How Farmville Brought Me Closer to My Cousins

When I first stated playing Farmville last summer, never did I imagine it would bring me closer to my cousins, but it did.

I'm one of the original Farmville players. Meaning, I started playing in June 2009, after seeing it advertised on Mafia Wars, another game by the same creator (Zynga).

I was originally drawn to the game by the cute graphics, but I stuck with the game because it was addicting and I enjoyed the challenge of leveling-up quickly and unlocking new decorations and crops. Soon, I stopped playing Mafia Wars and started focusing my attention on Farmville.

As the game grew in popularity, more and more of my Facebook friends and family started playing the game. Suddenly, my sister, mom, a few of my aunts and a bunch of my cousins were my Farmville "neighbors." We were fertilizing each others crops, sending gifts, adopting each others animals and so on. Soon, I was participating in Facebook chats with cousins I rarely talked to.

Recently, I saw most of my cousins at a wedding. In the past, I'd exchange polite greetings with my cousins whenever we saw each other at family functions. The conversation never was deeper than, "Hi, how are you? How's work going?" It's not that we didn't like each other; it's just that we didn't know what to say to each other. We're all around the same age--in our late '20s and early '30s--being that we're in the same life stage, you'd think we'd be close, but sadly, we're not.

But this changed. At the latest family event, we had plenty to talk about. "Have you finished building your nursery?" "How many crops have you mastered?" "How much Farmcash do you have?" Farmville was the center of our conversations-thank goodness we were sitting at the same table or some of our non-Farmville playing relatives would've thought we'd lost our minds.

I went from engaging in small talk with my cousins at family functions to having long conversations. Today, I even have all of them programmed into my cell phone. I receive and sending text messages related to new Farmville items, releases and game updates. I've even hung out with a few of them at a non-family event. Not only do we "talk shop," but we talk about our daily lives, too. I feel like I actually know my cousins now-all because of Farmville. How cool is that!