FarmVille released a new feature that lets you store virtual items in barns or sheds. There are quite a few storage options to choose from, that is, if you are willing to pay up to 27 FarmVille dollars per barn or 22 FarmVille dollars per shed, which let you store 20 and 15 items respectively.
The problem is: If you don't want to pay, you're left with only two options: buy a barn for 40,000 coins, which holds six items, or a shed for 14,000 coins, which holds two items.
Players have been wildly debating whether storage barns are a godsend or a total rip-off. Here are a few choice quotes on the negative side of the big debate:
"It's almost like they get half baked ideas and just throw them together toss them into the game and move on to the next thing. In game storage for in game items is useless. If you guys at Zanga want to make money just offer 50 units of storage in the gift box for 50 Farm cash and people would jump all over that. Anything is better than in game storage units that take up space." - Rettahs.
"The new Storage is the biggest sh*t ever All the time i thought we get a Box and can put our items there unlimited.. i feel bad :S this sucks so much..." - gschw
"Why can't they have some storage like the gift box???Just drag the item and put it in??? Every item can be stored in gift box too.....Why cant we put it back to gift box??Is it that difficult?? These greedy people just here to make money. Not to make the players enjoy it more. That's the feeling i get from all this crap." - Judebinoy
I'm fully aware that FarmVille is only partially free to play and the company makes money on players buying virtual goods, but, there's a balance to strike between making bucks and keeping players happy.
It does seem a little weak that the storage you get without paying actual real-life cash holds almost a third less than what you can hold in the premium storage buildings.
I spent the 27 FarmVille dollars to buy a Sleek Black Barn and am pretty happy with it so far. Maybe the storage cap on all buildings need to be raised a little higher to keep a mob of angry farmers (with pitchforks) converging at Zynga's doorsteps.
Spike TV has announced its nominees for the 2009 VGA awards show, which honors the year's best video games. As an official VGA Awards judge, I get to vote on the nominees, which include a heap of fantastic games, such as Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Grand Theft Auto, Batman: Arkham Asylum and the like. I'm especially pleased to see to see PopCap's "hard casual" game Plants vs. Zombies made the list.
However, I can't help but notice that there's some big gaping holes in the nominees, namely FarmVille, Mafia Wars and other social games.
This could easily lead to a huge debate on how these awards are for the "core" gamer and not for casual player, but I know plenty of people (including myself) who play Modern Warfare 2 will then turn right around and play FarmVille and Mafia Wars on Facebook.
Also take into consideration that FarmVille boasts roughly 60 million active players a month (World of Warcraft has about 12 million players). Based on that statistic alone, social games deserve to be recognized for the hours of entertainment they bring to gamers -- both core and casual -- lives on a daily (sometimes two or three times a day) basis.
So to my hard-working pals at Spike TV, I implore you to consider including a category for Best Sociable Games next year (or at the very least, an honorary tip of the hat). Millions of virtual farmers, mobsters and pet owners will thank you.
If you're interested in checking out the awards, they will air live on Spike TV, Saturday, December 12 at 8 p.m ET/PT. The show also has a fan favorite category -- so go to the official site to place your vote.
See the complete list of this year's Spike TV Video Game Awards 2009 nominees after the jump >
Posted Nov 17th 2009 2:00PM by Libe Goad Filed under: News
Tap into your inner gumshoe to crack the case behind four missing college students in this new hidden object game -- Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove. A special edition version of the new hidden object game from Big Fish will be ready for download starting November 25. In addition to the game, you'll get access to hidden content, bonus puzzles, a strategy guide and early access to the game (the regular version of the game will arrive in early December).
Like the rest of the popular Mystery Case Files games, players must solve puzzles, which unlock clues used to solve the case. Dire Grove dials up the tension by incorporating Blair Witch Project style shaky cam segments into the game, and -- from what we've seen so far -- give you that feeling of dread right in the stomach.
The Collector's Edition costs $19.99 and is only available to Big Fish Game Club members. The standard version will have a free trial and will cost $6.99.
Related: Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove Launch Trailer
Never played Mystery Case Files? Try them on Games.com now.
Posted Nov 11th 2009 4:55PM by Libe Goad Filed under: News
The trailer for the brand new Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove game (launch date TBD, sometime this year) has arrived, and it looks like the latest in the popular hidden object game series is cribbing from horror flicks like Paranormal Activity and the Blair Witch Project. Based on the trailer, it also looks like the new hidden object game will include full-motion video. Will we find objects and then cut to a movie-like cutscene and then back again? Or, will videos be part of the clues we find in each setting?
Big Fish is mum on the details at the moment, but have to admit -- we never expected a so-called "casual" game to have a trailer this compelling (or creepy).
Never played Mystery Case Files? Try them on Games.com now.
After week-long media coverage of scammy offers on FarmVille and other Zynga games which offer free in-game currency in exchange for signing up for subscriptions (some legit, some not) -- the company has pulled the offers from all of its games.
"Zynga has not been able to control the ad content as it is managed by the offer companies we work with," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says on his blog, "there fore we are removing all CPA offers across Zynga games until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves."
This statement is a big deal, considering that these offers purportedly account for 30% of Zynga's revenue. This is all on the heels of being called out for offering customers deals with scammy advertisers, which was followed by an outburst and outing of a CEO from one of the companies that serves these ads to Zynga and many other social gaming companies.
Following this morning's dramatic announcement that game giant Electronic Arts is buying casual gamer maker Playfish for a reported $400 million, Playfish COO Sebastien de Halleux talked to Games.com first about the implications for the social gaming industry, and for hit games such as Pet Society and Restaurant City.
"The basics is that this is not going to change anything much for users, specifically -- only that some of the franchises in the hardcore space will be looked at more seriously [in terms of social gaming]," de Halleux says.
de Halleux hesitated to tell us any specific EA franchises (like Madden, Burnout, Tiger Woods) that he'd like to turn into social games ("I'd like to turn that question back to you," he says), but he did namecheck Scrabble and Spore specifically during the conversation.
Even though Playfish will be working closely with EA to bring some of its 'hardcore' games to the social gaming world, Playfish will still operate independently (for now) and de Halleux and the other founders will stay with the company post-sale.
"When we started two years ago in a small room in London, we never imagined that this would go so quickly," he says.
As for Electronic Arts tolerance on upselling offers (some considered 'scammy') to consumers in exchange for free virtual currency, de Halleux says the transactions in Pet Society, et al will move forward status quo. "There's no plan to change any of the games or any motivation or techniques that we use, which are all very respectful of the users," he says, adding that a small portion of Playfish's total revenue comes from these offers.
FishVille, the Facebook game that tasks players with raising and selling fish while maintaining several virtual aquariums, is off to a rocky start on its first weekend. The game, which launched last week, has suffered a temporary case of the blahs (as in all of the popup text in the game simply said 'blah, blah" rather than actual words).
On Sunday morning, we logged in to find a notification that FishVille was "not available due to problems with a third-party developer." FishVille community manager Parizad says that the hiccup is "temporary" but there's no ETA when the game will return (and if the fish you've bought will still be alive).
This naturally brings up the larger topic: how resilient are players to games that launch in an incomplete state? So far it largely seems to depend on the game. For games with more universal appeal, i.e. Cafe World and FarmVille, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Is FishVille a compelling enough game to keep people hooked during the debugging phase? We'll see in the next few weeks.
Bebo's 'Social Game Experience' officially launches today, after a two-week beta period, and the social network says they've seen a 54% rise in game installs during that time.
The Bebo games page highlights a few noteworthy games, such as Pet Society from Playfish, in addition to a leader board that lists top-ranking players for a variety of games and an area where in-game updates appear. There's also a list of Most Addictive Games based on how many minutes they're played per user.
More features will be rolling out for the Bebo games hub, including the ability to challenge other players using Bebo Messenger, in the games hub page and inside the actual games. Players will also be able to see who is actively playing games, who is idle, etc.
This launch follows Facebook's announcement last week that they will soon be adding a game-specific hub to the popular social networking space. We've also seen similar game consolidation on hi5 and on MySpace in the past year, but those serve more as game aggregators than Bebo's more robust 'experience.'
We're curious to see if Facebook will settle for a simple game list or follow Bebo's model, offering a little something 'extra' for social game fanatics.
Days seem shorter? Check. Weather getting cooler? Uh huh. Well now that autumn seems to be in full swing, we're hunting down new indoor activities to keep us warm and busy. Farming and playing with cute animals still rank highly versus the Friday night TV lineup but this week's arrival of Zynga's Cafe World seriously threw us for a loop. We've been playing since we first caught wind of the game.
But that's not all that happened this week as Mafia Wars players found new adventures in Moscow, Zuma's Revenge gets a new version and we discovered a buried box of FarmVille tips that you'll just have to read. So get warm, it's time for the week's best stories.
Farming isn't hard and fans of FarmVille have repeatedly wondered if the game might be better if there were more depth. Now, the game that gets Facebookers out to the dirt has added mastery bonuses to the game. Borrowed from FarmVille's cousin Mafia Wars, players gain mastery bonuses for repeating the planting of seed based foods. The details on what players gain from the mastery bonus is still a bit of a mystery, but any way to add more action to Facebook's hotttest game isn't a bad thing.
Notice how your Mafia Wars-addicted friends skipped any social events this week? You can blame Mafia Wars: Moscow, the newest city expansion that brings mafia managers to Mother Russia's capitol to do business. Like the previously released Cuba expansion, Moscow tasks players with using the pugilist egos of your friends to complete jobs. It's an interesting development that you too can experience, if you're level 70 or higher. If you're already there, you'll want to read our tip guide before you take you trip.
Want to pay less for the games you play? Publishers may just start dropping game prices to compete for your attention.
Pricing for casual games over the years has largely stayed between $5.99 and $19.99, depending on the novelty of the game and the availability of the game on subscription/token-based sites such as GameHouse and Big Fish.
The latter of those sites, however, has been testing out a new Daily Deal promotion where a selected game is available at $2.99 for 24 hours. The deals are visible only to users who have installed the Big Fish Games Toolbar (which displays a search bar and navigation to their new releases, top games, etc), although that hasn't stopped blog A Game For Everyone from posting each day's coupon for non-toolbar users.
New Daily Deals have been posted every day since late July of this year, including on Saturday and Sunday. Originally the promotion was scheduled to run through the end of August, but as that date has come and gone, it's possible we'll see these offers discontinued any day now.
Solitaire players on our site know that there are dozens of variations on the classic one-player card game. You may have played Klondike, Pyramid or Tripeaks, but we're pretty sure you've never played anything like Up Down Solitaire, a new game for the iPhone and iPod Touch ($0.99).
Up Down is part Free Cell, part Crescent (we've got our lingo down!) -- two decks of cards are shuffled together, then dealt into thirteen piles (each representing one of the thirteen ranks) and a draw pile. The object of the game is to complete each of the eight foundations (from Ace up to King for each suit on the right side, from King down to Ace on the left). If no cards can be played, you can draw a card, which will also let you play cards from the associated rank pile.
It's a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it Up Down is as addicting as any of the Solitaire variations you might have played before. The game also lets you upload your score to the game's official website, where you can compare your stats with your friends.
We spent a good chunk of last night hunched over our iPod Touch with this game instead of attacking Mafias or crop farming -- suffice to say that at 99 cents, it's a deal.
Part match-three, part hidden object, part spot the difference, 4 Elements is the puzzle game for puzzle game addicts. You can demo the game right on Games.com, but you can win a copy of the FULL game right now!
The magic of the four elements that kept an ancient kingdom running for centuries has been corrupted by evil powers and the altars no longer yield the energy of life. It is up to you to unlock the 4 ancient books of magic and collect 16 mysterious cards that will help you restore the kingdom to life.
The cows, sheep, ducks and other assorted livestock of popular social game FarmVille were set loose last Thursday night when developer Zynga added the "Allow Walk" option in each animal's drop-down menu. Once enabled, the animals wandered around the farm on their own until the "Stay" option was selected.
Or at least, they would have wandered around on their own if it weren't for a few kinks that arose -- according to some users (including FarmVille tips and tricks blog, Harvest Guide), the animations were jerky, animals ended up walking backwards and many "out of sync" issues were reported (this happens when the state of your game doesn't match the version that FarmVille servers have stored for you). The feature was disabled late Saturday night, according to FarmVille's official Facebook updates. As of this posting, we were still able to see the "Allow Walk" option in the drop-down menus, although nothing happens when it is selected.
We reached Zynga for comment, who told us that the feature will be turned back on after they resolve the syncing issues on the game, which they expect to happen by the end of the week.
"As you can imagine," said Zynga's Lisa Chan, "sometimes it's tough dealing with all of the bugs that come across when serving over 15 million players a day, but it's all part of the learning process."
Did any of you get to try out the "Allow Walk" feature before it was turned off? Did you experience any of the syncing or animation issues? Let us know in the comments!
Big Fish Games is the developer behind some of our most popular game series, from the Diner Dash time management games to the Mystery Case Files hidden object games, but lately they've taken their development in a new direction: adventure games. Drawn: the Painted Tower, which debuted earlier this month, has been one of our biggest addictions this past week. The game, very much reminiscent of the popular point-and-click adventure genre of the 90s, features beautifully detailed art, a great Tim Burton-esque storyline and original puzzles -- we were surprised to find how drawn in (no pun intended) we became to the plight of a missing girl with ability to bring her art to life.
'Drawn' takes many cues from the hidden object genre we're seen as of late -- we spent much of the game searching around scenes for items and progressing through areas to find items for use in other areas. Pretty standard stuff.
But the way the storyline ties into the gameplay is where 'Drawn' shines. The paintings that we explore are works of art created by the very missing girl we're trying to find and protect -- her magical abilities have made her a target for would-be evildoers (naturally!). They're peppered with interactive characters that animate and react depending on your actions -- Big Fish did a great job in making us feel like we had an impact on the game world. It evolved and changed as we progressed in the game.
The puzzles themselves are varied and impressive in their own right. In addition to some predictable jigsaw puzzles, we found ourselves using the mouse to draw in our own objects, rotating mirrors to shine sunlight on a plant and solving word riddles. We even transported objects (drawn on pieces of paper) to and from different paintings to use them. Yeah, it's good.
This was one of the first downloadable games that we wanted to buy even before the demo hour was up -- 'Drawn' pulled us in quickly and unexpectedly. Give it a try (download the demo here) and come back to let us know what you thought of it!
If you've found yourself struggling to make time for both your hidden object and casino game addictions, we've got your solution right here. Funkitron and Slingo have partnered up to release a brand new game, Slingo Mystery: Who's Gold? -- it combines a drama-filled storyline (you play as the broke ex-wife of a dead millionaire attempting to both solve the mystery and find as much of his money as possible) with two already popular online game genres.
We took the demo for a run earlier today -- it's essentially a hidden object game interspersed with Slingo minigames (for example, you'll have to 'win' a Slingo game in order to reveal one of the hidden objects). The storyline's pretty wacky - at one point we were breaking open vases in an attempt to find our ex-husband's money - but fun and hokey. You can download the one-hour demo for Slingo Mystery now - the full version can be purchased for $19.95.
Check out other hidden object mystery and Slingo games you can play right on Games.com!
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FarmVille released a new feature that lets you store virtual items in barns or sheds. There are quite a few storage options to choose from, that is, if you are willing to pay up to 27 FarmVille dollars per barn or 22 FarmVille dollars per shed, which let you store 20 and 15 items respectively. 
Never played Mystery Case Files? Try them on Games.com now.
Following this morning's dramatic announcement that game giant Electronic Arts is buying casual gamer maker Playfish for a reported $400 million, Playfish COO Sebastien de Halleux talked to 
Want to pay less for the games you play? Publishers may just start dropping game prices to compete for your attention. 
Are we missing big news on your favorite game? Help us out! Email us at