Skip to main content

Zynga unveils CityVille game for Facebook

zynga-cityville-this-aint-no-farm

FarmVille addicts rejoice. Like so many rural folk, the pull of modern society may soon bring you to the city. Zynga has unveiled CityVille, its newest social game. Instead of building a farm, players will become a mayor of a city and build it from the ground up, a la Sim City. In the next couple weeks, beta versions of the game will be rolled out in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Recommended Videos

“Instead of harvesting crops you’re harvesting your neighborhood; instead of clearing your friend’s frontier you’re working on a friend’s franchise,” Sean Kelly, the game’s general manager, told the AFP.

The gameplay works like this: you’re a city planner and you must build roads, houses, police stations, schools, businesses, and even farms to grow your city and provide for your residents. If you fail to provide for them, your city will suffer in some way. Perhaps the roads will decay and the population will go down? Zynga points toward city hunger as an issue, though that’s a bit odd.

Franchising

The big catch is social interaction. CityVille players can create their own restaurant franchises and expand them to cities their friends have built. However, Zynga’s real moneymaking plan may come from businesses that want to plant a franchise in your town. Maybe Burger King wants to open up shop in your city. It’s good advertising for Burger King and if players like the restaurant, they’d be apt to add it to their city and share it with friends. If the building comes with benefits, all the better. There will likely be buildings players will have to purchase as well. Do you want a Chrysler building in your city? It may cost you a few bucks.

Zynga’s games are immensely popular. According to the publisher, 225 million people play its games each month on sites like Facebook and Yahoo. FarmVille alone has more than 80 million users. The games are so successful that Zynga was recently valued higher than Electronic Arts, one of the world’s largest game publishers.

Are you into FarmVille, Mafia Wars, or FrontierVille? Plan to play CityVille? Seeing what could be a new Sim City-like game is quite exciting, even though it will likely disappoint fans of the classic game.

Topics
Jeffrey Van Camp
Former Digital Trends Contributor
As DT's Deputy Editor, Jeff helps oversee editorial operations at Digital Trends. Previously, he ran the site's…
I tried to beat UFO 50’s hardest game. It turned into a fight for my soul
Key art for UFO 50 shows several retro characters.

On November 6, I was rudely awoken by my alarm blaring from behind my pillow. It couldn’t have known that I’d barely slept the night before, anxious about what world I’d wake up to the next day. No hesitation. It was time to rip the Band-Aid off. I opened the CNN browser tab I’d been obsessively refreshing the night before. I looked at the election result I’d always known was coming and shut my screen off just as quickly.

I’m in a rush. In 45 minutes, I need to be in a cab on my way to the airport. As fate would have it, I had a morning flight to Canada to catch. While standing in the shower, the void in my chest opening wider, I wonder if I’d get on that return flight in three days.

Read more
NYT Strands today: hints, spangram and answers for Thursday, November 7
NYT Strands logo.

Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you'll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.

Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There's no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you're stuck and need to know the answers to today's Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.
How to play Strands
You start every Strands puzzle with the goal of finding the "theme words" hidden in the grid of letters. Manipulate letters by dragging or tapping to craft words; double-tap the final letter to confirm. If you find the correct word, the letters will be highlighted blue and will no longer be selectable.

Read more
NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Thursday, November 7
The Mini open in the NYT Games app on iOS.

Love crossword puzzles but don't have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That's what The Mini is for!

A bite-sized version of the New York Times' well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn't always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt.

Read more