Have you ever wondered what kind of people pay actual real-world money to get ahead in “freemium” online games like Mafia Wars or Farmville? It seems ridiculous that anyone would bother, but Zynga made 600 million dollars last year, so there must be more than a few chumps out there doing it.

Well, one of those chumps was Bettysue Higgins, an administrative assistant who recently pleaded guilty to embezzling $166,000 from the law firm she worked at. Her skulduggery went undetected for years, until she got sloppy and began depositing thousands of dollars worth of forged checks directly into her personal bank account, which she would then blow on Mafia Wars and YoVille. Whoops!

Don’t be a Bettysue kids — stay away from Facebook games.

via Kotaku

Editor Corgi does not approve.

You know a reporter might just be biased when he opens an article with, “Councilman Nelson Crabb’s association with gore and violence has spread into the virtual world of violent online gaming.”  So what was Crabb’s association with gore and violence before it spread online?  Well, he’s a retired police officer, which, I guess, associates him with gore and violence.  Great reporting.  And what’s this virtual world of violent online gaming?  We can’t even make this up: Mafia Wars.  Yes, the Facebook game that has no animation and manages to somehow be about as boring as Farmville is a source of outrage for California newspaper Merced Sun-Star.

In an article that obviously consisted of a reporter looking at somebody’s Facebook updates trying to find an excuse to be outraged and an editor not paying attention, here are a few of the gems their investigative report uncovered:

In the game “Mafia Wars,” Crabb has many titles. He’s a “cold blooded” killer, a “Street Thug,” a “Master Burglar” and a “robber” in the game. Crabb also partakes in “icing” people, and as of June 23, his body count is up to 1,159, according to posts on his Facebook wall. The posts on Crabb’s Facebook wall don’t show blood and gore, but some descriptions of game activity are graphic. “Nelson helped Michael Dispose of a Body and wants you to help too,” according to an April 17 post on Crabb’s Facebook wall. [Merced Sun-Star via Geekosystem]

Did this reporter get busted by the retired cop for drinking underage?  Nothing about that article makes sense.  Amazingly, this ridiculous non-story ran on the front page of the Saturday edition, which Wikipedia claims has a circulation of over twenty thousand.  We hope at least a few hundred of them called up the paper and asked, “What the hell were you thinking?” if they weren’t too busy fragging some n00bs in Call of Duty.

[Inset pic via Superpoop]

Zynga is about to unveil their next game poised to addict your mom and wear out your “hide application” clicking finger.  TechCrunch got a look at the game, survived the ordeal, and emerged back into the light, neck-bearded and eager to relate the tale:

Next up is FrontierVille, if the screenshots I saw while logged in to Facebook as a Developer Test Account are to be believed.  The game description? Click and then keep clicking. Ok, not really. It’s “Howdy Pardner! Let’s explore a new life on the frontier. You gotta chop trees to construct buildings, clear land to raise livestock, plant crops, and raise a family. The untamed wilderness is hazardous, but your fellow pioneers are there to help.”  Milestones include things like “learned the ropes,” “just broke ground for a new homestead!,” and “just finished building a General Store in FrontierVille.” [TechCrunch]

This game has been in the works since at least January of this year (much longer than was spent on
version 1.0 of Farmville), which suggests this game might either be very large or had development problems.  One thing’s for certain, I’ll still be playing “Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist” on an old Tandy instead.  Is FrontierVille going to task users with catching horse farts in a paper bag?  Yeah, didn’t think so.

I couldn’t decide which of these videos to make a post about, so you’re getting all four of them. These are the important clips you need to familiarize yourself with in order to survive in today’s fast-paced economy:

1. The law firm of Trolman, Glaser & Lichtman makes fun of gamers with this ad. [via BoingBoing]
2. Here’s that “FarmVille” parody ad that’s been going around for the past couple weeks, made by Toby Turner.
3. I posted that older video as a backstory for this one.  He made another parody ad.  This one’s for Mafia Wars. [via TheHighDefinite]
4. A bunch of guys in Korea (the Seoul Dancetroopers) dressed up as stormtroopers and danced in public to K-pop music by the Wonder Girls.  So, that exists now. [via ToplessRobot]

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