In a notably bold seven-page article, the New York Times has attempted to make its point on hyper-addictive casual games, tracing the evolution of these "stupid" games and highlighting the implications of casual gaming on the society.

To highlight the effects of compulsive gaming in a rather unique way, the commentary-like article - authored by Sam Anderson - also has a built-in game which gives the `gamers' the advantage of shooting and blowing up ads, links, and comments on their website.

Beginning with the three-decade-old simple and additive puzzle game `Tetris,' the article gradually moves on to the more familiar present-day addictive titles like Angry Birds, Farmville, and Draw Something.

In fact, the article gives an all-encompassing glimpse of the rise of the `additive' games genre - right from the origin of Tetris, to the arrival of the cow clickers, to the outrageous popularity and pervasiveness of the "stupid" hyper-additive games.

Anderson himself admits in the article that the murky world of video game addiction enticed him when he got hooked to Drop7 - a game which was essentially a combination of Tetris and Sodoku.

Along with evaluating his own issues with additive games in the article, Anderson also looks at the rise of the so-called `gamification' - that is, bringing on a reward-based procedure for the more humdrum jobs like shopping - and notes: "Today we are living, for better and worse, in a world of stupid games."