Games.com Blog: “Sneak preview: Playdom's next game is Market Street” plus 14 more |  |
- Sneak preview: Playdom's next game is Market Street
- FarmVille Cascadian Farm Crop: Organic Blueberries
- FarmVille Unreleased Crane: Preview Image and Animation
- FarmVille Swiss Alps Buildings: Hotel Switzerland, Swiss Clock Shop & Swiss Tower
- FarmVille Limited Editon Swiss Alps Decorations: Cable Car, Floral Sculpture, Floral Pool & Swiss Hay Bale
- FarmVille Swiss Alps Crops: Triticale & Edelweiss
- FarmVille Limited Lightning Collectibles: Gemstone Collection Explained
- FaceBook Offers Free Credits for FarmVille and Other Games
- Moroccan Palace For Sale In YoVille!
- Fashion Yourself In YoVille - Moroccan Style!
- Furniture From The Exotic Kingdom Now In YoVille
- Pet Society: Huge Park Mascot and the Essentials of Cute
- How social games can rewire our brains for the better
- Are social gamers messing up Facebook's user stats?
- Facebook broadening Credits giveaways for gamers
| Sneak preview: Playdom's next game is Market Street Posted: 19 Jul 2010 04:59 PM PDT  Tonight we discovered something new and exciting - a brand new upcoming game from Playdom titled Market Street. Right now, you can only see the game's application fan page and not actually play the game itself. While we didn't get a chance to play the game, it appears to be a shopping and store management game along the same lines as Mall World and Fashion World. Here is the description of Market Street according to the game's Facebook page:Hire your friends, stock your displays, fire the slackers. Build the world's most successful retail store in Market Street! Love the game? Use the Reviews tab above to give us a 5 star rating! Even though you can't actually play the game yet, we're sure that it will be coming out soon as it looks like Playdom is prepping for a big release. It looks bright and colorful and fun, and we can't wait to give it a try! Become a fan of the Market Street fan page to be alerted when the game has officially gone live.
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| FarmVille Cascadian Farm Crop: Organic Blueberries Posted: 19 Jul 2010 11:30 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville  The Cascadian Farm sponsored crop, Organic Blueberries has been released! Keep in mind this limited edition crop can be mastered. The first organic crop can be planted until July 26th at midnight. Organic Blueberries: Cost: 20 coins Sells for: 80 coins Harvest Time: 4 hours Xp: 2 Mastery: First Star: 200 Second Star: 400 Third Star: 600 This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
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| FarmVille Unreleased Crane: Preview Image and Animation Posted: 19 Jul 2010 11:00 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville 
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| FarmVille Swiss Alps Buildings: Hotel Switzerland, Swiss Clock Shop & Swiss Tower Posted: 19 Jul 2010 10:00 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville  These buildings can be purchased with farm cash during the next days only and after which will be retired items.  * Hotel Switzerland - 60 FV$ * Swiss Clock Shop - 42 FV$ * Swiss Tower - 34 FV$ This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
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| Posted: 19 Jul 2010 09:00 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville  The Swiss Cable Car, Floral Sculpture, Swiss Pool and Swiss Hay Bale will be available during the next 14 days only in the FarmVille Market. FarmVille Swiss Alps Decorations (Released July 15th 2010): * Swiss Cable Car - 36 FV$ * Floral Sculpture - 40,000 coins * Floral Pool - 12 FV$ * Swiss Hay Bale - 2,000 coins 
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| FarmVille Swiss Alps Crops: Triticale & Edelweiss Posted: 19 Jul 2010 08:00 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville  Triticale, seeds are available to Level 23 farmers and above AND you must also have mastered Wheat Rye to unlock. Triticale is a wheat hybrid. Triticale seeds cost 60 coins, are ready to harvest in 8 hours and yield 130 coins and 1 XP with a profit of 70 coins. Edelweiss (a FarmVille Freak previously unreleased item) is unlocked for level 50 and above farmers, seeds cost 400 coins to purchase, are ready to harvest in 1 day and yield 600 coins and 2 XP with a profit of 200 coins. This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
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| FarmVille Limited Lightning Collectibles: Gemstone Collection Explained Posted: 19 Jul 2010 07:30 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville FarmVille has another new exciting feature: Lighting Collections. These new Collections, such as the Gemstone Collection, can only be found when planting crops on your farm. Players will also have the option of purchasing the items in the collection for $FV.  Free Gifables ( 3 Items ) or available for 1 $FV: * Topaz - Common * Amethyst - Common * Turquoise - Common The remaining 3 Gemstones can be found while planting crops or purchased for $FV: * Ruby 2$FV - Uncommon * Emerald 2$FV - Uncommon * Diamond 3$FV -Rare So you can be patient; accept gifts and try to find the Collectibles OR purchase them for a total of 10$FV (the complete set). When you complete the Gemstone collection you can share a few extras with neighbors:  But, currently you will not be able to complete this collection again, as the congratulations pop explains: "You won't be able to collect more Gemstone items, but you can still share extra Gemstone Collection items with your friends."   This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
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| FaceBook Offers Free Credits for FarmVille and Other Games Posted: 19 Jul 2010 07:00 AM PDT Filed under: Farmville  FaceBook credits can be used as virtual currency. You also have the option to buy FaceBook credits and redeem for farm cash when playing FarmVille. The picture below depicts, a 25 free FaceBook credit offer. 25 FaceBook credits is equivalent to $2.50 USD. This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
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| Moroccan Palace For Sale In YoVille! Posted: 19 Jul 2010 06:45 AM PDT Filed under: YoVille  This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
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| Fashion Yourself In YoVille - Moroccan Style! Posted: 19 Jul 2010 06:45 AM PDT Filed under: YoVille  Thank You Angiebaby and Spiralda.          This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
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| Furniture From The Exotic Kingdom Now In YoVille Posted: 19 Jul 2010 06:45 AM PDT Filed under: YoVille New Moroccan Furnishings have been released in YoVille. Deck your new Palace with the rich colors and distinct geometric designs of exotic Moroccan furniture. Items include Pillars in white and gold capped, Moroccan Arched Doorways, Sconces, Floor Lights, Chairs, Sittable Pillows, Loungers, Ottomans, Fireplaces, Couches, and much, much more!View the complete array of items after the jump. Thank You Angiebaby and Spiralda!
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| Pet Society: Huge Park Mascot and the Essentials of Cute Posted: 19 Jul 2010 05:30 AM PDT Filed under: Pet Society  This led me to do a little research on park mascots. Turns out some people have a real fear of them. On unusualphobias.com, I found several interesting comments: ...People dressed as big characters or animals are just really freaky. I have thought that they were since I was little, and I'm not really sure why. If I see one I get all scared and just try not to look at them, but I still know they're there and it's horrible. I'm 15 now and it was so embarrasing on the school trip to Disneyland, because I couldn't tell anybody and I insisted that we took the longer routes around to avoid those creepy things! It's their faces, they're so scary! And they don't speak either, that's creepy too.Here's another comment on the same forum: All of this makes me wonder if something that's bigger than yourself goes against the essence of being cute. Check out this article on Ars Technica about scientists studying why some things are considered cute. Basically, it boils down to our evolutionary love of babies. If something resembles a baby in any way, we are programmed to think of it as cute: The Park Mascot in Pet Society has a friendly face, but it's too large and imposing. It doesn't fit these definitions of cute. I think if it were smaller than my pet, it would have a much better chance at being cute. What do you think? This article originally appeared on Pet Society Anonymous.
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| How social games can rewire our brains for the better Posted: 19 Jul 2010 03:00 AM PDT  We've all heard the scolds talking about how games like Grand Theft Auto will turn a whole generation of kids into amoral killers. But that same concept can be used to explain how some social games are rewiring our brains to make us better people.Ayogo founder Michael Fergusson recently talked about that very idea in a Fast Company interview. As one of the guiding forces behind diabetes-prevention game Healthseeker, Fergusson knows that games can subtly influence our behavior. "We're not trying to do huge things like make smokers into non-smokers, or basketball fans into soccer fans," he said. "We're trying to motivate very small actions by giving very small rewards, and design those rewards to leverage what we understand about how our brains work." Historically, our brains have rewarded us for using past experience (seeing a predator every ten minutes) to predict future rewards (anticipating when the predator will return). Fergusson said these and other insights into how our brains work can be used in game design to create "compulsion loops" to do things that are good for us. "The idea we were designing around is that instead of making the primary goal getting one person to do a thousand healthy things, we would focus instead on getting a thousand people to do one healthy thing," he said. Fergusson even sees these concepts extending outside the gaming world and into the real world of government policy. "What if process of getting a healthy snack from a vending machine was more fun than for getting a chocolate bar?" he asked. "I know there's a lot of talk about taxing junk food to discourage consumption, especially by kids. I would love to see some thought put into making healthy food more enjoyable through play." Yum!
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| Are social gamers messing up Facebook's user stats? Posted: 19 Jul 2010 02:00 AM PDT  Much has been made in the press in the last few days about Facebook's imminent crossing of the 500 million user threshold. This seriously huge number suggests that nearly one in every 14 people in the world has a Facebook account -- a staggering yet not altogether unbelievable idea. However, there's some reason to believe the 500 million number is inflated by many Facebook users that hold multiple Facebook accounts. And many of those that open multiple accounts no doubt do so because of social games.While having more than one Facebook account is technically a violation of Facebook's terms of service, countless people do indeed start secondary accounts for various reasons. Some do it for privacy; so they can post semi-public information that's still hidden from their wider social network. Others start pages for fake characters simply as a joke. But many others start up their secondary Facebook accounts for gaming purposes. These multiple-account users can divided into two main groups. The first group creates multiple accounts to gain an edge in a game -- after all, it's a lot easier to get dozens of neighbors in Farmville if all those neighbors are actually you. The second group simply starts up a secondary gaming Facebook account for convenience. Not only does this secondary account stop all those "free gift request" messages from clogging up the News Feeds of your real friends' News Feeds (who probably couldn't care less, if they don't play those games), but it also protects your "main" Facebook account from in-game neighbors who may be complete strangers in real life. It's hard to determine exactly how many people have used multiple Facebook accounts for either of these gaming purposes, but the Facebook chatter about the problem is not insubstantial. Facebook's own official statistics show that only 50% of their users log in each day, though it's hard to extrapolate what that means to the "real" user count. Still, as Facebook continues to grow as a gaming platform, it seems they're going to have to take some action on the multiple account problem. Either they'll have to get much more proactive about policing their one-person-one-account policy or loosen the regulations so users can easily separate out each facet of their online persona (such as their gaming persona) into its own unique account. Then, at least, Facebook can honestly say that their hundreds of millions of accounts each represent a unique personality, if not a unique person.
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| Facebook broadening Credits giveaways for gamers Posted: 19 Jul 2010 01:00 AM PDT  While some developers and users are still somewhat ambivalent about Facebook's new unified Credits currency, we're pretty sure no one is ambivalent about free stuff. So we're pretty sure that no social gamer can be unhappy that Facebook is widening its credit giveaway program in many popular social games.Inside Facebook readers have reported seeing ads for anywhere from 10 to 25 free Facebook Credits (worth $1 to $2.50) popping up alongside "many Facebook games" in the past week. Of course this isn't the first time Facebook has given away credits to gamers, but the expanded breadth of these giveaways seems to show Facebook is making a big push to get gamers invested in their new currency. And it's easy to see why: Facebook reportedly gets 30 cents on the dollar for every Facebook Credit spent. So what do you think? Is a couple of dollars enough to get you to jump on board with this new payment system? Maybe you're already on board and just happy to get a few more Credits for no good reason? Or perhaps you going to hold out with your credit card payments to the bitter end, in some form of misguided solidarity with developer independence. In any case, let us know in the comments.
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