Wishlist: How FarmVille can take full advantage of the iPhone

Zynga's newly released iPhone version of FarmVille is a passable if flawed miniaturization of its popular PC cousin. But the move to Apple's popular mobile phone brings with it the opportunity to add some rather unique new gameplay to the familiar farming experience. Here are just a few ideas for how Zynga can take full advantage of the iPhone hardware to make a better (or at least a fresher) overall game.

Geo-location: Visiting your virtual neighbors in FarmVille is all well and good, but sometimes you want to see what's going on with your actual neighbors. With the iPhone's built-in GPS (and IP-based geo-location for iPod users), this should be easy enough to implement. Simply let players opt-in to share their locations, then let them visit other farms are being shared in a set radius (anywhere from a few feet to a few hundred miles should be available). In addition to helping people discover new FarmVille freaks in their area, this feature could also let businesses and attractions set up virtual farms that are only accessible by visiting their real-world locations.

Text message harvesting: The iPhone version of FarmVille finally brings push notification of harvesting times, a great boon for on-the-go farmers that can't keep track of their schedules. As it stands now, though, iPhone players still have to load up the game and go through the onerous process of tapping all of their crops -- a process that can take entire minutes. Who has that kind of time? This is the new millennium! Why not let people harvest all their crops with a simple text message to Zynga.

Yes, this feature would actively encourage people to neglect spending time in the game, but so do time-saving features like tractors and unwithers, and people pay good virtual money (and sometimes real money) for those features. I can just see the ads now: "Text 'harvest' to 01223 and get those pesky crops out of the ground. Texts cost 2 FV cash for the first and 1 FV cash for each additional harvest per week, plus your telephone provider's fees. Text NOW!
Tilt to plow: Some of the iPhone's best games don't use the touchscreen at all, instead letting players simply tilt their phones to control everything from spaceships to tiny ball bearings to... whatever this thing is. Surely it can be used to control a virtual tractor as well, no? Just thing of the wild farm designs that could easily be created with a few deft flicks of the wrist. Of course, as it stands the game's graphics might not be responsive enough to allow for easy tilting controls, so maybe Zynga should get to work on that problem first. It's OK, we'll wait.

Personalized photo crops: The iPhone camera has revolutionized many games, from... um... well... OK, there aren't that many great games that take good advantage of the iPhone's camera yet. But Farmville could be one of the first by letting players convert their photos into personalized crop images. Why just grow ears of corn when you could instead grow a picture of your significant other, or Barack Obama, or even Bishop Desmond Tutu (cutest crop ever!). True, there would be a small risk of visiting a friend's farm and seeing dozens of pictures of their junk sprouting out of the ground, but really, if that happens, well, maybe you need to find some new friends.

Augmented reality farming: While the personalized crops discussed above could theoretically be implemented on the PC version of Farmville, this next idea would be much harder to do without a smartphone. Augmented reality, in this case, simply means point your iPhone video camera at the nearest table, book or other flat surface and seeing your farm displayed on-screen resting on top of that surface. Just picture it -- wheat growing out of your homework! Cows mooing on top of your bedspread! A grove of trees on... the carpet! Yeah, OK, this is actually starting to sound pretty lame now that we type it out. NEXT!

Audio commentary: Letting your best friend know their farming skills are "teh lamez0rs" via a signpost comment is all well and good, but just imagine how much more fun it could be to use the iPhone's built-in microphone to actively curse out their farming skills with your own voice (or we guess you could leave a nice comment too. If you really wanted to). But why stop there? Why not let players record detailed audio commentaries that take visiting friends from your elegantly designed koi pond garden to the haybale picture of Justin Beiber. Zynga could even add complex editing tools to give your virtual tour that Ken Burns effect.

That's all we've got for now, but we're sure there's iPhone farming possibilities we've left out

FrontierVille: Enter the Water Feature Contest to win 500 Free Horseshoes

Just in time to combat the scorching summer, FrontierVille opened the flood gates containing a batch of new water decorations. Among the newly released items were geysers, swimming holes, hot tubs, and all kinds of other wet decor.

Now, FrontierVille is holding a water decoration contest and will be awarding 500 free Horseshoes to the winner!

Ordinarily 500 Horseshoes would cost over fifty dollars, so this is not a contest you want to miss. Imagine, with that many Horseshoes you could buy either 125 Horses, 100 Dinner Bells, 50 All You Can Eat energy refills, 25 Fishing holes, or whatever else your FrontierVille spouse and child may desire.

Continue reading for details on how to enter to win 500 free Horseshoes in FrontierVille.
From the FrontierVille Forums:

"Howdy Pardners!

The FrontierVille team wants to see how creative you have been while decorating with the Water Features recently released. Post a screenshot of your homestead focusing on the water features and you can win 500 Horseshoes.

The winning entry will also be featured on FrontierVilles fan page!

The Rules:

    One entry per person.
    You must post your entry to this thread. You may use any free image hosting website to display the picture. Guide to posting screenshots of your homesteads.
    Your image may be cropped and resized but you may not photoshop or otherwise edit the content of your image.
    Your entry must be of your homestead you cannot enter a friend or neighbors homestead.
    No insulting or making negative comments about other contest entries, this will not be allowed and may result in the disqualification of your entry.
    All entries must be posted to the forums by
    August 3rd 2010 8am PST and 11am EST


The Prize

    500 Horseshoes goes to the top chosen homestead.


Please be aware that Facebook images will not post here on the forums if you have specific permissions set. We recommend uploading all images to an image host such as imageshack or Jing. Please see http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?p=5170289 for additional information.

Selection of Winners

    The top 10 Homesteads will be selected by the FrontierVille team. A poll will then be created for you to vote for your favorite homestead out of the 10. The top choice will win 500 Horseshoes."


If you have any questions about the contest rules, please PM one of the moderators on the FrontierVille forums or post a comment here and we will try to answer any questions you may have.

A bunch of great submissions have already been posted so head to the official contest thread to check them out and enter to win the 500 free FrontierVille Horseshoes yourself.

Click here to view the contest entry page>

Mafia Wars Cheats & Tips: How to find a Car Key Copy

One of the consumable items you're going to need to complete jobs in Mafia Wars Las Vegas is a Car Key Copy. Much like the Wire Tap Device or Untraceable Cell Phone in New York, you have to earn the Car Key Copy by doing a job -- specifically, the Blackmail A Car Dealer job in North Las Vegas (this is a job if you take the Energy path). It takes 9 energy to do the job, and you'll get a Car Key Copy (alternating with construction materials) every few times that you do the job.

blackmail a car dealer
The Car Key Copies are then used as a consumable item for the Secure Some Wheels job in North Las Vegas (again, only for the Energy path). I didn't have enough keys to complete the Wheels job, so had to go back and do the Blackmail A Car Dealer job again several times, even though it was already 100% mastered.

mafia wars secure some wheels
What do you think of Mafia Wars Vegas? Is it the best yet?

Verdonia Cheats & Tips: Five easy ways to level up fast

Verdonia is a Facebook game developed by Playdom that throws you into the ancient time of knights and ladies. Your goal is to build your kingdom from the ground up and eventually amass enough resources to create your army and be the most dominant force among your circle of friends or allies. This quick start guide will provide you with tips to get started playing Verdonia.

Follow Suggested Quests

Once you start the game, you are given a handful of resources which are necessary for your advancement in the game (food, wood, iron, stone and gold.) You have a quest book which suggests the immediate quests for you to grow your town and kingdom. Do these quests first as they are designed to help you further grow your resources. This will also help you further understand how the game mechanics go.
Verdonia

Each quest has a corresponding reward upon completion. Some rewards could be a simple pile of wood, while some can be a combination of all resources used in the game (food, wood, iron, stone and gold). Once you finish a quest, go back to the quest book and collect your reward. If you forget to collect the reward, the book of quests will flash with a number in the toolbar.
Verdonia

Acquire Allies

Getting allies is another big factor in this game. There are some scenarios that pop up during game play where announcing it to your circle of friends (allies) will help you amass resources. The more allies you have, the better chance that someone will help and reward you.
Verdonia
Visiting your allies also help gain resources. As you visit, scenarios also appear in the town of your ally wherein you are asked to help out. Accepting the task will reward you with more resources. This can however only be done ONCE a day, so the more allies you can visit means more resources.

Spend your Resources to Level Up

In order to level up in this game, you need to get GLORY points (experience points). The easiest way to get glory points is to simply spend your resources. Anything you do in the game requires spending resources – a mix of wood, iron, stone, food and gold. Building structures is the most common way to spend these items. Building a cottage, one of the first structures you need to build, will earn you 1 glory point.

Upgrading the structures earns even bigger glory points. That same cottage that earned you 1 point will earn you 3 points when you upgrade it to a level 2 cottage. Upgrading it to level 3 will earn you 6 glory points and so on.

How to Earn More Resources

Since you want to spend to gain glory points, you need to earn more of those resources to actually keep on spending. Make sure that the buildings which produce those resources are producing enough to sustain your expenses. Although all the five resources are earned as rewards for quests are done, you need a steady inflow of them.
Remember not to spend your limited resources at the start of the game on buildings in your town. Go to your field and upgrade your Farm (producing food), Mine (producing iron), Logging Camp (producing wood) and Quarry (producing stone). This will not only boost your production of their respective products but the process of upgrading them will also earn you glory points. And remember, upgrading actually earns you more points.
Verdonia

Earning gold however is a different process. This resource is earned from the taxes you impose on the citizens of your kingdom. This means the more people you have, the more taxes you will be able to collect. So aside from maintaining good producing farms, mines, quarries and logging camps in your field, maintain a number of cottages in your town proper to assure a large enough population that will pay the taxes. And remember to upgrade these cottages too to earn those extra glory points.

The faster you can build and upgrade these important structures, the sooner you can actually forget about your resources getting depleted and start focusing on recruiting and training your army for world domination.

Upgrade your Town Center

Aside from your resource buildings, try to upgrade your town center as soon as possible. The town center is your City Hall and the higher the level of this building, the more possibilities open up for you, such as constructing other building types and acquiring other towns.
Verdonia
From this building, you can see your whole kingdom and all your possessions at a single glance. This allows you to see what buildings you have and which need upgrading.

This article originally appeared on Gamezebo >

Is Disney's big splurge on Playdom a smart move?

Yesterday, Disney announced that it was spending more than half-a-billion dollars to buy Playdom, the third largest social game publisher responsible for Facebook games, such as Social City, Sorority Life and Wild Ones.

While this move makes it clear that Disney's ready to get elbow-deep in social gaming, one analyst tells Gamasutra that Disney's latest acquisition is looking "very expensive," and that the Mouse House might not get a good return on investment for several reasons, including the fact that social games are losing players by the week. For instance, the most popular Facebook game, FarmVille, dropped roughly 20 million players in a matter of months, and lesser games haven't fared much better.

    "We believe the dynamics of the social gaming space are becoming increasingly commoditized and fad-based, and attracting gamers could become an exercise in increasingly aggressive marketing budgets, impacting the economics of the social gaming model," warns the analyst.

Other reasons for questioning Disney's big splurge are historical. The company bought the kid's social gaming site Club Penguin for the same deal several years ago -- offering a huge chunk of cash plus bonus performance incentives. And, the analyst says, Club Penguin never met Disney's expectations, and missed out on banking a few million dollars. Why would Playdom be any different? He also wonders why Disney paid double what EA paid for Playfish last year,. even though Playdom's monthly active user base is 15% smaller -- a great question which I don't expect have answered anytime soon.

Right now, what Disney's plans are with Playdom are still unknown, though I'll speculate Disney will let Playdom keep on with its more successful social games, close Playdom's lesser social games, launch the ESPN games the two companies were already working on together and then start looking in-house at existing brands to see if any of them would work on Facebook.

Games.com blog readers (yes, you!) have not been enthusiastic about the Playdom takeover by Disney. From the Games.com Facebook fanpage:

"Judging from how Disney manages to rewrite (and IMO RUIN) stories for animation, charge too much for their @#$% merchandise which is marketed directly to CHILDREN, I do not want Disney to take over the world or have more social networks or more of anything," one reader says.

"[Disney] just likes to, steal, and buyout other peoples success. Its a very cut throat company, who dosent care about the people who support it," says another.

Disney buys Playdom: Good move or bad?
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FarmVille Bakery Crafting Building: How to go from farmer to master baker

FarmVille Crafting Buildings have finally made their way to the game. Farmers level 25 and up have access to three crafting buildings -- a Winery, Spa and Bakery. What's the purpose of these buildings? In addition to giving you something to do with all those bushels you've been getting from you and your friends' Farmers Market, the main motivation is fuel. That's right, make stuff in your Bakery, and you'll ultimately be rewarded with sweet fuel to power your tractor and other farming equipment.

Most of my fellow farmers chose the Winery (says a lot, doesn't it?), so I decided to play contrarian and pick the Bakery as my crafting building. After all, who doesn't love a nice baked good, even virtual ones? To start on your way to becoming a master baker, choose the bakery from the Crafting is Here! pop-up window. I previously chose the bakery, so I just had to click the 'Yes Place' button to set the bakery on my farm.

bakery crafting

A Tip: Make your you clear out some room for your new crafting building -- it might require a little more space than you might expect. Once the Bakery is placed, you can get to work, well, baking.

If you didn't select the bakery several weeks ago, and you want to make the switch, click 'Choose Another' and then pick the building you want. farmville bakery inside

To get a better idea at what bushels you'll need to craft items for your bakery, take a look at the recipes and bushels required to make each:

Pumpkin Bread
- 4 Pumpkin Bushels
- 4 Wheat Bushels

Strawberry Shortcake
- 4 Strawberry Bushels
- 4 Wheat Bushels

Spicy Muffins
- 3 Carrot Bushels
- 1 Pepper Bushel
- 3 Ghost Chili Bushels

Pattypan Tart
- 3 Pattypan Squash Bushels
- 2 Onion Bushels
- 3 Rice Bushels

There are several ways to get the bushels you need. You can plant and harvest crops and hope you get bushels from there; you can shop at a friend's Farmer's Market and buy bushels from them using coins or you can snag bushels for free from friends' Facebook Wall posts.

Once you have the right ingredients you can choose to make a good, and like all things in FarmVille, you'll then have to wait a certain amount of time for it to be complete.
farmville bakery

You have the option to cook multiple recipes at a time, and the more you level up your bakery, the more ovens you unlock.

Once your goods are ready, you can sell them (there's also a sales report to let you know what friends have been buying), which will help you level up your recipe.
farmville bakery goods for sale

You also have the option to trade in goods for gas (and other rewards later on). To trade in goods, click the 'Use' button (see image below).

farmville bakery use items and trade them in for fuel

Like the rest of the Crafting Buildings, the Bakery can be leveled up using Farm Cash or coins. As the Bakery gains more stars, it's appearance will start to change, and the modest Bakery that you started out with in the beginning will get more frills the higher its star rating.

farmville bakery

After you're all set, just keep on baking until you reach five stars. Best part about this Bakery? You can bake to your heart's content and won't be tempted by yummy treats.

Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.

FarmVille Unreleased Modern Cottage, Train Crossing, Train Tracks, & Train Tracks v2

FarmVille Train enthusiasts will be happy to know that Train Tracks may be coming to FarmVille. We've seen FarmVille Freaks build their own roads using haybales and other creative material to give their farm some transportation infrastructure, but this will be the first time that FarmVille has offered them in the Market.

Thank you to FarmVille Freak Teresa for finding these unreleased FarmVille Modern Cottage, Train Crossing, Train Tracks, & Train Tracks v2 items!

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

FarmVille iPhone App Updated v.1.05

farmville iphone update
Today Zynga released an update for its FarmVille app for iPhone.

Continue reading to see what's new.
The September 1st 2010 update, version 1.05, includes fixes for the following:

    Fixed loading issues and crashes for large farms.
    Fixed "Out of Sync" error when sending iPhone exclusive gifts.
    Fixed crash when ignoring pending gifts.
    Fixed crash when visiting multiple neighbors.


This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

Have you noticed an improvement with your mobile farming with this update?

YoVille: Get a sneak peek at the new Romantic House!

Take a tour through the Romantic House now available at the Realtor Office.

When you walk into the living room there is a door to the bathroom and a door to the kitchen. From the kitchen are two doors one leading to the bedroom and the other to the backyard. The stairs off the living room lead to the landing and there are 2 doors one leading to master bathroom the other to master bedroom. From master bedroom is a Balcony.

Continue reading to embark on a tour of the new YoVille Romantic House.

yoville romantic house
Front Yard

yoville romantic house
Fountain Area

yoville romantic house
Living Room

yoville romantic house
Back Yard

yoville romantic house
Balcony that's off of the Master Bedroom

yoville romantic house
Kitchen

yoville romantic house
Green House in the backyard

This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.

YoVille Romantic Living Room items added in the furniture store

yoville romantic living room items
New Romantic living room furniture was added to the YoVille Furniture Store. Different sets are available in white, brown, purple and red. Ten new wallpapers, beautiful new doors, pillars as well as the new romantic window and plants will add a nice touch to any room.

Check the full list of items and prices after the link.
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
yoville romantic living room items
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.