The Crunchies Award has returned once again, and FarmVille needs its dedicated farmers to vote FarmVille for the 2010 Crunchies Best Time Sink Application!
Due to our votes last year, FarmVille won the Best Social App award last year (you can check out the post here). Can we do it again this year for our favorite game?
Vote for FarmVille for The Crunchies Awards
Hi Farmers! Show your love for planting, plowing, growing and gaming by voting for FarmVille for the 2010 Crunchies Best Time Sink Application!
Grimwell hosts this week’s podcast. This podcast reveals a little more details about the upcoming FarmVille Orchards and how they will work as well as some exciting news about new limited edition giftable seeds, like this Halloween’s Black Rose crop! Read more in the coming soon section for all the details.
You can listen to the podcast video above, read the FarmVille Freak Summary below, or read the entire transcript, provided by Zynga, at the bottom of the post.
What do you think about the news from this week’s podcast? Discuss!
FarmVille Freak October 23rd 2010 Podcast Summary
Halloween in FarmVille
Can “trick” your neighbors by covering their fences, barns, or trees in cobwebs or by turning their animals into ghosts.
5 times on each of your neighbors famers
Spooky effect can be purchased for 2 FV$
Re-releases like the Haunted House and new LE Halloween items
Avatar Upgrades
You can now purchase clothing for your farmer avatar with coins or farm cash
Halloween Costumes for Avatars
Will only be in the market until Halloween theme expires
If you purchase, you can keep costumes forever and can wear year-round
Farmer’s Insurance in FarmVille
Limited promotion lets you place the Farmer’s Insurance Airship on your farm for wither protection
For farmers located in the United States only
Ends October 28th 2010
Mobile Farming Update
New exclusive app for iPad
Makes use of the iPad’s large display to show more of the farm
Improved mobile interface
Free through iTunes Apple app store
New Apple only gifts will be coming soon (free Apple giftables)
FarmVille Youtube channel
The release of each major theme will have previews
Features animations of new items
Located at youtube.com/FarmVille
User-submitted questions
FarmVille reveals that Chicken coop expansion could be in the future.
Country fair theme could be returning to FarmVille.
COMING SOON
Orchards are coming soon
Orchards will be a constructible buildings
You can place up to 20 trees in each Orchard and you can have more than one.
The appearance of your Orchard depends on the trees you put inside.
Orchards can be harvested once per day for coins.
Harvesting your Orchard yields the possibility of receiving a Mystery seed.
Mystery Seeds can grow into any type of tree in your Orchard and must be planted and watered before they mature into a fully grown version of their parent tree.
Enhanced trees will be part of the Tree Mastery.
You can progress as you harvest Orchard or individual trees.
There will be 3 levels of mastery with rewards for each level.
There will also be mastery signs given after mastery is complete.
Gifted Limited Edition Seeds
You will be able to gift your neighbors packets of 20 seeds.
Once you accept a gifted seed it can be found in the market.
You can then plant the seeds on your farm and will also be able to master!
The seeds will also be available for farm cash.
The Black Rose Crop coming soon!
-For Halloween as the first giftable Limited Edition seed crop.
Another Limited Edition Halloween themed building is now available to make your farm spookier. The Haunted Bell Tower was a previously unreleased item on FarmVille Freak.
You can purchase this LE building only for the next 12 days.
FarmVille LE Halloween Buildings (Released October 20, 2010):
Haunted Bell Tower – 28 $FV
FarmVille Haunted Tower
Will you purchase the Haunted Bell Tower? Send pics of your Halloween or Fall themed farm to farmgoddess@farmvillefreak.com and we may feature them on FarmVIlleFreak.com
Zynga continues to have fun conquering the West with yet another Zynga branch. This time the acquisition is due to the purchase of BonFire Studios which expands the Zynga empire to Dallas, Texas.
This will mark the second location in Texas, as there is already a Zynga-Austin, and makes the number of Zynga locations in the United States increase to a total of six.
Zynga’s Press Release can be read below,
Zynga Dallas: Giddy Up!
Yeehaw! We’re thrilled to announce that Zynga is moving into the world of boots and BBQ today, with the acquisition of Bonfire Studios. Bonfire Studios brings world-class talent and an impressive résumé to the Zynga team, some of their employees having created popular PC and Xbox 360 games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Halo Wars.
Starting today, Bonfire Studios becomes Zynga Dallas and will be developing original IP for the company – with Bonfire founders David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett leading the charge. David will serve as GM of Zynga Dallas, Scott will be senior art director and Bill will act as the creative director. Additional information on each included below:
David Rippy: Game industry veteran of over 15 years; served as president and CEO of Bonfire Studios and established the company’s vision, culture and direction
Bill Jackson: A veteran programmer and producer; was in charge of the creative direction of Bonfire’s projects, specifically with driving the creation of Bonfire’s original IP
Scott Winsett: Defined the visual style for Bonfire’s titles, with more than 14 years of relevant experience; strong leadership experience in the games industry with serving as the art lead on Age of Empires, The Rise of Rome Expansion and Halo Wars” (Source: Zynga)
Do to an overwhelming response to our FarmVille Freak Denise’s Corn Maze post, we have added a gallery for all our subscribed FarmVille Freaks to upload their own Corn Maze! Just click the Add Image link to upload your screen shot!
FarmVille Freak "Dislikes" today's FaceBook Outage. Where is the "Dislike Button" anyways?!??!
Earlier today, FaceBook went down and everyone freaked out!
FarmVille Freaks were worried about their farms, crops, and beloved Puppies going hungry. Mobsters were on edge from being forced to take a break from whacking people and all the other millions of people who have some sort of alternative internet career in the realms of social gaming no less worried about something. Oh and then there are those other people, who still use FaceBook for purposes other than gaming, well they were worried too.
Even though the outage was only for 2.5 hours, panic was widespread. The world reacted and news of the outage made both national and international headlines. According to FaceBook this is the worst outage that they have experienced in four years. So what did happen? If you want to read all the nerdy technical details about today’s outage, click here. If not, just be happy knowing that it works now and that even though FaceBook was down, Zynga was still looking out for all its addicts farmers. Unwither was turned on and Puppy starving was disabled.
Now, if only FaceBook could fix our disabled FarmVille Freak FaceBook Fan Page. That’s probably asking for too much.
So what would we do without FaceBook? What happens if it really did “break”?
ABC’s Good Morning America news talk show seems a little late in the game as they just now have realized that over 80 million people are playing FarmVille and decided to do a special puff piece on the demographics of current farmers and their possible addiction.
“They tried to stop. They couldn’t. They tried to put time limits on their FarmVille use, but they couldn’t succeed,” Young said, speaking in general about women who find it hard to kick the FarmVille habit.
According to the psychologist referenced above, those obsessed with playing FarmVille can lead to problems such as addiction and that players should limit themselves to how much time they spend on their virtual farms.
Their special report covers the gamers that make up the majority of FarmVille players which includes women in the over fourty age group. While this fact may be true, they also leave out a huge demographic of farmers. This article and video are definitely from an outsiders perspective by obvious non-players. We all know that you don’t normally purchase seeds with farm cash (besides Sweet Seeds for Haiti) and purchasing farm cash (with real money) for virtual goods has been around much longer than the reported “recently”.
Facebook Credit Gift Card Image Provided by Usa Today
What will top your holiday gift list this upcoming season? I would venture to guess that quite a few FarmVille Freaks will be asking for the new and upcoming Facebook Credit gift cards. As reported by USA Today this past week, Facebook Credit gift cards will become available for purchase from Target stores sometime in September (along with several other retail stores by the end of 2010). The cards will be sold in quantities of $15, $25 and $50 USD in stores across America as well as online at Target.com. Facebook Credits can be used among the many social games played through Facebook to purchase virtual goods.
A picture of Facebook Credit gift cards (left) showed a slogan of “The quick & easy way to get premium items in your favorite games and applications”.
As USA Today pointed out “this will be the first time Facebook has had any presence in a retail store”. The sale of these Facebook Credit Gift Cards will demonstrate for the first time the profit Facebook can make by their major role in the social gaming world. Once again I want to know, Does Facebook need games like FarmVille? Or, does FarmVille need Facebook? With users being able to purchase something ‘physical’ from Facebook, that will surely display their money earning power in a real way to users. I know I have felt a lack of support from Facebook in several situations, such as security breeches or lack of customer support in general. Lets hope the “10 million active users a month”, or even demand, that Facebook improve user support and privacy options.
About ten days ago FarmVille was quietly pulled from MSN Games, as reported by Inside Social Games.
In a partnership between Zynga and MSN dating back to February, FarmVille was made available to play via MSN Games. The idea was that having FarmVille accessible through other portals besides FaceBook, would drive hits for both MSN and increase exposure for Zynga. It is unsure how successful this partnership was and whether or not it was worth it for Zynga’s investment.
So why did Zynga leave? While Zynga has failed to make an official statement concerning the end of farming on MSN, it is no secret that Zynga recently entered into a partnership with MSN competitor Google, who has invested millions in the social gaming company. Could this partnership have something to do with it? According to Inside Social Gaming, ” Zynga didn’t find the traffic MSN produced meaningful enough to continue running FarmVille on the Microsoft platform”.
As access portals other than FaceBook seem to be of particular interest to social gaming companies like Zynga, “Zynga’s departure suggests the traffic other social developers are hoping to find off of Facebook may be more difficult to find than expected”. Despite FarmVille’s “lackluster performance” on MSN, Zynga continues to seek other avenues of social expansion, including investments in mobile apps, like FarmVille for iPhone as well as seeking access for its games in international markets such as Japan and China. With investments like Google’s in Zynga, rumored to be of up to $200 million, the future of Zynga games in the US market seems to be more than hopeful especially with the launch of the much anticipated Google Games. For now, the big question remains unanswered. . . do social gaming companies like Zynga need FaceBook or does FaceBook need them?
What do you think? What does the future of Zynga’s games like FarmVille outside the realm of FaceBook?
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