Coming in 2014: a Playfish amusement park!

(Check out the Playfish forums at forum.playfish.com to see what people think of the news!)

That’s right, just twenty minutes north of London, England, we’re building Playfish World, the world’s most spectacular amusement park!

The 140-acre amusement park will be divided into four exciting lands: Restaurant City, Pet Society, Country Island – which will feature both My Empire and Country story amusements and rides – and a mystery land, which we can’t reveal right now since it’s based on a game yet to be announced!

Playfish World will amuse and delight kids and adults of all ages. In addition to all the thrilling rides and attractions, you’ll be able to meet and interact with costumed versions of all your favorite Playfish game characters as they sing and dance their way through the park. And every hour on the main stage of the Playfish Friends Pavilion, park guests can treat themselves to a zany musical revue starring Pet Society’s lovable Mayor and Maggie, the playful hostess from Restaurant City.

Planning to make Playfish World your holiday destination? After a fun-filled day at Playfish World, you’ll be able to relax in your very own luxury suite in one of our very own five star hotels in Hotel City!

Here’s a little taste of what to expect in each land!

Restaurant City
Take a stroll down the real Gourmet Street and find a table at one of the amazing restaurants inspired by actual restaurant designs created by our players! But be careful not to eat too much because you might lose your lunch on the Whirlin’ Waiter Waltzer!

Pet Society
Meet the Mayor in his life size house and pick a crazy souvenir from the many bountiful trees in the Pet Society garden! Feel like relaxing? Grab a rod and fish for something rare in the Pet Society lake. Don’t worry, the fish are just props but there are prizes to be won if you can catch a big one!

Country Island
Take a boat ride to the 20-acre island in the middle of the fishing lake but beware — the Roman Rollercoaster can conquer even the toughest countryman! And while there, you won’t want to miss out on the country farms. You’ll be able to strap on a pair of authentic farming overalls and till up the soil to see what you can find. If you’re really lucky you might uncover a tree spirit and walk away with your very own magic

Mystery Zone
You’ll have to wait and see!

Excited? So are we!

And if getting to England is difficult for you, don’t worry! We have plans to build more parks and we might just open one near you!

We’ll be back with more details about Playfish World soon! See you in 2014!

Most Haunted Pets: Garden Edition

A little while ago we asked players to design a spooky vegetable, flower or tree to go into Pet Society just in time for Halloween. The winner of each category would earn themselves a frighteningly large amount of Playfish Cash — 500 to be precise — as well as eternal fame as their hard work is made available for the game’s millions of players around the world to buy.

So who won? Let’s hand it over to Eepette, the host of Most Haunted Pets, to find out!

“Thanks Mark! Welcome to the very special garden edition of Most Haunted Pets, the show that visits the most mysterious and eerie homes in all of Pet Society and brings supernatural discoveries to you live on camera! This week we’re going to be taking a look at haunted gardens, so expect terrifying trees, fearsome flowers and, er, very scary vegetables! Our first stop is a spooky vegetable patch. If we wait a few moments, I’m sure something scary’ll happen pretty soon.”

The camera settles on a patch of potatoes. Time is set to fast forward, but nothing happens. Suddenly the camera spins wildly and a carrot flies past.

“Did you see that?! A carrot just flew through the air!”

The footage is played back in slow motion. On the second pass, the host of the show, Eepette, is visible in the side of the frame throwing the carrot.

“Well that was amazing! Now I just need to go to the bathroom….I’ll be back in a second. Keep looking, and listening… I said listening for anything scary. BRB!”

Eepette runs enthusiastically out of sight. Suddenly, loud knocking sounds can be heard. The camera whirls around to focus on a large shimmering gray tree. The footage is played three times for good measure, each time slower than the last. Three Moody Ghost Vegetables can be clearly seen in a distant part of the vegetable patch, giggling, sobbing and growling in equal parts. The camera now focuses on the knocking sound, while the camera operator mutters shrilly into the mic that he’s absolutely terrified. Encouraged on by the rest of the crew he starts to approach the sound. It seems to be emitting from behind the tree. Terrified, the crew pace around the tree to find Eepette knocking a piece of wood on the tree’s trunk. She drops the piece of wood when she sees them approach.

“Oh my, did you hear that knocking sound? I heard it all the way from the bathroom, what do you think it could be?”

The half-speed replay shows Eepette startled and dropping the piece of wood in slow motion.

“Hmm, must have been….like….a ghost or something. Anyway let’s go check out those flowers!”  As she points to the flowers she absently picks a Gummy Ghost Fruit from the shimmering tree and eats it. “Hmm, spookily delicious whatever they are!”

Next, the crew paces over to a flowerbed across the garden from the tree. By this point Eepette seems to be running out of ideas. “Wooooo, I’m the Green Garden Ghost!,” as she wafts a leaf in front of the camera. The crew is becoming visibly frustrated and embarrassed.

“That’s a leaf, Eepette.”

“Yes it’s a Leaf Ghost.”

“No, it’s just a leaf.”

Eepette stares at the leaf still in her hands for a few moments then appears to lose interest and flings it into the flowerbed. As the crew starts to return to the Most Haunted Pets van, a single black rose spits out the leaf and smiles that chesire-cat smile.

“Well that’s about all we’ve got time for! Over to you, Mark!”

Er, thanks Eepette. Anyway moving swiftly on, congratulations to our winners, MissGlitter who designed the spooky Spirits Tree, CarlosEP creator of the devilish Black Cat Rose, and Danzefly the evil mastermind behind the Moody Ghost Vegetables. Each of our ghoulish winners have won 500 Playfish Cash, as well as their designs featured in Pet Society!

We were truly bowled over by the sheer talent on display during this competition. We only wish we had time to put ALL of your ideas in the game. Really amazing!See you next time and have a spooktacular Halloween! (Hey it’s Halloween. Bad puns are allowed at Halloween).

 

Country Story Birthday Card Winners!

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to be famous?

Being a movie star’s all well and good and we’re sure being an R&B singer with a song at number 1 is just peachy but what’s it like to experience true worldwide fame with millions of people seeing your hard work every single day?

Well ten people are about to find out.

That’s right, we’re rolling out the red carpet to the ten winners of our Country Story birthday card competition who’re going to have their birthday cards featured in Country Story for the whole world to see!

So who are our new A list celebrities?

First down the red carpet is luicei375 who collects their 100 Playfish Cash for their birthday card:

Next up is GayleWarfield, collecting 100 Playfish Cash:

Here’s -Milkah- who also collects 100 Playfish Cash for her work:

This is Requiem ♪’s work winning 100 Playfish Cash:

Rhini blew us away with this amazing entry taking 100 Playfish Cash:

Jullyet stole the show with this fine piece of work taking 100 Playfish Cash:

Cudz took things to a whole new level with this fantastic piece winning 100 Playfish Cash:

While Tsukuyomi pulled out all the stops with this exceptional effort bagging 100 Playfish Cash:

Damselwolf made it look easy pulling off this fine piece of work for a cool 200 Playfish Cash:

And last but certainly not least our big winner Chewbie secured 500 Playfish Cash for this masterpiece!

Congratulations everyone! See you on Country Story!

http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=1944750

Win 1000 Playfish Cash in Pet Society’s 2nd Birthday Competition!

Love Pet Society? Love parties? Want to win 1000 Playfish Cash?

Well you’ve come to the right place! We’re celebrating Pet Society’s 2nd birthday by having a big party all over the world and for a chance at winning the 1000 Playfish Cash all you have to do is show us how you party with Pet Society!

Just decorate one of your Pet Society rooms using Pet Society items from the shops, take a picture using Pet Society’s camera button and upload it to the contest tab here by Sunday 15th August 2010 at 00:00 PST.

You don’t even have to decorate a room to join the party, just come along to see the entries and vote for the one you like most! That’s right, we’ll choose our favorite 15 parties and let you know which they are, then YOU get to vote which should be the top 3!

3rd place will earn themselves a cool 200 Playfish Cash, 2nd place in the votes will bag themselves 300 Playfish Cash and the winner of the competition as voted by YOU will be instantly catapulted to Pet Society’s A List with a stunning 1000 Playfish Cash prize!

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with! Oh, and remember to read the terms and conditions on the contest tab before you enter folks!

Good luck everyone, see you at the party!

Announcing the Lounge Bar competition results!

Firstly thank you all for taking part in the Lounge Bar competition. We were as overwhelmed as ever at the sheer skill and creativity on show, and let us tell you now that makes us pretty darn overwhelmed!

We’ve sent our roving restaurant critic to report on the winning restaurants, so take it away roving restaurant critic!

I’m reporting live from the winning restaurant tapping the results of the competition into my trusty laptop. I’m not going to say too much about where I am just yet so I don’t spoil the surprise but I will tell you that from where I’m sitting I can see a rather nice collection of bottles and a drinks keg, decorated tastefully with a fine black marble pillar.

But more about where I’m sitting later. The competition was split into four parts. As well as asking you to show us the last word in lounge bar dining there were  three other categories — the More Than A Bouncer Award, the Oops! I Can’t Believe That Just Happened! Award and the relatively sensible sounding Best Lounge Bar Name Award.

Bouncers are the unsung heroes of Restaurant City. They don’t get paid like the other staff do. They don’t get to rest like other staff do. They just have to stand there and wait just in case someone causes trouble. And touch wood, no customer has ever caused any trouble in the history of Restaurant City. The hours are long and the work can be a little uneventful. So we wanted to give the bouncers a chance to show what they can really do. And you know what? It turns out they’re good at being big. But not, y’know, bouncer big. We’re talking really big. Like, this big:

So congratulations gemesimo, the 100 Playfish Cash for the More Than A Bouncer Award is yours. We’d come visit your restaurant to congratulate you in person but we’re a bit put off by the whole scary giant bouncer being in there thing. By the way, I just ordered this pink fruit cocktail from behind the well stock drinks bar in the overall winning restaurant but it was kind of sugary for me and I haven’t got much of a sweet tooth. Between you and me I poured it into one of the blue and white Ming vases that were close to my table and- oops, I think I just gave another clue where I was didn’t I? No. Bad roving reporter. Think before you type.

Anyway, for the next entry, well, we shouldn’t really laugh but we have to admit it made us chuckle. This one comes courtesy of “LOL!!” and we really hope the 100 Playfish Cash they just won helps to repair some of the flood damage in their restaurant.

As you can see, LOL!!’s staff have paddled out of the restaurant to go on strike outside. Having said that they don’t seem to be in agreement on the terms, with some claiming the restaurant needs a bar, some arguing what the restaurant needs is a new stove and one who we’re guessing has had enough because all he really wants is a new job. Well done LOL!!, we hope you get your restaurant back in business soon. And to the guy outside asking for a new job, we really hope that works out for you.

Next up is the Best Lounge Bar Name Award. VIP Lounge (Very Important Pharaohs) takes the top spot earning khoi1979 100 Playfish Cash! Special mention must go to Cocoa Cabana by PunkiC and The Codfather by Spursy79 which came a close 2nd. 1979 must have been a good year for restaurant naming!

So now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The top 3 winning restaurants as voted for by the Playfish team. A picture paints a thousand words so we’ll let your photography skills do the talking:

Pinky25 wins 200 Playfish Cash for Exquisite

Davidk wins 250 Playfish Cash for The Full Moon

So that just leaves one restaurant. The restaurant which I’m sitting in now enjoying the duck confit, which might I say is every bit as exquisite as the ambience. The winner of the Lounge Bar Competition and the 300 Playfish Cash grand prize is…

BUTTERCUP with Black Magic Bar! Congratulations BUTTERCUP!

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget the community vote. We wanted to save it until last because there otherwise we’d have given away which restaurant came in first place. So, we asked you to vote for your favourites which would take 4th, 5th and 6th place in the competition and earn their owners a cool 150 Playfish Cash each. And you know what? It turns out great minds think alike. Black Magic Bar was your top voted restaurant with an impressive 23.3% of the vote and it was our top voted restaurant too. Your 3rd choice, The Full Moon with 14.87% of the vote, was actually our choice to come 2nd overall. So that means your 2nd choice, Euphoria with 17.89% of the vote, takes 4th place overall. Cocoa Cabana takes 5th place with 11.33% of the vote and Carpe Noctum takes the 6th spot with 10.36% (apologies to C and H who were wrongly credited with 6th place). Give yourselves a pat on the back for a job well done, folks.

Well that’s a wrap. We hope you’ve enjoyed the competition and all those amazing lounge bars. Congratulations to all the winners and everyone who took part! You’re all awesome!

EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars Brings the ‘Beautiful Game’ to Facebook

Have you ever dreamt of managing a football team comprised of the world’s greatest players? Now, just in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup^TM, we’re pleased to announce EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars!

Here’s your chance to take control of the ‘beautiful game’ to see if you can do a better job than the pros. FIFA Superstars lets you build a team of real players and compete with the whole world on the football pitch.

First, you’re assigned a set of football players to develop your team around. Players are rated on their shooting, control, stamina and strength, with the ratings based on real world statistics. So if you’re lucky enough to have, say, Cristiano Ronaldo on your team, he’s going to have much higher stats than a less accomplished player.

So you’ve got your team lined up, but what if they’re just not all that hot? Well, that’s where the game starts getting really fun! Buying Bronze, Silver or Gold transfer sets gives you a random group of players of roughly similar skill range. Bronze players are international quality, Silver players are star footballers and Gold players are the football world’s superstars – the best of the best.

Once you’re happy with your team you can take them to the pitch to play some games with other players. You can play each of your friends once a day, earning cash and building experience. You also can play league games, climbing ever higher to face better and better players around the world. The more cash you earn, the more you can spend on transfers and taking your team to the big time.

You’ll also need to ensure your team has a consistently high standard of training and fitness, which improves its abilities on the pitch. Additionally, stadium upgrades increase your team’s revenue and training levels.

FIFA Superstars features four modes of exciting play: Friendly matches, League matches, Premier League (and more of the world’s top leagues to come soon), and 2010 FIFA World Cup^TM.

You can win some amazing prizes in 2010 FIFA World Cup^TM mode. Just predict the scores for upcoming games, and if you guess the winner or the score correctly you’ll earn points which add up to Coin prizes, Match Credits and even Gold rated players! Even better, the more friends who play the 2010 FIFA World Cup^TM Mode, the better your chances at winning prizes – so remember to get everyone involved. Not only will you earn more together but you can finally prove once and for all who really knows football best!

Just like the start of your favorite team’s professional league, this is only the beginning for EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars. There’ll be all kinds of amazing new features to try in future and much, much more. So step onto the pitch, make wise training and transfer choices, and you’ll have the chance to take your team all the way to the top of the world! Do you have what it takes?

Welcome to My Empire!

Friends, Romans and citizens. The time has come to make your marks on history with Playfish’s latest release: My Empire.

Each one of you has been given an island to make your own and enough gold to build the foundations of a mighty empire.

You have each been given the finest ships in the Roman empire’s fleet, that you may set sail for each other’s islands, earning Coins for your colony through good will gifts and trading.

Each of you is placed in control of your own empire’s destinies, and the destinies of the very people who populate them. Treat them well by building fine baths, arenas and other luxuries and your population will grow and prosper. And with a growing population comes more taxes to collect.

Your people may be loyal to you, but they still have needs for creature comforts. A happy population is a productive one and the population’s mood can be improved by planting trees and flowers, erecting statues and laying roads and hedgerows. Make your city beautiful and your citizens will be proud to call it their home and thank you with their devotion.

As your population of devoted subjects grow, so too will the number of ways you can put them to work for you and help you raise your empire to glory. You and you alone are in control of your empire and the way it grows under your guidance will say much about the way you think. You could have them build a mine to dig for iron, copper, silver and perhaps even gold, or construct a quarry to search for precious stone.

By collecting more of these valuable raw materials you can set your loyal citizens to work creating a masterpiece — a Wonder of the World. Achieving the truly legendary status of building a Wonder of the World is one of the highest honors you can achieve and the choice of different Wonders will astonish and amaze, ranging from the mighty Colossus of Rhodes to the mysterious Sphinx and many more between. Who will be the first among you and your friends to construct them all?

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’ll need your friends to help you construct your finest achievements, whether by sending you gifts or by enlisting them to help you to build. Lend help to your friends when they need you and they’ll be there for you when you need them.

The more friends you have who create colonies in neighboring islands the more rich opportunities will be uncovered, all yours for the taking.

So set sail for distant lands to explore because this is only the beginning, and who knows what marvels await in My Empire? Play it now to find out!

Announcing the winners of our movie awards competition!

OK, we admit, we messed up again.

We thought 11 awards was going to be enough. I mean it seemed like quite a lot. We know you well enough by now to realise if we run a competition you’re going to amaze us with the sheer number of amazing entries but yeah, we thought 11 awards felt like plenty.

We were wrong.

Not only did we have to add another couple of categories: Best Frame and Best Fantasy, we still couldn’t decide between two entries to win the Fantasy award so we thought what the hey, we’ve already totally changed the rules and added more categories, we might as well have TWO winners for Fantasy!

So without further ado, introducing the first ever Pet Society Movie Awards!

—

[theme tune and pan around star studded audience before cutting to the Mayor of Pet Society introducing the awards]

*clears throat*

Welcome everyone to the Pet Society Movie Awards! The first category was for Best Fantasy. There are two winners for this one. Would ah *adjusts reading glasses* Brunella Rizzo and ณัฐวดี สุชาโต please step up to the podium to collect your 50 Playfish Cash and Golden Mayor Awards!

The Action Award goes to Adityansyah Irendra Nugraha, who also wins 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award!

Step up Eduardo Galvez, winner of 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award for best comedy!

The prize of 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award for Best Drama goes to Ivett Ariana Ponce Guevara!

Please join us at the podium Lilian Sachiko to collect your 50 Playfish Cash and Golden Mayor Award for Best Horror!

Best Miscellaneous Award goes to Andrea Lombardi who wins 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award!

The award for Best Romance goes to Aliz Szebényi, securing them 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award!

The newly created Best Frame Award goes to Regina Vargas Mancilla winning them 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award!

Step up to the podium and collect your 50 Playfish Cash and Golden Mayor Award Marti Zangari!

The Best Science Fiction Award earns 50 Playfish Cash and a Golden Mayor Award for Cergio Ortiiz!

Step up Julianne Ting for your 50 Playfish Cash and Golden Mayor award for Best Thriller!

The Gangster City Award goes to Timmy McDonald for his excellent entry. Well done Timmy, enjoy your 50 Playfish Cash and Golden Mayor Award!

Finally, the big one. Best Picture Award. This award goes to our favorite entry of all, so they win a huge 1000 Playfish Cash as well as their Golden Mayor Award. And the award goes to…

*drum roll*

Sometime Zili! Congratulations Sometime Zili! Time for an acceptance speech?

And that’s about all we have time for folks, but congratulations to all the winners as well as the many, many other talented people who entered the competition!

See you at the after show party!

We have a(nother) winner(s)!

Well with 10 spectacular winning entries this is going to be a long one so we won’t keep you. Anyone who has a particular desire for a longer intro take the following steps: go back to an older competition results blog post (there are lots), copy paste the intro into Wordpad and do a find and replace of the previous competition’s name with “Country Story Theme Competition”. The result will be something along the lines of: “Yadda yadda yadda, big competition lots of prizes, yadda yadda yadda, so many cool amazing entries we were blown away, yadda yadda yadda, congratulations to all the winners!”

And you know what? It’d be true too. Because you did blow us away once again. And we’re willing to wager you’ll be blown away too if you just take a little scroll down this very blog post!

So the task was to create a Country Story farm with a set theme. The theme you used was your choice: as usual we let you guys figure out exactly what you’d like to do, we just deal with the giving out prizes bit!

1) Now this… this wasn’t just a great competition entry. This was one of the funniest, most perfectly awesome things we’ve ever seen. We could explain but Rachel, our competition winner, just sums it up so perfectly herself. Congratulations Rachel, you deserved your 2000 Playfish Cash and no shadow of a doubt! We just wish we’d come up with this idea 55 years ago. Enjoy.

2) 1000 Playfish Cash goes to Hiba Ibrahim Al Qawasmeh for this cute little diorama of a girl sitting in a tree. There’s even some perspective and 3D style goings on here. Try looking at one then the other quickly. Love it!

3) 500 Playfish Cash goes to Engy Elgamily, one of the best ‘portrait painters’ we’ve seen in Country Story. We can tell you now the Country Story mayor was thrilled!

Meanwhile 4th to 10th place each win 100 Playfish Cash!

4)  Allora Jay McCullough – this one’s stunning. Look at the detail! We wouldn’t be surprised if Allora were a dab hand at all kind of other art forms!

5) We received several farms inspired by Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros but Alonso Villouta‘s Super Country Bros was definitely our favourite! Perfect detailing!

6) Helena Campo: Well done Helena for using the competition as a platform to get an important message across. Beautifully made, too!

7) We love Christine Marie‘s Magical Birthday Party. That’s a pretty amazing magical forest cake & purple cabbage gift box!

8) Julia Solovjeva: This amazing freshly baked pizza looks good enough to be a dish in Restaurant City! We just hope you wouldn’t need all those vegetables to make it…

9) Here’s a toast to Zoe Miranda for her brilliant idea. We loved how it was so simple — minimal even — and yet so effective. Absolutely superb.

10) …and lastly congratulations to Karim Kadi for his penguin farmer. Karim’s entry made it into the top 10 by being the cutest thing in the competition, and after all, everyone loves penguins don’t they?

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered! Until next time!

News from the Valentine Competition!

We have a winner!

Well more specifically, we have two!

Didn’t we say there’d only be one winner? OK you got us there, yes we did. But as these things tend to pan out with you guys, you just turned out to be too good! With the quality of entries we thought we really had to have a couple of winners; one for our favourite video and one for our favourite image.

If you cast your minds back we asked you to use images and/or videos to show us your pet’s perfect valentine. You didn’t let us down. We were inundated with all kinds of Valentine’s goodness — some romantic, some funny, some tragic, but all supremely creative and packed with all kinds of Valentine’s Day awesome.

As promised the winners will both receive 500 Playfish Cash but also they’ll be given completely unique in game items — items which no-one else in the whole world have! So what are these mysterious items? Well they’re kind of fun. Both the winner and their Valentine will receive a his and hers t shirt and dress personalised to their Valentine, like these:

Cute huh?

So without further ado we’d like to congratulate:

Chia Hui Liu

and Danyela990

…for their amazing entries! They both obviously had a lot of work lavished on them so we’re sure Brico and Daniel must be very touched!

Well done everyone! See you next time!