In preparation for going public, Zynga's taking proactive measures to improve how it deals with privacy issues. As TechCrunch notes, the gaming company was sued last year for a privacy breach, and mentioned the "p word" as a challenge in its S-1 IPO filing last week. The company is garnering praise then for its newest game: PrivacyVille, which allows Zyngites to wander through a virtual town and find out about Zynga's privacy policies.

On the plus side, it's more fun than reading the standard privacy policy. On the negative side, it's not a very fun game. There are no thrills, chills, zombies, or privacy gardens in need of tending. You just click on different buildings in the town and get pop-ups telling you about what information Zynga collects from you, your computer and your mobile devices and how it will use that info. At the end of the tour of the town is an insultingly easy five-question quiz, which is more a veiled promotion for Zynga than a test of a user's understanding of Zynga's privacy policy. (Sample question: "How much game data does Zynga process every day?" Tip: Neither "40 Bushels" nor "5 Balloons" is the right answer.)

Zynga, you hooked a million people on Farmville. You know how to make dynamic, engaging, addictive games -- why is this one so flat?

"Anything that moves beyond a privacy policy and into engagement is a step forward," says Jules Polonetsky, founder of the Future of Privacy Forum, who applauded the effort. "It's hard to make privacy fun."

(Well, invading it can be fun...)

When I posted the news to Google Plus, privacy guru Lorrie Cranor of Carnegie Mellon expressed disappointment, calling it a "good idea but not well-executed." I, for one, wish it took some cues from educational games like Carmen Sandiego or Oregon Trail, with challenges rather than just a quiz at the end: "Whoops! You gave your credit card number to a spoof site! Water buffalo stole your identity. Lose life points."

Go "play" Privacyville here.