my future roommate plays daily, and she got me hooked. There is no real value in my current gaming problem, however, sometimes I will sign onto Facebook just to update the game. Instead of using those few moments of my free time to check notifications or emails, I serve dishes, wash the stove, and queue up the next batch of food. My gaming habits have become a bit excessive. If my rating drops below the highest of 105, I start to worry why the number is falling. What started as a little game I used to pass time when I was waiting to leave the house or for a phone call, is now a multiple time a day ‘addiction’. It’s a waste of time, energy and effort. I don’t want to imagine the amount of time it will add up to eventually, but I keep playing. The game is fun. I can send gifts, redecorate the Café, receive bonuses, advance my level, and much, much more.

Luckily, I do not have it as badly as most gaming addicts. There are people who have gone into debt paying for the different versions of currency sold in each of these virtual worlds. For instance, there is a 12-year-old boy who managed to fall $1,300 into debt playing FarmVille. If you buy this currency, you don’t have to wait to level up. The online gaming cash is worth much more than the currency that is earned through normal play, and can allow you to buy various items unavailable to regular, non-paying, gamers. So demand for this super currency is high.

Obviously, this gaming habit can be detrimental to an individual who does not use it at the proper times, in the right context, but what does it mean for businesses? We’re all fascinated by the rapid growth of social gaming. A single Facebook application can drive 400,000 people to fan a business’s page in one day with the right marketing plan. Microsoft did just that by promoting Bing via FarmVille. If users fanned the Bing Facebook page, they received Farm Cash, the currency used in FarmVille’s virtual world. Gamers will often jump at any opportunity to gain these currencies for free because of their value, discussed earlier. So for businesses this era of social gaming could prove to be a great opportunity for growth. With everyone scrambling to get into Facebookers’ streams, teaming up with one of Facebook’s many social games could be the perfect solution. These games already have a ton of buzz marketing behind them, so go ahead and affiliate with one of these social gaming giants, and watch your numbers soar.