FrontierVille: Everything you need to know

frontierville
Prepare to embark on a brand new adventure with FrontierVille on Facebook. Zynga's new wild west themed game has all of us aspiring pioneers headed towards the Pacific to start our very own frontier towns. You'll work the land, start a family, build cottages, decorate your town, and help your neighbors endure the hardships of the west. Before you know it you'll have conquered the wilderness and established a first-rate town out in the wild west.

However, getting to that point won't be easy, there's a ton of features packed into FrontierVille. Fortunately, we have everything you need to know about FrontierVille to have your town flourishing in no time.
frontierville create a character
Welcome to the West
Before starting a new life out on the frontier, you'll have to create a character. The straightforward system lets you recreate your FarmVille player with all the same hair styles, smiles, and eyes. In addition, FrontierVille offers a bunch of western themed features and clothing to make your character fit the period. I decided to go traditional western with a large wild-man mustache and cowboy attire. My character is certainly not happy, he knows there are hard times ahead before he can relax in our bustling frontier town. Perhaps I'll change his mouth to a smile later on.

Energy and Goals
In FrontierVille you need energy to do everything. Most actions require one energy. However, like in Treasure Isle, FrontierVille gives you a very limited amount of energy. At the beginning, the scarcity of energy preventing you from playing the new game may frustrate you. But if you used wisely, following our tips, you'll be able to maintain a healthy amount of energy throughout the first few levels.
frontiervill meals
Energy can be replenished by purchasing meals at the market or by waiting. One energy is replenished every five three minutes. In addition, your entire meter is refilled every time you level up. As a result, to be most efficient, your energy is best used contributing to a level up. At the beginning of the game, the best way to level up is by completing goals. Completing these tasks will reward you with extra experience improving your chances of leveling up and regaining your energy.
frontierville goal
Beginner Tip: Only use your precious energy to complete goals allowing you to level up faster.
frontierville level up     frontierville

For example, don't feed your sheep until you receive a goal telling you to. Early goals include tasks such as clearing trees and grass or buying a cottage and giving it a few whacks. Nonetheless, completing goals will help you level up faster and teach you the basics of the game.
frontierville goodies
Working and Resourcesfrontierville wood
Everything you do in FrontierVille will give you food, wood, experience, coins and sometimes even some energy or a collectors item. Whether it's cutting trees, clobbering snakes, feeding chicks or whacking your unfinished cabin, resources will pop out for you to gather up.

Experience - You need experience to level up. Leveling up unlocks new items in the market and increases your total amount of energy. Experience can be gained from most forms of work.

Coins - To buy anything you're going to need coins. Coins can be found in many forms of work such as harvesting crops and feeding animals. The store is full of great stuff and we suggest browsing through the inventory of decorations, animals, trees, crops and buildings.

Wood - Necessary to build structures, wood is a precious commodity. You'll gain wood by chopping down trees. It's good to have a sizable supply. Just to build a cabin you'll need 46 logs!

Food - Gained from harvesting crops and feeding animals, food will allow you to buy meals, replenishing your energy.
frontierville farming
Farming and Ranching
There's a lot of work to be done on your land claim. Once you've cleared a little of the brush, you can begin farming. Farming works a little differently than FarmVille so be careful. To plant seeds, go to the market and select the crop you wish to buy. Plowing and planting are done in one move that doesn't require energy. Harvesting on the other hand, does require energy.
frontierville feeding
Beginner TIp: Don't plant more crops than your energy meter will allow you to harvest. You wouldn't want your crops to wither.

Fruit trees from the market are also valuable in FrontierVille, they can be harvested for food over and over, serving as a good source of energy.

Animals too can offer food and coins when harvested. Plus, what western homestead is complete a variety of livestock?

Tame the Wild West
frontierville snakeSooner or later, malicious critters are going to make their way to your homestead. These animals are going to hinder your frontier town unless you clobber them and scare them away. For example, doing work in proximity to a snake will require more energy than usual, so make sure to get rid of them as fast as possible.

Neighbors on the Frontier
Starting a frontier town is a daunting task, luckily your neighbors will be able to help you. When visiting a neighbor, you'll be able to help them work the land. Similar to FarmVille's crop fertilizing system, you will be able to assist your neighbor with five tasks. It doesn't cost energy and you still gain resources, so be sure to help your neighbors every day. In addition, helping out will add to your reputation. The higher reputation is as a good helper, the more you'll be able to help your friends.

Like leveling up, gaining neighbors will also unlock more options for your town. New buildings such as the General Store require multiple neighbors.

Settle Down
The world of FrontierVille can be a lonely one, but fortunately once completing your cabin you'll be able to get married and have children to aid in the daily toils of life in the old west.

Collections are also a feature of FrontierVille, collecting all five in a set will net you some serious coins and experience. Collectors item's can sometimes be found in the mail and by working the land.

Posted on sign posts around your land claim are missions that seem to be coming soon. While details are still sparse on these, it seems they will be unique ways to earn more goods. In addition there are tons of goods to be bought at the market. Buy livestock, buildings and decorate your frontier town until no passerby could possibly resist spending a night in your western village.

So, now that you've learned about what to expect from the FrontierVille, it's time for you to make your claim and build a cabin out on the prairie. A new life awaits you out in the wild west, get started on your FrontierVille adventure now.

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Check out the rest of our FrontierVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What is your favorite part about FrontierVille?

Welcome to the future: We predict big trends in social games for 2012

In 2011, social gaming turned out pretty much the way we thought it would. Mobile devices proved to be a fertile breeding ground for social games, FarmVille maker Zynga continued to get bigger, and we witnessed more than our fair share of advergames this year.

Now it's that time of year that we, once again, reshuffle our tarot decks and see what the next 12 months will hold for games of a social nature. And, even if the Mayan predictions about the world ending in 2012 prove true, that won't happen until December -- so everyone has plenty of time to get this stuff in under the wire.

facebook will be the #1 place to play social gamesFacebook will still be the #1 place to play social games

Facebook may (or may not) be losing users in the US, but it will still be the number one platform for social games this year. Google's social network needs to make its service much more user friendly to convince the change-averse general public (i.e. non-tech-heads) to make the move from Facebook.

Mobile social games suffer from a similar problem -- there are a lot of them out there, but there's not an easy way to play them with other people. Mobiles have three major game-based social networks duking it out for the top spot -- Apple's Game Center, OpenFeint and Mobage -- but it's hard to convince social gamers to join, especially when a majority of them don't consider themselves 'gamers.'

Facebook's strength continues to lie in the fact that its games are integrated into a larger social experience. People are already visiting the social network daily to uploading photos, write zingy status updates and commenting on friends' walls, what's the harm in spending a few minutes playing Bejeweled Blitz or checking in on the farm?

SimCity Social will go toe-to-toe with CityVille

Since launch, Zynga's city building game, CityVille, has maintained its position as the number one game on Facebook. There are several reasons for this: First, the game was simultaneously released in multiple languages, and second, there's something about building virtual cities that crosses any cultural, gender and generational divide. So when we heard reports that Electronic Arts is hard at work on making a Facebook version of its PC gaming mega-hit SimCity, well, we can't think of any other game more likely to topple CityVille from atop its perch. If the success of Sims Social is any indicator, SimCity Social (or whatever it's called) will be sitting pretty this time next year.

amazon kindle firePlay your game of choice on any device

One of the biggest problems in social game-dom is the fact that you have to be on a computer to play your games. Or on a mobile device. But you can't do both. And world that is quickly growing to embrace tablets, from the iPad to the new Kindle Fire, as a secondary computing device, it's annoying that we can't check in on our virtual people in The Sims Social whenever, wherever and on whatever.

2012 will be the year that someone makes this breakthrough. Why? Because it has to be. Companies like Zynga rely far too much on Facebook and must stop doing that for long term success. Technology is the main reason this hasn't happened yet, as in, you can't play Flash games on iOS devices. Flash-creator Adobe says it has come up with a workaround for that problem and many seem to be pinning their hopes on the platform agnostic HTML5 as well.

Social games with video game-quality graphics

Last year, we were certain that social games with 3D graphics, or what I like to call "video game quality" graphics, would be everywhere by the end of 2011. That didn't exactly happen, but we've got plenty good reason to believe that 2012 will -- for real, this time -- be the year of 3D games on Facebook and other social gaming outlets. Social games will continue to look and play better, and the addition of high falutin' 3D graphics is a natural next step. Second the technology to do it made major strides recently (though we're still dubious that Flash 11 can deliver games on par with those on Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's PlayStation 3).

Do you think SimCity Social will beat out CItyVille in '12? What else do you see happening in social games next year?

Google+ Games shows its colors with new game discovery features

The seemingly endless tit for tat battle between Google+ and Facebook may finally be over. Well, at least where games are concerned. The search giant of the same name (minus the "+") issued an update to Google+ Games that includes three new ways for players to discover which games to play next. The lists are "Top Games"," "New Games" and "Staff Picks."

They're pretty much self-explanatory, but the key takeaway here is that features like these take full advantage of the fact that Google+ Games is its own tucked-away section of the social network. Therefore, Google has opted to take more of an app store approach that you'd find at Apple's App Store or the Android Market than Facebook's highly ad-driven and social approach.

Each list appears on the left hand sidebar of the Google+ Games home page, and clicking on each opens a new page. While the way each list is populated is entirely different, they each look identical. Each page features a number of game icons in a grid layout, and mousing over each reveals a description of the game and the option to play. If a player wants to find the newest games on Google+, the guy or gal can simply click on "New Games" and instantly find brand new games to play.

Well, brand new in theory: The majority of social games on Google+ are already available on Facebook, save for exclusive releases like The Godfather: Five Families and GT Racing: Motor Academy. As the platform matures, game discovery features like these could be the selling point for Google+ Games. Your move, Facebook.

Do you think these features could pique your interest in gaming on Google+ once it brings in more games? How do you think Facebook will respond ?

Android gets with the times, new Facebook brings FarmVille Express

Android just got caught up with the Joneses. Facebook announced recently that the new Facebook Mobile platform has hit Android devices everywhere, meaning fans of Google's smartphone operating system can access all the mobile web apps Facebook Mobile has to offer. Most importantly (of course), that includes HTML5 games like Zynga's FarmVille Express.

In fact, that means a number of HTML5-based social games are now available through Facebook Mobile for Android, including wooga's Magic Land, Moblyng's Word Racer Live, Storm8's World War and more. That's according to Facebook's announcement, which doesn't include games like the HTML5-based Words With Friends and Zynga Poker.

However, HTML5--a web application development method used commonly for games played in mobile web browsers--is largely available on both iPhone, iPad and Android devices, it's a safe bet that these games are accessible through Facebook on Android. (Before the Facebook update, Android users could simply visit "m.farmville.com" to access FarmVille Express.) HTML5 is making big strides in becoming a viable method for making and playing social games.

In fact, Happy Aquarium maker CrowdStar's CEO Peter Relan thinks that HTML5 is the path to 1 billion players of a single game. However, if you ask folks like Zynga Germany's Paul Bakaus, we're a long way from that kind of reach through HTML5. If game makers want to beat Rovio's Angry Birds to the coveted 1 billion fans, they might have to do it the old-fashioned (?) way: get on every game platform you can possibly imagine.

New study finds Facebook games might do the economy good

The Facebook Economy
The success of Facebook gaming goes beyond Facebook. Based on an economic impact study released today (courtesy of the University of Maryland), Facebook games, applications, and social plugins (e.g. "Like" buttons, fan pages, Facebook Connect, etc.) are responsible for adding somewhere from 182,744 to 235,644 full-time jobs, and $12.19 billion to $15.71 billion into the US economy.

Seeing that the Facebook platform has only been around since May 2007, the growth has been tremendous. The study cites Zynga as an example as the most successful venture on the Facebook platform, primarily thanks to hits like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Words With Friends. Zynga itself has 2,000 employees with the company valued at $15 to $20 billion. Whereas, Playfish was bought by EA for $300 million, and Playdom was bought by Disney for $763.2 million.

The study, created by professors of the Center for Digital Innovation, Technology, and Strategy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, moves on from counting the numbers of direct employment to uncovering jobs indirectly created by Facebook apps. It then estimates the economic value of all those jobs, which means analyzing salaries and benefits. Still skeptical? They're calling it the "Facebook App Economy" and you can read all about it here.

[Image Credit: Visual Economics]

[Via SFGate]

Do you still think that Facebook games are a waste of money? Do you know anyone who's been able to make a living thanks to Facebook games? Add Comment