IMO, the Farmvilles and Mafia Wars of the world are only problematic if they crowd out resources and attention available to produce higher quality games. I have

IMO, the Farmvilles and Mafia Wars of the world are only problematic if they crowd out resources and attention available to produce higher quality games. I have yet to see any evidence to that effect. I'm not saying it's not out there; I'm simply saying that I haven't seen any. Farmville isn't preventing the next Chrono Trigger from getting made, as far as I can tell. In fact, there's a reasonable, if counterintuitive, argument to be made that Zynga's success is helping the gaming industry as a whole -- by making video games more mainstream, and thereby reducing the stigma traditionally associated with them. In turn, more investment dollars flow into the gaming startup space, and this means that more games get made. So the gamer wins. I'd love to see some analysis that counterbalances Zynga's effect on the size of the gaming industry vs. its effect on the quality of games being made. That would be an interesting study.