I don't think the secrecy of the manufacturing formula was a big factor in the tobacco judgements. Everyone knew cigarettes had tobacco, flavorings, and preservatives, and delivered a bunch of nicotine/tar/smoke to the lungs.
You can see what's on the screen in Farmville, but do the players understand the effects of periodicity and random reinforcement on the dopaminergic motivational system? The power of well-crafted images and sounds or emotionally manipulative language? Viral loops?
We in the industry know these things; for a layperson it's as obscure as the chemistry of physical addiction.
Speaking of Diablo... Diablo 3 will have a new in-game marketplace which some people think is a step closer to gambling. The reason being that you can actually earn money playing the game now. Put enough hours into it and you can make a few bucks in the market.
I guess the connection is, you buy some loot to get better at the game to play against random monsters to hopefully make some cash from the stuff you find.
^ This. I don't think government intervention is the answer. In respect to tobacco companies, the government only intervened when public outcry became deafening, but the public interest in the abuse was what drove their involvement.
Also, cigarrettes contribute to lung cancer, which kills thousands of people per year. Social games do not directly cause any significant social issues, and even if they may indirectly cause some problems, it won't be as serious as death.
We stepped in to stop misleading advertising, and several other non lethal behaviors because of their derogatory effect on the lives of others.
We don't have to have games kill people to recognize that they are designed to manipulate and addict/engage its audience in a manner inimical to the interests of people.
Unfortunately, once we agree on the above points, we reach the real defense of social gaming, the slippery slope argument.
I believe that in due course of time, people will leave social games, after getting bored of them. The gaming market is not static.
At the same time that doesn't mean we stand back and let evolution go on its merry way. At the very least, we should be able to agree that there are some metrics we can analyze, perhaps the risk reward schedules and payout schemes, and compare them to their ability to create repeat behaviors/addiction in a percentage of the population.
(Heck even if we did wait for games to kill, we would have to work through the defence which will say: "well those people couldn't control themselves, so its just an outlier, or a freak case." )
