Not a fan of the game personally, but I can see why people like. Kids like it as much as adults like it and from what I gathered, the levels seem to be well balanced in that they aren't too easy but also aren't frustratingly difficult.

Youre missing out. There are a lot of great "casual" games that shouldnt be dismissed as an entire genra. I would not list Angry Birds as one, but I have sunk more time into Plants vs Zombies than I care to admit. I am also trying to get that last damn badge on Rebuild 2 / Kongregate... damn biker horde.

And they already are impacting what you call AAA dev. Persoanlly I feel in a good way as it shows you can produce a commercially viable product without a huge publishing house.

Well, see that's the thing. I think it's more of an interest thing. I definitely XBLA game and Kongregate game, but I tend to stay away from shovelware or apps that ape FB games, which I despise with multiple passions. While I do agree that smaller dev teams getting some focus is good, I also think that it's important that they make an engaging product too. I played Crush the Castle on Kongregate, got bored with it and when Angry Birds came out, the genre was already boring to me.

I'm not a TOTALLY close-minded gamer, but I also know what I like and I stick to it.

Ssh! Don't point that out, I'm trying to provoke people here!

I just hate most FB games for the damn "Do an action, and wait 1-6 hours before doing anything else" lol.. I mean what the hell fun is that? it reminds me of the old play by mail games that were popular in the 80's. nah, think i'll stick to PC and console gaming

I used to play Ankhet, travian and another one that allowed for that sort of thing. These days I won't play those types of games just because they tend to be so addictive. If I just wait another 5 minutes I'll have another action point or whatever.

Travian was particularly bad because everything would happen in relatively real time so you might need to be online 3 hours later for an attack.

Well, that's one theory. If people truly subscribed to it, there would be no art critics, professional reviewers of anything (i.e.: hardware, software)...

Some sentences would also be rendered meaningless or contradictory. For example - GOG tries to show us "hidden gems", games that are good but people didn't appreciate them at the time. If we assume that being good is defined by public appreciation... You see where I'm getting.
You'd need to stack additional caveats at this, for instance - claiming that a good game is such that "a competent, unbiased person, given the chance, would enjoy"... which at a certain point becomes "a game is good or bad on its own merit, here are the conditions necessary for a person to be able to see its value: (...)".

I'm not saying that beauty is definitely objective but it pains me to see people going "Duh, it's subjective". It's not that obvious, no matter what the crazy postmodern world tells you ;P.

I've flirted around with eRepublik, which would be a good game if the admins weren't so damn focused on feeding the people that buy massive amounts of gold. These things are always out of balance, imo. Also, the amount of crazed nationalists playing these types of games have a tendency to ruin it for people who can be objective about dealing with people from countries who may not like each other in real life.