Life at Playfish

It’s ‘All Go’ for Lift Off to Crazy Planets!

July 1, 2009 by Kim Daniel Arthur

Today Playfish celebrates the launch of its latest game Crazy Planets, where we blast you and your friends into space for intergalactic battles on an epic scale!

In Crazy Planets all the action starts from the headquarters on your home planet where you recruit your own team of space troopers, specially selected amongst your friends, to take on the invading aliens and robots at full force. To make things even cooler, you can personalise your character by integrating your profile photo into your space suit. Your enemies will definitely know that it’s personal!

Through battles and adventures you’ll discover remote planets where you can gather precious gems and metals to create new, more powerful weapons! Each weapon has its own behaviour and special powers, so building your team of troopers will require strategy and planning.

As team commander, you return to your home planet with new found riches to grow your world so it becomes the most powerful and renowned in the universe!

The true test for any space commander is, of course, how they can hold up in a battle against their peers. We’ll soon be introducing a real-time Multiplayer Arena where you’ll be able to put the tactics you’ve learned against aliens and robots to use against the ultimate competitor – your real-life friends!

With Crazy Planets, we set out to combine more active real time gameplay with elements of longer term growth and tactical depth. At the same time, we’ve aimed at creating a fun experience that feels fresh and creative, with the familiar playfish graphical style and approach to gameplay.

Throughout the closed beta we have received a lot of great feedback on how to improve the game (thank you, beta testers!). We have a nice roadmap of new features planned in the coming months, and as always, we look forward to hearing your ideas and comments about how we can take the game even further, so keep them coming!

So, assemble your troops and get ready for some explosive, out of this world fun! Who will reign supreme in your galaxy of friends? Start your adventure now!

Tags: crazy planets, facebook, playfish, social games
Posted in Games | 7 Comments »

And the winners are…

June 5, 2009 by mark bendon

We sincerely thank you for all for your great contributions to Playfish’s I Play Here! competition. Once again, we were overwhelmed by your talent, passion and creativity, and touched by your continuing enthusiasm for what we do!

We asked you to take a photo of yourself holding up a Playfish logo. Exactly where you took the photo and what you were doing at the time was entirely down to you, and we had a lot of fun looking through all your entries to see all your fantastic and inspired ideas!

From all the amazing submissions, we chose our 50 favourites to become finalists. With prizes on offer for the top 10, we let YOU vote for the photos you liked the best, and here are the results!

So, let’s see who you voted for shall we?

The winner and proud owner of a shiny new Apple MacBook (making us all very jealous here at Playfish) is Paula from France, who took a spectacular picture of herself and a friend standing on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. At least, we think it’s Paula behind that cute Pet Society mask! Congratulations from Playfish, Paula!

1st place

Second place goes to Minerva from the Phillipines who seems to have been interrupted at an awkward moment while playing Pet Society. It’s a good thing she keeps a print of the Playfish logo with her wherever she goes or that could have been embarrassing! Minerva wins an 8GB Apple iPod Touch, which she’ll also be able to take wherever she goes. Congratulations, Minerva!

2nd Place

3rd place goes to Hathairat from Thailand. Hathairat wins a Playfish T-shirt, a Pet Society figurine, 25,000 Pet Society coins on Facebook and Pro Pack expansions for the Facebook versions of Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge and Geo Challenge. Hathairat’s photo was taken underwater, which we think might be an artistic metaphor for the aquatic nature of the name Playfish, or it might just have seemed like a cool idea at the time. Either way, the prizes are yours! Well done, Hathairat!

Additionally, Jermaine from the Phillipines and Angela from Mexico win a Playfish T-shirt, a Pet Society figurine, 20,000 Pet Society coins on Facebook and Pro Pack expansions for the Facebook versions of Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge and Geo Challenge. Well done to you both!

3rd, 4th and 5th place

Finally, Laszlo from Hungary, Pirun from Switzerland, Annelies from Belgium, Enita from the USA, and Ario from Indonesia each win a Playfish T-shirt, 20,000 Pet Society coins on Facebook and Pro pack expansions for the Facebook versions of Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge and Geo Challenge!

Playfish congratulates everyone who participated in I Play Here!, and we thank you for your continued support. We hope you love playing each of our games as much as we love creating them for you!

6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th place

Tags: competition, i play here, playfish, winners
Posted in Just for fun | 13 Comments »

Vote for your favourite! I Play Here entry!

May 28, 2009 by mark bendon

Thank you all for your amazing entries to our competition where we asked where YOU play! With the entry period now closed it’s time for you to tell us whose entry you liked the most!

I PLay Here Image

After much thought and sifting through all the many many amazing entries to the competition we chose the 50 finalists who we thought most deserved a place in the finals. Thank you to all of you who entered and a huge congratulations to the 50 contestants who made the final cut.

Now the voting is up to you. Which entry is your favourite? Which one makes you smile the most? Or laugh the most? Maybe you just like the way the photo was taken, or you wish you could play there too? Every vote counts, and with such amazing prizes up for grabs may the best entry win!

Vote for your favourite here!

Tags: competition, i play here, playfish, prizes, votes
Posted in Just for fun | 45 Comments »

Where do you play?

May 5, 2009 by Silje Mølnå

We’re so proud to see people from every corner of the globe enjoying Playfish games, and now we want you to show us exactly where YOU play! And to entice you, we’ve got some amazing prizes to give away!

Here’s all you need to do. Print out a Playfish logo and take a photo of yourself or you and your friends holding it. Now where you take the photo is up to you but the more fun, crazy and unexpected the shot the better, so put on your thinking caps and show us what you can come up with! I PLay Here Image

When you have your photo the rest is easy! Just follow the instructions to send us everything we need to enter you into the competition and youll have a chance at winning one of the amazing prizes!

This competition is open for submissions between the 5th and the 27th of May 2009. After that well select our top 50 finalist snapshots. Then YOU get to vote for your favourite!

So, where do you play?

Tags: competition, i play here, landmark, playfish, prizes
Posted in Just for fun | 38 Comments »

Cook up a storm with Restaurant City!

April 28, 2009 by mark bendon

We’re really proud to announce that Pet Society is now the most used app and game on Facebook with nearly 3 million daily active users and we’ve been working hard around the clock to keep bringing new features and additions, but we’d also like to show you something else we’ve been working on.

Cooking’s great. First you get to choose which ingredients to use. No more eating around the pickles. Next you get to use fun things like blenders. And then you actually get to eat it! But then there’s washing up. And drying. And putting away in closets. Kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?

So why not make your friends do it for you with Restaurant City!

First we’re going to give you your very own restaurant. You can name it, decorate it, fit it with all the equipment you need, and customize every little detail right down to the chimney pot. Or chimney pots. Or just make it one big chimney pot. The only limit is your imagination. Next up, we’re going to add a pinch of friendly rivalry. How about say a street full of your friends’ restaurants, all vying for the same customers? In fact, why not take a walk and check out the competition? You might be able to pick up a neat trick or two. Add a liberal sprinkling of different dishes which you can put on your very own menu — each requiring a different set of ingredients which you’ll need to find and trade with your friends — and you’ve got a recipe for some delicious fun!

So now you’ve got the smartest, best equipped restaurant on the block, you’re going to need to find someone to cook for you. That’s where your friends can help you out. You can choose who works for you and what they have to do. And if you’re feeling generous you can even let them take a break once in a while.

You can even buy new clothes for your character, to make them as smart or ridiculous as you like. It’s worth it just to see the look on your friend’s face when your character turns up for work at their restaurant wearing a cheese shaped hat!

We hope you like the art style we’re using in Restaurant City. We chose to go with a cartoon style because it’s easier to get great results in Flash, and choosing to work in three dimensions make the possibilities for you to customize your avatar endless.

So what are you waiting for? Click here to play Restaurant City now! We think you’re going to love it! And last but not least, a big thank you to everyone who’s been testing the beta version of the game. We’re still not ready to move the game out of beta yet but we’re enormously grateful for all of your suggestions to help make the game absolutely perfect, so please keep them coming so we can make the game work exactly as you’d like!

Tags: facebook, playfish, restaurant city, social games
Posted in Games | 159 Comments »

We’re live on iPhone and iPod touch!

March 14, 2009 by kristian segerstrale

At Playfish, we’re huge fans of iPhone and the iPod touch. We speculated last summer that the iPhone would make an impact on social games. So we’re today very excited to be part of the launch of Facebook Connect for the iPhone and iPod touch and proud to announce our first games, downloadable from iTunes, that let you play with your Facebook friends any time, anywhere. Read the official press release here.

Our first title, Who Has The Biggest Brain? – played by over 15 million people so far, is available for download now in the iTunes Store. It features the full pro-mode of the game – 12 mini games, a practice mode, a performance calendar, and the ability to connect and compete with your Facebook friends, see their pictures, scores and check their brain profiles. The game is of course fully optimised for the touch screen interface and you can even unlock a mobile exclusive achievement to show off online! Read about the full feature set here.

Additionally, Word Challenge and Geo Challenge will be available for download on iTunes by summer. As with Who Has The Biggest Brain? both games take full advantage of the touch screen interface. The games have feature sets similar to the fully unlocked Facebook pro versions you’re familiar with, but add content exclusive to the iPhone and iPod touch. And – most importantly – they let you play with your Facebook friends!

We believe Facebook Connect for the iPhone and iPod touch will revolutionise how games are played on mobile. Instead of playing to kill time, you can now play to interact, express, communicate or compete with friends – which are far more interesting emotional drivers to play games. Being a launch partner for Facebook Connect and offering games for the iPhone and iPod touch is an important step in Playfish’s mission to change how the world plays games by creating experiences that are more social and connected. We’re very grateful for Facebook’s support and, as always, look forward to your feedback and ideas!

We’ll be releasing a few updates and tweaks over the coming weeks so be sure to let us know if you have ideas of how to make Who Has The Biggest Brain? on the iPhone and iPod Touch even better.

Some screenshots are below. To try it out yourself, download the game now from the iTunes Store! And be sure to let us know what you think!