An update post on Rift is on its way, but I found this post over at Terra Nova very interesting, especially considering Rift is a sub-based MMO in what seems like a sea of F2P games.
I’m not holding my breath that games like Farmville will pass, since plenty of people go to a casino just to put pennies in a slot machine, and have been doing so for years. I think the more realistic scenario is that those type of games are no longer the ‘in’ thing, and their popularity fades but does not completely stop. Going back to the casino example, poker became the ‘it’ thing for a bit, and more people played that, but the ‘lifers’ still showed up to hook into a slot machine, happily pressing their one button and watching the wheels spin. When the poker fad passes, the average player will move on to the next fad, while the poker players will keep playing, just like the lifers will still be hooked into their machine.
I’m just hoping the Farmville fad passes sooner rather than later. At least the previous fad in the space was more traditional MMO games, and while we got lots of crap, we did get a few gems. Has the Farmville fad produced anything remotely close to a gem yet?
Hardcore Casual 
What I find hilarious is that the earliest game designers didn’t have a clue about metrics or models, nor did they have advanced degrees in human psychology. They made games they wanted to play. Plain and simple.
These days they really are trying to build the most productive slot machine, and the hilarious part is how dramatically some of these things fail because they forgot to carry the fucking 1. Woopsie! There goes your $60M investment.