Pioneer Trail: Start the new year with promises of change from Zynga

As we start a new year both in the real world and in Pioneer Trail on Facebook, we've received some reassurance from Zynga about how the game will continue to grow and even improve this year. The news comes by way of a letter posted by Pioneer Trail Community Manager Stumpgrinder on the game's official forums.

The letter is a bit lengthy, so we'll give you the most important bits here:

    Starting today, Gears in Holiday Hollow should be much easier to earn
    New items are being given away on the game's Facebook fan page, and that will soon include free Gears
    The maps to Fort Courage will remain open until the end of January, giving users a bit of an extension
    Hank and Fanny will return in a "big" way with new goals involving the Newlyweds
    Monumental Homestead goals are coming soon


In addition to these tidbits, we've learned that Homestead space (or a lack thereof) won't be as large of a concern in the coming months, thanks to another building that is being released in the game. We're being assured that this building is worth constructing, as you'll be able to store your other buildings inside it. Here's the full explanation:

"Before you start groaning about yet another new building, let me explain: it'll let you store certain kinds of buildings inside of it--many of which you weren't able to store before. In addition, you can interact with those buildings inside of this new building. Crafting menus, bonus collection, etc. It'll all be available for you, stored away inside the new building."

In other words, it sounds like this will simply give us a way to free up space on our homesteads without having to drag buildings back out of storage to actually interact with them. That's a pretty big convenience, so I wouldn't expect it to be the easiest building to complete, but we'll look out for it all the same.

Are you excited by the announcements made by Zynga this week, or is this all too little, too late in your opinion? Have you stuck with the game through all of its ups and downs, or did you quit playing the game a long time ago?

The Sims Social: EA, Tencent will make a Littlehaven in China

The Sims Social China
Playfish's number one social game on Facebook, The Sims Social, is headed east ... far east. Lame jokes aside, EA has signed an agreement with Chinese social network Tencent to release The Sims Social to Chinese audiences. Tencent is the leading social network in China, and The Sims Social will be known as Mo Ni Shi Guang on the network.

The Sims Social is currently the sixth most popular Facebook game, trailing behind five Zynga games with just under 21 million monthly players, according to AppData. EA's idea with this move is obviously increasing the game's overall audience, and thus revenue. And what better place than one of the most densely-populated countries in the world? That could do the trick.

This news follows The Sims Social receiving the 2011 Interactive Achievement Award for Best Social Game amidst steep declines in player numbers since its release in August. This move will certainly help its audience grow, but The Sims Social could be improved upon a lot, if you ask COO Peter Moore.

[Via All Things D]

Are you surprised that EA would launch in China in such a big way? What do you think the game needs domestically, so to speak, to survive?

Game of the Day: Poker - Five Card Draw

five card draw game of the day
Today's Game of the Day is the classic game of Poker: Five Card Draw. Five Card Draw Poker is a game of betting. You'll place bets, call, check, and bluff your way to a tall stack of chips. Once you begin betting, you'll be dealt five cards and have one opportunity to swap out up to three of them. With your five cards, you'll have to create hands that beat your opponents' and earn your chips.

Poker: Five Card Draw is one of those Games.com gems. Like our other Poker games, Five Card Draw uses the same avatar and chat system that makes playing with strangers way more fun. Be sure to participate in the chat and make some friends. So if you're in the mood to win (or lose) some quick cash and have a great time doing it, check out Poker: Five Card Draw below.

This Valentine's Day: Would you choose sex or social media?

A new survey says that moms would rather give up .... wait for it ... Facebook for Valentine's Day. Seventy-six percent of the roughly 800 respondents to a Socialmoms.com poll say they'd rather get cozy in the bedroom than make connections over social media.

That's just a fictional scenario, of course, and survey participants say they still plan to use social media to wish friends and family a Happy V-Day on Facebook and Twitter (37 %), mention the holiday in a blog post or status update (28%) and check out Pinterest for romantic inspiration and ideas (20%).

Another fun, but not too surprising, finding culled from the survey: A majority of the respondents wanted a romantic night on the town with their partners (57%), rather than a Apple iPad (28%) or Kindle Fire (12%).

Just goes to show -- as popular as socializing over Facebook, Twitter and other outlets might be -- there's still nothing quite like the real thing.

> Social Media Moms Choose Sex Over Facebook This Valentine's Day [Yahoo! Finance]

Image credit: Someecards

Hidden Haunts goes hunting for hidden objects on Facebook

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is in the social games war now, didn't you hear? Anyway, the company's gaming division, Making Fun, has launched its first Facebook game today, Hidden Haunts. It looks about what you'd expect from a hidden object game. Well, aside from the characters with abnormally large heads and and equally large eyes.

"These games have been successful and confirmed our thesis," Making Fun CEO John Welch told VentureBeat. "We knew we had to get to market quickly or else there would be 20 of these games out there." So, Hidden Haunts is Making Fun's answer to the trend, a hidden-object game with enhanced, photo-realistic scenes. That's what Making Fun hopes will differentiate Hidden Haunts from other hidden-object games.

"We shot the photographs on location and added about a third of the objects in post production," Welch told VentureBeat. "In one scene with a kitchen, there was a real turkey. After taking the photo, the team ate the turkey. We get a better sense of realism that balances lighting and place. It looks more natural. It's a very complicated process, but one that results in higher quality. It's like watching sports in high definition. Once you see this, you can't go back."

Hidden Haunts is firmly situated to compete with the likes of Hidden Chronicles and Gardens of Time, both of which welcome millions of daily players. Is there room for another in the ring, enhanced environments or not? See for yourself in the game now.

Click here to play Hidden Haunts on Facebook Now >

Are you excited to see another hidden-object game on Facebook? Do you think the sub genre is over-saturated on Facebook already?

Dream Heights takes on Tiny Tower on iPhone in the U.S. App Store

Not deliberately, of course. We sure know of at least two folks that aren't terribly thrilled about this news. Amidst claims of copycatting, cloning, what have you, Dream Heights has made it to the U.S. iOS App Store. And according Zynga, it's certainly not the first game in its category, but it's most definitely the most social.

Whether that makes it cool or not depends on who you ask. While East Side Games' Jason Bailey thinks "cloning" is a natural thing to entertainment, Double Fine's Tim Schafer thinks people who say that are liars. (So, take your side already, eh?) At any rate, the game allows players to socialize via a Sky Bridge to visit friends and shop in their towers.

Players can out-build real-life monuments while mixing and matching up to 50 different stores. We had a look at Dream Heights when it landed on the Canadian App Store a few weeks back, and this release looks largely the same. To check out our full impressions of Dream Heights, click here. If you're ready to give it a go when it launches, click on the link below:

Click here to play Dream Heights on iPhone, iPad for Free Now >

Are you interested in Dream Heights given the recent claims by NimbleBit? Thoughts on the whole copycatting issue in Facebook and mobile games?

FarmVille Pic of the Day: If Georgia O'Keeffe played FarmVille...

...her FarmVille farm would probably look like Siren465's (a 5-year player at Level 143 and counting). For an art history refresher, Georgia O'Keeffe is a famous American artist from the early 20th century whose paintings, mostly the ones of flowers, often made people think of things other than flowers. She always denied that this was intentional and it's easy to believe that this upset her because she refused to work with people who promoted her work that way. But her paintings had a very sensual quality, so most people found it impossible not to go Freudian over them.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I'm not sure what you're seeing, but this Valentine's Day farm -- with its rolling hills, soft dips, curves and crannies -- totally has me seeing pink. But that might also be due to all the English poetry I was forced to read in high school. Pastoral poetry was insanely popular in the olden days, and the ones that waxed romantic had a tendency to compare women to farmland and men as the happy deer frolicking across it.

Don't believe me? Have some Shakespeare:

    I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
    Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
    Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
    Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

Can you say "sexy time"? If you think FarmVille is big now, I'm scared to say how popular it would've been in 15th and 16th centuries.

Check out the rest of our Valentine's Day 2012 coverage here.

If your favorite artist played FarmVille, what kind of farm would it look like? Do you see flowers or... something else when you look at O'Keeffe's flower paintings?