Before the Tuscan decor has even left FarmVille, new tiki items have just stolen some Market space. A small set of island items have made their way into FarmVille, and we have the scoop. This all seems a little too familiar to us; not only are there dozens of island games out there already, but Zynga has their own in Treasure Isle. Perhaps this is the start of a Treasure Isle theme? These new items are only available for 9 days, so this could be a short-term theme that doesn't last as long as most of the other FarmVille themes. Here are the new items in the FarmVille store:
Tiki Mask I - 5,000 coins
Tiki Mask II - 25,000 coins
Outdoor Torch - 20,000 coins
Lychee Tree - 10,000 coins
Blue Macaw - 16 Farm Cash
Roast Pit - 14 Farm Cash
Pelican - 18 Farm Cash
Island Pig - 16 Farm Cash
Flamingo Flower - 35 coins
Giant Hut - 27 Farm Cash
White Sand Bar - 18 Farm Cash
Hut - 100,000 coins
The Flamingo Flower is a limited time seed that sells for 200 coins, harvests in 16 hours and grants 1 XP. The Island Pig has a harvest of 90 coins in 2 days, and the Pelican is 92 coins in 2 days. We know there will be more of these island items, because FarmVille's in-game popup stated that this is "the first" of their new island theme.
Thứ Tư, 15 tháng 2, 2012
FarmVille Green Mystery Box: find out what's inside *Spoilers*
FarmVille has released yet another new Mystery Box, this one alongside the island themed items (though the items inside are not island themed). Like other Mystery Boxes, this one costs 16 Farm Cash and can be purchased for yourself or for a special friend. The Green Mystery Box is only available for 7 days, so you'll have to act quick if you want your hands on these mystery items. Let's take a peek at what is inside:
Lily Pad Bridge , 300XP
Froggy Pond, 300 XP
Leap Frog Well, 350 XP
Jade Victorian, 400 XP
Peeper Frog, 200 XP
Dream Patio, 500 XP
Read on for pictures (courtesy of the FarmVille official forums):
Farmville Green Mystery Box
Lily Pad, Dream Patio, Peeper Frog
Jade Victorian
Jade Victorian
Farmville Leap Frog Well
Leap Frog Well
FarmVille Froggy Pond
Froggy Pond
Which Mystery Gift are you most excited for?
Lily Pad Bridge , 300XP
Froggy Pond, 300 XP
Leap Frog Well, 350 XP
Jade Victorian, 400 XP
Peeper Frog, 200 XP
Dream Patio, 500 XP
Read on for pictures (courtesy of the FarmVille official forums):
Farmville Green Mystery Box
Lily Pad, Dream Patio, Peeper Frog
Jade Victorian
Jade Victorian
Farmville Leap Frog Well
Leap Frog Well
FarmVille Froggy Pond
Froggy Pond
Which Mystery Gift are you most excited for?
FarmVille: All Crops Mastered!
farmville crop mastery
Congratulations to FarmVille players 1907fbcy and Andre C for completing every available mastery to date. Both have completed the 51 crops available in the Market as well as all three limited edition masterable crops.
Super Pumpkins were available for FarmVille Fans only, starting in late January and ending early February. To obtain mastery 5,000 crops had to be harvested in a very short time. Many people worked towards this but unfortunately missed out on completing because Super Pumpkins were removed from the Market early, brought back and removed again.
farmville crop mastery
The LE Tomatillo Mastery was offered as part of the FarmVille Cinco de Mayo celebration. This crop took 10 hours took mature and 480 crops had to be harvested to achieve mastery.
The Goji Berry crop is part of the current 7 Eleven Zynga promotion. To unlock the Goji Berry crop in the Market you must redeem a FarmVille 7 Eleven code. The 16 hour crop mastery levels are 80 for the first star, 160 for second and 240 final star – 480 total.
If you are unable to get a 7 Eleven FarmVille code, be sure to check out FarmVille Freaks latest contest! The first prize is a complete set of redemption codes- enough to receive the 200 $FV Uber Prize!
Congratulations again to FarmVille Freaks 1907Fbcy and Andre C, mastering all crops is quite a feat!
How many crops have you mastered?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.
Congratulations to FarmVille players 1907fbcy and Andre C for completing every available mastery to date. Both have completed the 51 crops available in the Market as well as all three limited edition masterable crops.
Super Pumpkins were available for FarmVille Fans only, starting in late January and ending early February. To obtain mastery 5,000 crops had to be harvested in a very short time. Many people worked towards this but unfortunately missed out on completing because Super Pumpkins were removed from the Market early, brought back and removed again.
farmville crop mastery
The LE Tomatillo Mastery was offered as part of the FarmVille Cinco de Mayo celebration. This crop took 10 hours took mature and 480 crops had to be harvested to achieve mastery.
The Goji Berry crop is part of the current 7 Eleven Zynga promotion. To unlock the Goji Berry crop in the Market you must redeem a FarmVille 7 Eleven code. The 16 hour crop mastery levels are 80 for the first star, 160 for second and 240 final star – 480 total.
If you are unable to get a 7 Eleven FarmVille code, be sure to check out FarmVille Freaks latest contest! The first prize is a complete set of redemption codes- enough to receive the 200 $FV Uber Prize!
Congratulations again to FarmVille Freaks 1907Fbcy and Andre C, mastering all crops is quite a feat!
How many crops have you mastered?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.
FarmVille Unreleased White Apple Tree & Rainbow Apple Tree
farmville rainbow apple tree
Thank you to FarmVille Freak Maria & Farhan for finding these unreleased FarmVille White Apple Tree & Rainbow Apple Tree.
Sources:
FarmVille Unreleased White Apple Tree – Zynga FarmVille
FarmVille Unreleased Rainbow Apple Tree – Zynga FarmVille
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Thank you to FarmVille Freak Maria & Farhan for finding these unreleased FarmVille White Apple Tree & Rainbow Apple Tree.
Sources:
FarmVille Unreleased White Apple Tree – Zynga FarmVille
FarmVille Unreleased Rainbow Apple Tree – Zynga FarmVille
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
FarmVille: New Button Collection
FarmVille Freak let you know last week that the Button Collection would be coming soon to FarmVille. There are now 6 Collections, the Button Collection can be found on the first page of your Collection Menu.
Keep in mind you only have a chance of finding collectibles, so try keep trying to follow the clues to complete them!
To complete the Button Collection you must collect:
Check Button – Free Gift (Clue: Requires a little help from your friends)
Brass Button – Found when fertilizing neighbors crops (Clue: Your friends won't notice when you find this in their crops)
White Button - Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Jewel Button – Found when harvesting chickens (Clue: Cluck)
Formal Button – Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Pearl Button – Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Collections are valuable to farmers due to the great rewards, when trading in a collection you receive 250Xp, 5,000 coins and the oh so useful 5 Fuel Refills.
Have you found any Buttons yet?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Keep in mind you only have a chance of finding collectibles, so try keep trying to follow the clues to complete them!
To complete the Button Collection you must collect:
Check Button – Free Gift (Clue: Requires a little help from your friends)
Brass Button – Found when fertilizing neighbors crops (Clue: Your friends won't notice when you find this in their crops)
White Button - Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Jewel Button – Found when harvesting chickens (Clue: Cluck)
Formal Button – Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Pearl Button – Found while plowing your farm (Clue: You need to get a little dirty)
Collections are valuable to farmers due to the great rewards, when trading in a collection you receive 250Xp, 5,000 coins and the oh so useful 5 Fuel Refills.
Have you found any Buttons yet?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Thứ Bảy, 11 tháng 2, 2012
What Zynga's game closures say about the social gaming market
The recent hard times for the social gaming market have been harder on some games than others. Last week, social-gaming mega-publisher Zynga decided to shut down two well-established parts of its catalog. First, the servers for Roller Coaster Kingdom (RCK) were shut off, then Ponzi Inc., a promising game Zynga got as part of a Challenge Games acquisition less than a month ago, went dark for good.
So, what can we learn from the abrupt termination of these two games? Well, one lesson seems to be that the standards for success in social gaming are going to keep increasing -- at least for the big publishers. Despite their declining popularity, both Ponzi Inc. and Roller Coaster Kingdom had a relatively decent number of monthly active users when they were closed -- 221,000 players for Ponzi and 1.2 million players for RCK. That might not seem like much compared against Farmville's industry-leading 62 million monthly players, but it probably doesn't seem like chump change to many struggling social game makers just getting their start.
Obviously Zynga's resources are limited, and devoting resources to a game that attracts "only" one million players a month might not make sense -- especially when those resources could be put towards a more popular game. That said, I can't imagine letting the servers for these games limp along would have been a crushing expense for a company like Zynga. In fact, those costs would probably go down quickly as the player bases continued to shrink (although maybe not quickly enough -- a smaller user base probably eliminates some of the economies of scale that help amortize costs for mega-games).
Of course, there are other costs associated with keeping smaller games in a catalog -- technical support, ad sales, bug-catching programmers and database maintainers -- that were eliminated along with these games. Zynga likely saw the declining numbers for both games and decided these costs just weren't worth it anymore. Somehow, Zynga made the determination that the writing was on the wall for these games -- that the players had simply grown tired of playing and that it wasn't worth making the investment to draw them back with new content, new offers, and new advertising (We're guessing the ARPU numbers for both games may have played into this decision).
The implications of this kind of decision are pretty scary for Facebook games as a whole. Is there a time limit on how long shallow social games can survive without constant infusions of new content? Will players eventually get tired of even mega-popular games like Farmville and Treasure Isle and move on? Will companies abandon these games as soon as the numbers start to dip, or will they devote possibly futile time and effort into getting them to rebound? What happens to a game that attracts a lot of players but not many that actually want to pay money for virtual items?
Speaking of paying money, the shut down of Ponzi and RCK doesn't just represent the end of an amusing pastime for hundreds of thousands of people. It also means the destruction of a lot of virtual property that many players had invested real money in. Does Zynga just get to keep the money they pocketed from selling these ephemeral items, now deleted forever from some internal server bank?
From a legal standpoint, they probably do (let the EULA-signer beware), but from an ethical and player-relations standpoint, simply destroying people's virtual property is not a good move. Zynga obviously realizes this and is giving players some consideration for their in-game investments. Outstanding balances and recent purchases in Ponzi Inc. will be transferred to Frontierville credits, while Coaster Cash used in RCK will be converted to Favor Points in Vampire Wars.
Still, this seems like a less-than-ideal solution, especially if players don't want to play the game the new credits are being offered in. It seems doubtful that RCK players will be flocking to Vampire Wars, considering how different the two games are. Perhaps these kinds of problems will start to go away as the industry moves to a unified Facebook Credits model.
All in all, the closure of Ponzi Inc. and Roller Coaster Kingdom are barely going to send a ripple through the larger social gaming industry. But as more and more social gaming experiments are sacrificed to the altar of the bottom line, and as companies continue to consolidate their efforts towards a few mega-games, don't be surprised if the social gaming landscape of the near future starts to look very different from the one you see today.
So, what can we learn from the abrupt termination of these two games? Well, one lesson seems to be that the standards for success in social gaming are going to keep increasing -- at least for the big publishers. Despite their declining popularity, both Ponzi Inc. and Roller Coaster Kingdom had a relatively decent number of monthly active users when they were closed -- 221,000 players for Ponzi and 1.2 million players for RCK. That might not seem like much compared against Farmville's industry-leading 62 million monthly players, but it probably doesn't seem like chump change to many struggling social game makers just getting their start.
Obviously Zynga's resources are limited, and devoting resources to a game that attracts "only" one million players a month might not make sense -- especially when those resources could be put towards a more popular game. That said, I can't imagine letting the servers for these games limp along would have been a crushing expense for a company like Zynga. In fact, those costs would probably go down quickly as the player bases continued to shrink (although maybe not quickly enough -- a smaller user base probably eliminates some of the economies of scale that help amortize costs for mega-games).
Of course, there are other costs associated with keeping smaller games in a catalog -- technical support, ad sales, bug-catching programmers and database maintainers -- that were eliminated along with these games. Zynga likely saw the declining numbers for both games and decided these costs just weren't worth it anymore. Somehow, Zynga made the determination that the writing was on the wall for these games -- that the players had simply grown tired of playing and that it wasn't worth making the investment to draw them back with new content, new offers, and new advertising (We're guessing the ARPU numbers for both games may have played into this decision).
The implications of this kind of decision are pretty scary for Facebook games as a whole. Is there a time limit on how long shallow social games can survive without constant infusions of new content? Will players eventually get tired of even mega-popular games like Farmville and Treasure Isle and move on? Will companies abandon these games as soon as the numbers start to dip, or will they devote possibly futile time and effort into getting them to rebound? What happens to a game that attracts a lot of players but not many that actually want to pay money for virtual items?
Speaking of paying money, the shut down of Ponzi and RCK doesn't just represent the end of an amusing pastime for hundreds of thousands of people. It also means the destruction of a lot of virtual property that many players had invested real money in. Does Zynga just get to keep the money they pocketed from selling these ephemeral items, now deleted forever from some internal server bank?
From a legal standpoint, they probably do (let the EULA-signer beware), but from an ethical and player-relations standpoint, simply destroying people's virtual property is not a good move. Zynga obviously realizes this and is giving players some consideration for their in-game investments. Outstanding balances and recent purchases in Ponzi Inc. will be transferred to Frontierville credits, while Coaster Cash used in RCK will be converted to Favor Points in Vampire Wars.
Still, this seems like a less-than-ideal solution, especially if players don't want to play the game the new credits are being offered in. It seems doubtful that RCK players will be flocking to Vampire Wars, considering how different the two games are. Perhaps these kinds of problems will start to go away as the industry moves to a unified Facebook Credits model.
All in all, the closure of Ponzi Inc. and Roller Coaster Kingdom are barely going to send a ripple through the larger social gaming industry. But as more and more social gaming experiments are sacrificed to the altar of the bottom line, and as companies continue to consolidate their efforts towards a few mega-games, don't be surprised if the social gaming landscape of the near future starts to look very different from the one you see today.
Quote of the Moment: Breaking an appointment
"There are a number of reasons why I prefer Foursquare. One is that the Farmville compulsion loop is based on an 'appointment gaming' mechanism. Players must come back to the game at a certain time in order to harvest their crops (and get the reward) before the crops wither and die. This is known as a hard penalty. It seems so clear that a game designed to mimic my real-world life of appointments would seem like a chore. Working full-time and raising two small children with my even busier husband, I really don't need more appointments in my day. I don't want to log in and see that my raspberries have withered and died because I forgot to harvest them.
"The gaming mechanism in Foursquare is based on rewards, not penalties, and there is no appointment mechanism. I can check in as much or as little as I like. I was delighted when I got my Adventurer Badge. When I was mayor of my local café, I felt like I had finally arrived. (Mayors often receive special deals or discounts.) It's true there are some penalties. If I don't check in enough, I might lose my title of mayor–but it felt different then being greeted with a bunch of dead plants."
-Hot Studio Senior User Experience Architect Marsha Platt lays out why free-roaming gaming beats appointment gaming any day.
"The gaming mechanism in Foursquare is based on rewards, not penalties, and there is no appointment mechanism. I can check in as much or as little as I like. I was delighted when I got my Adventurer Badge. When I was mayor of my local café, I felt like I had finally arrived. (Mayors often receive special deals or discounts.) It's true there are some penalties. If I don't check in enough, I might lose my title of mayor–but it felt different then being greeted with a bunch of dead plants."
-Hot Studio Senior User Experience Architect Marsha Platt lays out why free-roaming gaming beats appointment gaming any day.
Đăng ký:
Bài đăng (Atom)