April 12, 2012 Comments Off
On Monday morning, you probably noticed a big problem when you went to play Hanging or Chess With Friends (if you play the iOS versions). Specifically, if you tried to rematch a friend or start a new game, we wouldn’t let you. It was the beginning of a nightmare for both us and you. The next few days had us scrambling to fix it and left you hanging without any new games.
We’ve since fixed it, and we’d like to now take the opportunity to apologize to you. We are truly sorry!
If all you want to do is get back to playing, head over to the App Store now and grab the latest versions of Hanging With Friends and Chess With Friends.
For those of you still scratching your heads and demanding more answers, we have the story on what went wrong after the jump.
March 1, 2012 Comments Off
Great news, With Friends players — Hanging With Friends is now available in an exclusive HD version for the iPad!
Just in time for the new iPad coming later this month, Hanging With Friends HD brings our popular twist on hangman to life on the iPad’s 10-inch screen. It dazzles with a high-resolution look and polished interface designed to keep the action all on one screen for a streamlined experience.
The best part is all your games and goodies will carry over if you’ve been playing one of the other versions of the game. Don’t want to lose your progress on missions, or your balloons and characters? No problem — just log in with your email or Facebook account and it will all be there waiting for you.
Download the free version today.
Game on!
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January 9, 2012 Comments Off
We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the road ahead here at Zynga With Friends. After a lot of introspection, we’ve come to the realization that our passion is in making new games. That’s where we feel we’ll be the most productive and innovative. In other words, we’re thrilled to start coming up with all kinds of new With Friends games.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave a lot of time to spend on our existing games without hiring a bunch of new people (which we’d prefer not to do). After going back and forth on whether to expand our office here in Texas or just keep focusing on our current games, we realized the best solution was right in front of us: we could “give” our current games to the very capable folks at Zynga headquarters in San Francisco. They could be in charge of managing our live games as well as building out awesome new features.
For those of you who are wondering how that might work, and whether those games would still live up to the quality you’ve come to expect from Newtoy/Zynga With Friends, look no further than Words With Friends. We started this new process by handing over all versions of that game last October. Since then, the team in SF has improved the game’s technical performance and launched awesome new features, like the store where you can buy themed boards, a word strength meter and a point counter. All things we’ve been talking about doing long before we were acquired by Zynga.
Meanwhile, we’ve been hard at work on some new games and can’t wait to share them with you all. 2012 is going to be a big year for us. We’re so excited, and hope you will be too!
Finally, we’ve given our blessing to the team in SF to create some With Friends games of their own. The recently launched Scramble With Friends is their first. Give it a try!
December 7, 2011 Comments Off
Our Hanging With Art Contest was a great success, and now it’s time to unveil the winners. You can see them here.
And to see even more of our players’ amazing creativity, check out our contest entries album on our Facebook page.
October 19, 2011 Comments Off
Now that Hanging With Friends is out on the iPhone and Android, and the Coin Store is open, it’s time to celebrate! And how better than with a contest with awesome prizes?
How awesome, you ask? The grand prize is a new Macbook Air!
The contest theme is creative expression. In Hanging With Friends, we love expressing ourselves by customizing our avatars and balloons and even by playing all sorts of words — funny, obscure, high scoring or whatever. So we’re bringing that fun into the contest by asking you to express your love for the game through homemade art. How you proceed is entirely up to you; you can do a painting, sculpture, video, decorative food, graffiti — anything that gets your creative juices flowing.
Get the full scoop here!
UPDATE: Vote for the finalists here!
HTML5 has gotten a lot of attention recently as being the future of multimedia on the web. It’s been cited as a replacement for Flash, a solution for everything from videos and games to other web animations, and has gotten support from some big players in the tech industry, including Apple.
Since Words With Friends is one of the first major Facebook games to be made entirely in HTML5, we wanted to chat with Shawn Lohstroh, lead developer for the Facebook version, about the decision go with the burgeoning technology.
Zynga With Friends: When did you guys know you wanted to bring Words With Friends to Facebook?
Shawn Lohstroh: Really since the beginning, it had been a goal of ours. We’ve always wanted to bring our games to as wide an audience as possible. We felt HTML5 was the best way to do it.
ZWF: So level with us — what exactly is HTML5? To the uninitiated it might sound like some kind of Internet hit squad.
SL: It’s just a new revision of the HTML standard the Internet was built on. It gets a lot of press as a new way to deliver video on the web, but really it’s a whole gamut of tools that includes Javascript, CSS and HTML. Most importantly, it doesn’t need any proprietary plugins or APIs — it just works.
ZWF: Most Facebook games are made in Flash. Why HTML5?
SL: We were looking for something that integrated well with our existing service. Of course, Flash, Silverlight and other software are ubiquitous around the web, but as we explored HTML5, we fell in love with what it could do. Also, Facebook has a great JavaScript SDK that was easy to use.
ZWF: Were there any tradeoffs?
SL: The tools for designing games in HTML5 are still in their infancy or non-existant (it’s currently geared towards traditional web development). Also, not all the browsers perform quite the same, which posed some challenges for us. However, we felt we could bring the core experience of Words With Friends to the web and Facebook with HTML5 and provide our customers with a great gaming experience.
ZWF: Wait, HTML5 isn’t as good as Flash?
SL: Well, for now, maybe. Part of this started out as an investigation into what was possible with HTML5. While it’s early in its inception, we realized HTML5 is only going to get more popular and robust, and we wanted to get ahead of the curve and bring that expertise to our studio. Besides, when a company like Apple throws their weight behind something like HTML5, you tend to listen.
ZWF: So why should the Average Joe care what technology Words With Friends uses, so long as they get their daily triple word score fix?
SL: There are a lot of reasons — everything from small stuff like opening a game a few seconds faster or using less power to run the game to bigger picture stuff. Ultimately we’re really pushing the envelope in terms of what’s possible with online gaming. Ultimately, HTML5 will let us take the training wheels off online games and let them go all sorts of places unimaginable before.
Hanging With Friends is now available on Android!
Download it here.
Now Android users can join in the excitement of building mystery words to stump, amuse or impress their friends while trying to stay in the air long enough to win. And just like the Words With Friends Android version, Hanging brings cross-platform play to the mix so Apple peeps can play with their Android-toting buddies. More fun for everyone!
The game works on all devices above Android OS 2.1 and all resolutions above MDPI (except Honeycomb).
Time to start collecting coins and holding on to those balloons!
August 9, 2011 Comments Off
Back in May, we ran what was a very new kind of promotion for us, teaming up with Lady Gaga for an in-game contest in Words With Friends. Many of you participated, playing Gaga-themed words of the day for a chance to win one of ten trip packages to see the Mother Monster herself in concert.
We’ve finally confirmed the winners. Congrats, guys! Tell Ms. Gaga hello for us.
– Adan V. from Alice, TX
– Amy R. from Orlando, FL
– John L. from Arlington Heights, IL
– Robin O. from Interlachen, FL
– Michelle H. from Billings, MT
– Antonia R. from River Ridge, LA
– Kedwin H. from North Bergen, NJ
– Laura D. from Brick, NJ
– Maria G. from Glenoma, WA
– Bobbi S. from Roseburg, OR
Earlier this week, we told you Words With Friends was coming soon to Facebook. We’re thrilled to announce the game is now live and playable!
On a laptop/desktop? Click here to play Words With Friends on Facebook!
On your phone? Like our fan page and we’ll remind you to play later:
We think you’ll love playing Words With Friends this way. You’ll be able to play anyone you’ve ever “friended,” so you’ll never run out of new friends to challenge. The Facebook version has everything you’ve come to love about the mobile one — the same word building, double & triple score seeking and chat bubble sending goodness — but on the big screen. Plus, you can play on your laptop and then pick up later on your phone. You now have no excuses for taking too long to make a move!
Helpful note: you first login, you’ll have to authorize some permissions. We do this just so the game works as it’s supposed to (we won’t post to your wall without your permission, email you spam, snoop on you or anything else like that — promise!). Then you can link your Facebook account to your Games With Friends username to play the same games across both Facebook and your mobile device.
P.S. To celebrate the launch, you can grab a custom letter tile to use as a Facebook profile pic. Get that here.
Big news today: Words With Friends is coming soon to Facebook!
If you’ve been wanting even more of the game, consider this an early (or late) birthday present. You’ll be able to play with anyone you’ve ever “friended” on Facebook. And if you play the game on your phone, you can tie your account to the Facebook version and play all your current games there!
We’re so excited for you all to try it. But first, there are two things you can do to make your experience awesome:
- Login to Facebook on the mobile version (that way, when the game launches your games will carry over automatically):
- Like our Fan Page so you can be the first to hear when the game is ready.
For extra credit, you could try studying the dictionary and boning up on two and three letter words. Good luck and stay tuned!
