That's A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz's description of Farmville in a screed taking the game to ask. It's worth a read, albeit his claim that Farmville does not meet Callois's definition of 'the game' is highly debatable.
Things are actually, however, worse than Liszkiewicz realizes; social games are in fact refined, user-tested mechanisms for extracting money from players for nothing. The combination of SQL-derived metrics over a large player-base and the ability to test minor variations in gameplay quickly make these games examples not of the ars ludorum, but of financial engineering.
(I'm working on another social network game at the moment, btw.)
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