The image of gamers is slowly changing, and social-networking sites have a lot to do with it. The image of a "normal" person from one of any number of backgrounds is replacing the stereotype of a pasty, underexercised social outcast living in his mother's basement. So as a lifelong gamer, why am I afraid to play FarmVille?

Statistics show that social gaming is massive: FarmVille, the game that arguably kicked off the revolution, presently has 52 million active users. CityVille, Zynga's hot new title, has a whopping 98 million active users. To put this into context, between the two of them, the number of adds up to almost two and a half times the population of the United Kingdom. If gaming has become this socially acceptable, why should hardcore gamers feel a pang of shame for indulging in these pursuits?

I am a gamer and have been since the early 1980s. I've owned a Commodore 64, an Xbox 360, and everything in between. I have sampled most every genre, and I rank real-time strategies among my favorites.

As someone who has witnessed the evolution of the industry over the past three decades, I feel I should embrace the move toward Facebook-integrated apps, especially the RTSes. I'd like to play titles like Kingdoms of Camelot and Mafia Wars, but their presence on such a widely used a social-network platform puts me off.  My reasoning may be debatable, but it goes as follows: I don’t like the idea of everybody on my Friends list, which includes work colleagues and people on the periphery of my social circle, receiving updates every time I sow a field or request help to build a barn. 

The very nature of social gaming requires this sort of interaction with other users, but because of the number of requests I've received -- not to mention their persistence -- I am loath to inflict such irritation upon my friends. The carpet-bombing nature of the applications’ update messages and the lack of customizable privacy options is the issue.

An immediate retort to this concern is that Facebook features an option to ignore all such notifications. Not everyone chooses to use this feature. Perhaps they are happy to receive them or are eager to involve themselves in the game. But what if they wade through endless updates because they don't know how to filter them out? With 500,000,000 users, surely some of them are pretty close to computer illiterate. I wouldn’t want everyone to see my deluge of Mafia Wars spam. And I’m not alone in my frustration: An entire anti-FarmVille movement exists within Facebook, born of this sort of complaint, and it sports over 2,000,000 disgruntled users.

Collaborative gaming should be about people who want to work together working toward a common goal. If users aren't interested and don’t have the application, then the system shouldn’t bother them with updates or requests. Sadly, Facebook and other social networks like it have a mandate to expand, and it’s not likely that social gaming will move become less intrusive any time soon.

I’m sure many worthy titles exist in the genre -- especially if you looking for something to do in a very short window of time -- but until the creators rein in the updates, it will remain an area of the gaming world that I’ll avoid. I don’t play on Facebook because of privacy issues and a reluctance to have my pastimes scrutinized by everyone connected with my social media accounts. I don’t want everyone I know to see what I’m playing and how often I play it. I reserve that "privilege" for the friends I game with on Xbox LIVE.