Facebook Fires Back at Google+ With New Gaming Features

Facebook has unveiled a slew of new features for Facebook games just hours after Google launched its gaming platform.

The first feature, the Game Ticker, transforms the right-hand Facebook Chat column into a newsfeed of friends’ game activity. The column displays what games your friends are playing as well as their achievements and high scores. It’s designed to be social, so clicking on a Game Ticker story takes you to that game so you can play with your friends. And just like Facebook News Feed, you can control which stories appear and don’t appear in the stream.

The world’s largest social network also introduced a new expanded-screen mode for games. Current players of social games will appreciate the added real estate for harvesting their crops or attacking their enemies. The final addition to Facebook’s gaming platform allows users to bookmark their favorite apps or games so they’re easily accessible from the News Feed.

The move is a counterattack to today’s launch of Google+ Games, which debuted Thursday with 16 games, including Angry Birds and Zynga Poker. It looks like the competition between the two Internet giants is getting even more intense.

Source: Mashable.com

Words With Friends [$1.99 / Free] is headed to Facebook

Words With Friends [$1.99 / Free] is headed to Facebook. Social giant Zynga Games announced the platform flip this afternoon with a delightful teaser image. Normally, I’d be a little annoyed by the lack of information, but really, what is there to say? Words with Friends is an extremely simple riff on the Scrabble formula with basic visual do-dads and mechanics that we’ve been enjoying for quite a while on iOS.
I’d imagine the reason we don’t have many details here is tied into the fact that nothing meaningful has been changed, aside from the addition of new Facebook-y social elements.

How To Play Farmville on the iPad

Anyone wants to be my neighbor in Farmville?
Just post your id below.
Feel free to add me too --> Facebook Farmville Link

Trapping Your Character On FarmVille

This tutorial will show you the steps that you need to take, in order for you to trap your character in the game of FarmVille.

ALL IMAGES CAPTURED TO MAKE OUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS ARE THE PROPERTY OF ZYNGA GAMES

Copyright© 2009 Zynga Game Network Inc.. All rights reserved.

Kid Racks Up $1400 Debt in FarmVille

Oh dear — looks like it’s time to add FarmVille to the list of internet addiction scares after a 12-year-old UK boy has amassed £905 in FarmVille debt. About £288 of that came from the boy’s own savings, while £625 was billed to his horrified mother’s credit card.

The debt — which is equivalent to about $1400 USD — was racked up in all of about two weeks’ worth of gameplay. In the popular casual Facebook game, players can spend real money to accrue virtual currency and items. It’s a business that’s booming enough to garner the game’s developer Zynga an estimated valuation as high as $5 billion.

Neither Zynga or the mother’s credit card company HSBC responded positively to requests for refunds; the latter indicated only a criminal proceeding could trigger eligibility for getting the funds reinstated. A spokeswoman for HSBC indicated that had the expenditures been on a gambling site the escalating transactions would have raised warning flags, but since the purchases were technically Facebook Credits, they didn’t warrant suspicion.

What do you think: is FarmVille destined to replace World of Warcraft as the favorite scapegoat for cable news gaming addiction scare segments?

[via Games.com]

My Fave Country Life Farms in Facebook

PetVille Debuts on Facebook: Like FarmVille for Cute Pets

Just a couple of weeks ago, popular Facebook games maker Zynga trademarked the name PetVille, hinting at the theme for their next wildly popular casual game on the social network and other platforms (Myspace, iPhone, etc.). Today, Games.com reports that PetVille has launched.

Zynga is also the maker of FarmVille, which just yesterday was touted by a Facebook (Facebook) spokesperson as being bigger than Twitter in terms of an active userbase. The company followed up on the formula early last month with an aquatic-themed title dubbed FishVille, and now PetVille joins the ranks of of other popular pet simulation games like PlayFish’s Pet Society, which borrow mechanics from popular casual Nintendo titles like Nintendogs and Animal Crossing.

In PetVille, you create and customize your own sugary cute animals, feed and care for them, and earn through gameplay (or buy) the resources to decorate your home, buy better food, give gifts to other players and so on. In the tradition of other Zynga titles and other casual social games on Facebook, MySpace (MySpace) and elsewhere, the game mechanics are relatively simple to learn and the titles are easy to pick up and play for short stretches of time — leading to that addictive quality of reinforcement and reward that characterizes frequent revisitation of your virtual domain.

Check out a demo video of PetVille below and let us know your thoughts. Are you hopelessly drawn to any of these casual titles? It’s okay to admit it: You’re among friends here. Friends who may help you on your FarmVille farm.

How to deliver food faster in Café World

My Christmas Theme Fishes

Presenting!!!
My Christmas themed fishes in Fish World!
Just love watching them in my virtual aquarium. heheh!

LOLLIPOP FISH THEME


PRESENT FISH THEME


SNOWMAN FISH THEME

My Lollipop Fish in FishWorld

Wana try my Lollipop Fish???

I didn't IGNORE the gifts !

I was accepting gifts and neighbor requests on my facebook apps way too fast.
Now it seems like I lost them all.

Glitch? FB please fix it and bring back all my gifts!:(

New Duds for Cafe World Chefs

Decking out your Cafe World chef adds an extra little bit of you to your burgeoning food empire. Now the Cafe World team has added several new clothing options that players of the Facebook game can use to cater their chef to their tastes. From a traditional waiter outfit (also available in yellow, blue, green and red) to new eye wear including slotted red glasses to a mystery mask, the new options look to make your favorite preparer of food into a veritable fashion palette.

source: www.games.com

Happy Aquarium vs. FishVille

Boasting 24 million active users, Happy Aquarium is clearly the big fish to beat on Facebook. Now Zynga's dropped its hook to see if it can catch that many and more with the just-released FishVille. To test the waters, we decided to fillet both into categories to see which aquarium game swims... and which one sinks.


Add fish, water and glass and you have a viable fish tank. Happy Aquarium's starter tank is barebones as players use coins to add plant, coral, rocks and other submergible treasures although five different sand colors are free. FishVille's basic tanks feature a eye-catching background and a must more simplified list of tanks accessories. While we were going to give the category to FishVille because Happy Aquarium's eye-pleasing backgrounds are purchased with Pearls (earned but easier to buy with real money)... but FishVille's backgrounds are "Coming Soon." Happy Aquarium takes the candy by offering one awesome feature, full-screen play.

Winner: Happy Aquarium


Fish need food to grow and both games deal with those morsels in very different ways. Happy Aquarium requires players to purchase food whereas FishVille offers the ultimate in fish buffets, free food. If you like feeding fish all the time, FishVille is for you. But we like Happy Aquarium's 3 Day Feeder option that lets us kick back to watch and sell fish instead of feeding them all the time. But that options comes with a real price... you have to buy it with real money.

Winner: FishVille
Buying Fish



Selecting fish is never an easy task. Will they thrive? How long until they mature? How much can I sell them for? All are obvious questions. Happy Aquarium takes the less is more approach here by merely showing off the fish you can buy and how much it will cost. FishVille decided to answer all the big questions right up front as it lists the fish's name, time to maturity and how much money it will sell for.

Winner: FishVille

Selling Fish



Fish mean profit and making sure you make the most money and experience points is essential to continued growth. Yet this is where Zynga's FishVille packs in all the info you'll need to know before selling your fish.

Winner: FishVille

Fun



While FishVille is newer, the gameplay is a bit closer to real fish tanks. You feed the fish, they swim around and you repeat the whole process again until you sell them or they die. But Happy Aquarium has a fin up on its competitor by allowing you to tap on the glass, coaxing two fish to mate and a training mode where you avoid water hazards for coin and points (and gets better as you teach them tricks).

Winner: Happy Aquarium


The Verdict: FishVille
Despite Happy Aquarium's clear dominance of the Fun category, FishVille feels like the result of Zynga really understanding the parts of its older games and how to make them better. Is this verdict set in stone? No way. CrowdStar really has a great product in Happy Aquarium, one that with a few refinements, might turn Zynga's next big tuna into chum.


P.S.: I'd like to gave props to Zynga for supplying this week's best way to humiliate a co-worker. I'm sooo going to make this into a T-shirt for the Christmas party.


Source: www.games.com

My fave Cafe World themes of the day!

Vivian's Cafe World..


Shirlicious Cafe World..




Louie's Cafe World...


Mine's Cafe World..


Terence's cafe World..:)

Buddy Pokes on Facebook

I just buddy poked some of my friends on facebook. They are really cuute!hehehe!
CHASE



SPACE DANCE:


ZOMBIE DANCE:

Have remodelled my Cafe

I decided to use this theme instead..What do you think peepz?

Happy Aquarium?

Someone invited me to play Happy Aquarium and got a chance to try it.
When seeing the whole thing, the aquarium looks a bit boring compared to Fish World.
But while exploring, I found out you can actually name your fishes and get
it to train and some other options like to mate.

It's kinda fun for now. Let me see.

I just opened my Cafe on Facebook!

Add me on Mafia Wars Facebook !

I'm on Level 123 now. Add me and will send you energy everyday!

Join My Mafia: http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/status_invite.php?from=555130790

Dead Fishes on FISH WORLD? --no worries!

One time I forgot all my Fish tanks and when I opened it.Huwaaaaah!
My fishes were all dead!!!
I flushed all of them without knowing that I could still ask
my neighbours to revive it.
Don't make the same mistake that I did.
Hope this entry helps you in some ways:)