Games - as opposed to sports - of any kind are often seen as a minority interest. Computer games are, it’s assumed, a subset of that, and therefore even more insignificant. However, there is a game which is currently played by about 1.2% of the population of the world. This game is called Farmville, and it’s played through Facebook. It really does have 82 million players. Not all of them play every day, but that’s the number who have played in the last month.

While I play a lot of games, I hadn’t tried Farmville - or, indeed, many of its ilk, dubbed ’social games’. Last week, I installed the Facebook app, and went in to give it a go, and do some research at the same time. I had a few expectations going in - that it would be a poor game, in the purest sense, that I wouldn’t want to keep playing it, and that it probably wouldn’t have many sensible applications for a non-games business. I was wrong on one and a half counts, and they weren’t the ones you’re expecting.

I thought it would be a poor game. I was wrong, but only in degree; it’s an abysmal game. The gameplay is so poorly designed that you can “win” or “succeed”, in terms of level, in-game cash, or whatever other criteria you want to apply, with minimal effort and minimal thinking. I’m used to my games taking a little bit of thinking, and for a while, I was irritated with this four-piece-jigsaw equivalent. However, after a little while longer, I realised I was looking at the wrong half of ’social games’ - the important aspect is ’social’, not ‘game’. Farmville is extensively cooperative, not competitive, and the more you interact with other players, the better you and they both do. I was right about the gameplay, though.

I thought I wouldn’t want to keep playing. And indeed, after about a day, I had the game sussed, I knew which crops would make the most money, which would level me the fastest, and I had even spotted a few ways to get around the mechanic in the basic game which requires you to come back every so often, or lose ‘investment’ of in-game cash and effort. And then I kept playing anyway. ‘Neighbours’ were sending me gifts, and it seemed churlish to refuse them. The game is, in its own peculiar way, addictive, and there are emergent behaviours - ‘farm art’, and the like - which are fascinating. I did want to keep playing, but I was more interested in the side effects than the core game itself. Call that the half.

And then the one on which I was wrong: I thought that social games had no application for a non-games business. I was terribly, terribly wrong. Even in the purest, simplest sense, there’s enormous goodwill to be got by interacting with other players, and giving them free things for their farms. This can work for anyone; if you’re on Facebook, and you have business contacts there who are playing, get in there and give them things. People like getting gifts, and these small tokens can have every bit as much impact as the bottle of wine you send over at Christmas or when their new product launches. Indeed, since it’s clear that you have to take a personal interest in them, their farm, and the interaction, these things may be more meaningful than just sending a bottle on the company’s dime.

But there’s more. These games have huge, massive potential for companies in all areas, if they make their own. There’s been plenty of buzz around the development of Facebook apps for marketing purpose. You can track sports results on sponsored tickers, check the price of travel on a widget from the airline, or view the weather in apps developed by hundreds of different businesses. But these apps are not sticky. They don’t bring people back regularly, they don’t put the brand back in front of them on a regular basis, and they don’t develop any relationship, real or otherwise.

Farmville lets you play at running your own farm. Café World lets you play at running a small (or, in later levels, vast) restaurant. Say, for instance, you run a real-life business, a garden centre. You can - for small enough money; these are only flash applications that use the Facebook API - get a game up and running where people run their own garden centre. They can buy and sell products (which happen to parallel the ones you sell). They can set up fancy displays, expand into wild bird feed, send their friends free fencing or water features or roofing tiles. They can weigh up the benefits of expanding the car park for their virtual shop against more display space or more shelf space.

All this time, of course, they’re looking at your brand, dealing with products you sell, and having you communicate with them in a hundred subtle and not-so-subtle ways. New product in your shop? An equivalent item in the game, and you’ve communicated that to however-many-hundred people are playing it.

At this point, I haven’t seen any company making this kind of use of social games, but I expect to see it in the near future. And if you can, while you’re at it, make it a better game, I’ll look forward to playing.