PlayScreen to donate $10,000 to Alec Baldwin’s choice of charity, when he scores better than 400 points in the iPhone/Pad game Word Carnivale.
BALTIMORE – May 13, 2013 —
PlayScreen has invited word game fanatic/brilliant actor Alec Baldwin to play the free iOS game Word Carnivale for charity.
Social/mobile game developer PlayScreen will donate $10,000 to a charity of Mr. Baldwin’s choice if he scores 400 points or more. A score of 400 is about the average score for players on any given day.
In Word Carnivale, players are pitted against their friends in a “best of three” contest to form words within the allotted time. Unlike a conventional word-finding game, Word Carnivale replaces static blocks with balloons that pop when words are formed, allowing new balloons to float up. There are always simple words to find, due to the changing nature of the game board.
Word Carnivale hit the top of the charts for iPhone Educational and Word Games, soon after its launch in December 2012. The free game has received rave reviews from adults, children and parents for its addictive play and vocabulary boosting abilities. Even players that speak English as a second language have progressed in the game, achieving impressive scores and gaining an improved vocabulary in only a few weeks of play. It’s so addictive, some play Word Carnivale for over six hours a day.
“We know Alec Baldwin is a word game fanatic and we’re confident he’ll enjoy playing Word Carnivale” says William Volk, Chief Creative Officer, PlayScreen. “I have no doubt he’ll beat the score to win $10,000 for charity, but we do recommend he follow the instructions of the flight crew, when he finds himself playing this addictive game on an airliner” added Volk.
Word Carnivale can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store.
From the very first iPhone game, even before the App Store was an app store, PlayScreen, LLC has been committed to creating the best in mobile, casual, and social games. PlayScreen strives to stay ahead of the curve with a single focus: the players. The company consists of gamers and veteran developers who combine strong design and gameplay with the elusive “fun factor.” To learn more about PlayScreen, please visit http://playscreen.com
Media Contact:
PlayScreen, LLC
William Volk
(858) 692-1124
marketing@playscreen.com
The “Worst Tech Predictions EVER” puzzle features Blackberry’s CEO’s Thorsten Heins’ claim that “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” and other infamous tech predictions from the past. Notable examples include Michael Dell’s 1997 suggestion that Apple Computer shut down and return their money to shareholders, Sir. Alan Sugar’s claim that the iPod would be dead by 2005.
Download and play for FREE today against all of your friends and family!
Players Say: “It’s (That Jewel Game) with Words!” … “It’s different from other word games.” … “I can’t put it down.”
In Word Carnivale you’re pitted against your friends in a best of three contest to find the most high scoring words. Unlike a conventional word-finding game, Carnivale has the added dimension of balloon letters popping off the screen as you find words to play. Letters flowing in remind players of classic games such as Tetris.
In Carnivale speed and strategy matter. Word Carnivale isn’t about trying to find obscure words. It’s about speed and the strategy of bringing in new letters and forming new combinations.
Word Carnivale is a ‘universal’ app that takes full advantage of the iPhone and iPad displays. Featuring bright and cheery retina graphics on all capable iOS devices.
Word Carnivale is truly free. No credits, No coins. Nothing to buy.
Carnivale is Easy to Play but Hard to Master
We’ve simplified the entire game experience. The game opens with a quick play game introduction and features an extensive in-game tutorial.
Moving beyond the endless annoying coin based in-app freemium play, Word Carnivale offers players two simple options:
Ad supported. Interstitial ads after each round. No banners, no distractions.
Just one simple in-app purchase turns off ads.
Social network support for Facebook, Twitter and your Contacts make it easy to start a game with any of your friends – OR – opt to play a random opponent. The choice is yours.
In-Game chat, player profiles … everything you expect in a iOS social game, executed to perfection in Word Carnivale.
The music and imagery will bring back that Old Time Carnivale experience on your iOS device.
Word Carnivale Needs:
-A network connection.
-OS 4.3 or later.
-One of these: An iPhone 5, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd or 4th gen, Any iPad.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Behold The Most Addictive Word Game Yet!
Are you playing Find-The-Word games more, but enjoying it less? Bored from staring at the same block of letters. Well step right up to the Word Carnivale my friend. POP the lettered balloons and watch as new ones float up! New possibilities appear with every swipe. Challenge your friends to a best of three contest with that old-time Carnivale flair.
Race the clock to get as many points as possible. Spell the most words or longest words, or a mix of both, in order to add time bonuses to keep the rounds going longer. The longer your round lasts the more points you’ll rack up!
Log in through Facebook for the best game experience!
Step Right Right Up! is where you go to create a game. You can do this through a Facebook Search, as long as you are logged in through Facebook, which is recommended. You can also do this by searching through Email, Username, Contacts, or Random Opponent. If the person you would like to play does not have the game, simply invite them through email, SMS, or Facebook
In Progress and Past Games tabs break down if a game is live or has been finished.
My Profile takes an in-depth look at your statistics acquired from your game history.
POP! gives you one chance per round to clear the board. Use this if you’re stuck.
NOW WITH $20,000 FREE CHIPS! More than a game, a LIFESTYLE. Play Poker ANYTIME/ANYWHERE with PlayScreen Poker.
Make your mark in Poker by PlayScreen, the BEST Poker game for the iPhone. Created by people who love playing poker. Connect with Facebook OR Game Center. You can even play on a airplane.
Poker by PlayScreen allows you, the player, to defy the odds and create a path that leads your poker career to the very top,. Go from a brand new amateur player,with nothing, to living a the lifestyle of the rich and famous as the best poker player in the world. Your skills will allow you to live the good life with luxurious cars and jets, mansions, yachts, and even your own entourage. But it’s not going to be easy! There are plenty of other players that will be coming after you for that very spot. Are you ready for the challenge?
-New Puzzles Daily based on current events, geography and more.
-Difficulty level, manually or automatically adjusted, Crickler adapts to YOU.
-Multi-tasking…Crickler always remembers where you left off.
-Play several puzzles at the same time, even when not connected.
- Hints available as well
-Read each clue carefully to look for anything that may help you come up with the missing word/answer.
-Solve the easy clues first, to help save your Hints.
-If you are unsure of how you should adjust the handicap, have no worries, the game will adjust to you automatically.
Clues: Displayed as sentences and are numbered. Each clue has a missing word(s)
Hint: Hints can be used to give you a letter for a specific word and the other words that have the letter. Using too many of them will cause for a higher handicap level so don’t can’t carried away.
Handicap: Portrays your skill level. The lower the handicap, the better Crickler player you are. You
PlayScreen partners with AdsYolo to help Chinese gamers gain mastery of the English language with a unique and fun educational game experience.
BALTIMORE – February 13, 2013 Social/ mobile game developer PlayScreen, LLC has joined forces with AdsYolo to launch their acclaimed iOS word game, Word Carnivale, into the Apple Chinese App Store.
In Word Carnivale, players are pitted against their friends in a “best of three” contest to form words within the allotted time. Unlike a conventional wordfinding game, Word Carnivale replaces boring static blocks with balloons that pop when words are formed, allowing new balloons to float up. Word Carnivale hit the top of the charts for iPhone Educational and Word Games, soon after its launch in December 2012.
“The value of Word Carnivale’s unique ‘Word Search’ game mechanic is that it brings in new letters and creating new possibilities with every word found,” says William Volk, Chief Creative Officer, PlayScreen. “Players can start with simple words without getting stuck as in traditional ‘Word Search’ games. This broadens the game’s appeal from the traditional ‘vocabulary savvy’ users an ‘English as a Second Language’ demographic as in China.” Volk added “We’ve seen nonnative speakers progress in a few weeks from a modest vocabulary to game mastery in a matter of weeks.”
Tony Thielman, the founder of AdsYolo commented, “We think Word Carnivale is a perfect language vehicle to connect with our Chinese audience. Among this emerging middleclass is a strong desire to learn English. It is their way to absorb all that is coming to them from the West. And AdsYolo is all about supporting that effort.”
AdsYolo is a Mobile Advertising Agency focused on helping Western enterprises reach consumers in China through the largest inApp network in China.
· For App developers who want to expand their user base among the most energetic, youthful, entrepreneurial and fastest growing middleclass in the world, AdsYolo offers a direct line of communication with its 200,000,000+ unique, monthly visitors in Greater China.
· For App developers who are serving empty impressions in China because they are not speaking the language, AdsYolo offers a way to better monetize those impressions and help clients generate revenue, also increasing ROI.
· For multinational brands with a presence in the country and for those trying to establish a position there, AdsYolo provides a way to speak to Chinese consumers directly in their pockets, on their 300,000,000 mobile phones.
The company’s history of digital agency support, operationally and creatively, is deep and wide going back more than a decade.
About PlayScreen, LLC
From the very first iPhone game, even before the App Store was an app store, PlayScreen, LLC
has been committed to creating the best in mobile, casual, and social games. PlayScreen
strives to stay ahead of the curve with a single focus: the players. The company consists of
gamers and veteran developers who combine strong design and gameplay with the elusive “fun
factor.” To learn more about PlayScreen, please visit http://playscreen.com
In poker, sometimes you’ve just got to take a chance that the next card will be the one that gives you an unbeatable hand. Well, looks like that just happened for us with the new iPad.
You see, we had a feeling that this iPad was going to have a ‘retina’ display … 4x the number of pixels than the iPad and iPad 2 have. Turns out to be a pretty good bet.
So all along we’ve been building the iPad version of our iOS Poker game with this very detailed iPad retina display in mind (2048 x 1536 pixels to be exact). Just look at how cool this is:
CLICK on the image for full iPad Retina Display
Of course we’ll be supporting the existing iPads with this upcoming release, but isn’t it great when a bet like this pays off?
I’ve always believed that a “software meritocracy” … a market with entry to all and rewards to winners … would create a massive wave of game development … and the iPhone App Store has proved this true.
Meanwhile Nintendo has been having some problems. The 3DS has not sold as well as expected, even after Nintendo discounted the device (something they had not done for such a new item in quite some time … maybe Virtual Boy?). The Wii’s appeal has wained and the prospects for the next generation hardware are uncertian.
The result:
The last six months may have been much worse for Nintendo than the company has previously admitted. According to Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun–as related by Reuters, Nintendo will show a fiscal first-half loss of 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) when it announces its earnings tomorrow.
At the same time there’s a real hunger for Nintendo IP on iOS and other devices. An example would be “Duck Hunt AR” which was an augemented reality version of the classic “Duck Hunt” game. The app has already been pulled from the store, probably becuse of copyright issues.
There is no doubt that Nintendo has created some of the greatest games in video game history and I for one, know they would be blockbusters on the iPhone and similar devices.
So, will Nintendo go the way of Sega and become a game publisher? Well unless some major changes occur, that seems to be a good probability.
I recently gave a talk at DevCon5 on Gamification – how non-gaming apps are using gaming aspects to motivate users.
And in the course of researching material for this talk, I took some time to play the latest social games on Facebook and iOS.
Grind to the nosestone
These are the grind games; games where the play is actually about tasks and not the traditional gameplay elements we’ve previously known. There’s no win/lose, it’s all about tasks and achievements.
Yet these freemium or free-to-play games (however you want to call them), rule the charts. They’re hugely popular with ten of millions of players, and payers.
For example, six of the current top ten top grossing iPhone games are of this type, while on Facebook, by definition, the entire business of companies such as Zynga and Playfish has been built on such games.
Back to nature
Much as in life, tasks are neverending. You plant crops, harvest food, buy more things, make the farm larger, plant more crops, harvest more food etc…
These tasks results in achievements shared with friends who are also playing the game, with the glue across friends being the items you can gift between yourselves.
Motivation includes pride of ownership in building a personalised world as well as effective rewards with the slot-machine-style awards of coins and the like. It’s very clever and much has been written about the system and how it’s tweaked to keep players playing.
The evil empire
Despite what the critics say, there is progress. Admittedly I checked out Zynga’s new Empires & Allies expecting to see a vast multiplayer strategy war game (hey, I got my start at Avalon Hill).
But it’s just another a task game, where you’re rebuilding your island that’s been attacked. As in FarmVille, you construct buildings and even can plant crops, while the addition is that some of the buildings create troops – something I fondly remember from games such as Total Annihilation, Starcraft andWarcraft.
Building these units enables you to eventually fight the mythic enemy who destroyed your army in the first place. Combat is simple, which is appropriate for casual Facebook gamers, but the clever thing is Zynga has extended theFarmVille grind into a broader gameplay with the simple combat sequences.
Work, rest and work
Personally, I believe much of the appeal of the grind or task game is you can drop in when you like and just play it.
This harkens back to digital plaything games such as Little Computer Peopleand SimCity. The difference now is the social networking element that motivates folks to create something worth bragging about. Productivity, even in a virtual sense, feels good.
Another driving force is the opportunity to build something with pride. For many folks, work is unfufilling paper shuffling. They don’t have much of a creative win in their normal jobs.
Producing what?
In a very real way, task games are all about being productive.
After all, these are virtual economies, and when you think about it, much of real economies are virtual (just ask anyone who worked in the dot com era). Currency only has value because people believe it has value. The only items with intrinsic value are commodities, tools and land … even real gold’s current high value is a product of belief.
So the way to make something useful out of these sort of games is to apply the principles to the real world tasks we all have to do to survive and prosper, such as weight loss programs, fitness and other grind activities.
Still, the thing I really like about this is we’re encouraging the sort of audience that’s never played games in the past. Our next step should be to combine this mechanic with traditional game elements of strategy, action and adventure and make the best of both worlds.
MySpace, the social network originally purchased by News Corporation for $580 million was recently sold for $35 million. Back in 2005, MySpace was the social network, but Facebook ate its lunch.
If you want a good take on what went wrong, you could do worse than to listen to Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker’s explanation – MySpace didn’t improve its system in response to the challenge of Facebook.
Riding high, falling low
So is it fair to compare Nokia’s situation to MySpace?
Yes and no. Nokia is still the number one phone manufacturer in the world, Symbian the number one operating system (in terms of installed devices) for smartphones, and the Nokia app store (formerly Ovi) generating over 5 million downloads a day. On the surface, things seem okay.
However, in some ways the situation for Nokia is far grimmer than it was for MySpace when Facebook started to take market share. In western Europe – a Nokia stronghold – the company’s smartphone sales have dropped by 15 percent to 4.2 million devices, despite Nokia having led its home market for sixteen years.
To understand the first part of why things have gone bad, we can look all the way back to 1983 and something called the Osborne Effect.
Too much information
In 1983, so the story goes, Adam Osborne, founder of the Osborne Computer Corporation, prematurely revealed a new model of his highly-successful Osborne 1 system.
In anticipation of this new version, dealers immediately cancelled their orders for the existing model and sales declined rapidly. But the new model was far from ready for release, meaning the company went quickly bust. (Yes, there were other issues, but for arguments sake we’ll stay with the conventional story).
So what happened to Nokia?
Investors, unhappy with the low valuation of Nokia shares (compared to Apple, as the most telling example), bought in new management (Stephen Elop from Microsoft) to change the company’s direction. At the time Nokia had two smartphone systems; Symbian and a UNIX derivative called MeeGo. Symbian had over a decade of development, but was ‘clunky’ in terms of user experience, specifically compared to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. MeeGo had yet to be shipped on a handset.
Jumping ship
Elop decided to abandon Symbian and MeeGo, looked at Android and passed (it’s rumoured that Google wouldn’t give them special status), and choose Microsoft Phone 7 for Nokia’s future direction. No doubt Microsoft gave Nokia a billion incentives to do so, given the lukewarm reception to Windows Phone 7 at that point.
That may have been a brilliant or bad decision for Nokia, but announcing it well before any handsets were running the OS was a classic Osborne moment, as sales of Nokia’s current devices indicate.
In addition to the resulting decline in sales, many publishers launching titles for the Nokia app store rationally cancelled those plans. Why release titles for, and develop expertise in, a platform that was in the process of being abandoned?
Damned with true praise
It was at this point Nokia’s product development team released the N9, a new handset based on the MeeGo operating system, to critical acclaim.
Website Engadget, which had increasingly been critical of Nokia’s Symbian handsets, went positively gaga over the N9 in a podcast with a quote that went viral: “This is the MOTHER of all phones. This is the design of the gods. This is IT, like NOTHING comes close to this. This blows everybody’s minds out of the universe.”
Now that’s another problem – The Unanticipated Success.
I’ve lived through this with game releases: a product that has low expectations achieves wild success. Peter Drucker, the doyen of modern management, has this to say on the subject: “No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success.”
Head in the ice
So, how has Nokia reacted to this slice of good news?
A day following its launch, Elop told a Finnish newspaper that even if the N9 succeeded, it will be Nokia’s first and only device on MeeGo. “In Elop’s words, there is no returning to MeeGo, even if the N9 turns out to be a hit,” wrote the Finnish daily, Helsingin Sanomat.
I know what the MeeGo team must feel like. The expression that springs to mind is “He would rather be right than rich.”
Now, I would be a fool to count Nokia (and Microsoft) out, but clearly Mr Elop has to make some difficult decisions if he wants to save Nokia: the company could collapse fast if more wrong decisions are made. I think it needs to look hard at the success of the N9 and make the hard decision to listen to the consumer. I fear if it doesn’t, its collapse could be more dramatic than MySpace’s.
From the very first iPhone game, even before the App Store was an app store, PlayScreen, LLC has been committed to the best in mobile, casual, and social games. Our goal has always been to look forward and strive to stay ahead of the curve with one focus in mind: you, the players. We are long time gamers who care about the gaming experience. With innovation defining the space tha… Read More . . .
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PlayScreen to donate $10,000 to Alec Baldwin’s choice of charity, when he scores better than 400 points in the iPhone/Pad game Word Carnivale.
BALTIMORE – May 13, 2013 —
PlayScreen has invited word game fanatic/brilliant actor Alec Baldwin to play the free iOS game Word Carnivale for charity.
Social/mobile game developer PlayScreen will donate $10,000 to a charity of Mr. Baldwin’s choice if he scores 400 points or more. A score of 400 is about the average score for players on any given day.
In Word Carnivale, players are pitted against their friends in a “best of three” contest to form words within the allotted time. Unlike a conventional word-finding game, Word Carnivale replaces static blocks with balloons that pop when words are formed, allowing new balloons to float up. There are always simple words to find, due to the changing nature of the game board.
Word Carnivale hit the top of the charts for iPhone Educational and Word Games, soon after its launch in December 2012. The free game has received rave reviews from adults, children and parents for its addictive play and vocabulary boosting abilities. Even players that speak English as a second language have progressed in the game, achieving impressive scores and gaining an improved vocabulary in only a few weeks of play. It’s so addictive, some play Word Carnivale for over six hours a day.
“We know Alec Baldwin is a word game fanatic and we’re confident he’ll enjoy playing Word Carnivale” says William Volk, Chief Creative Officer, PlayScreen. “I have no doubt he’ll beat the score to win $10,000 for charity, but we do recommend he follow the instructions of the flight crew, when he finds himself playing this addictive game on an airliner” added Volk.
Word Carnivale can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store.
From the very first iPhone game, even before the App Store was an app store, PlayScreen, LLC has been committed to creating the best in mobile, casual, and social games. PlayScreen strives to stay ahead of the curve with a single focus: the players. The company consists of gamers and veteran developers who combine strong design and gameplay with the elusive “fun factor.” To learn more about PlayScreen, please visit http://playscreen.com
Media Contact:
PlayScreen, LLC
William Volk
(858) 692-1124
marketing@playscreen.com
The “Worst Tech Predictions EVER” puzzle features Blackberry’s CEO’s Thorsten Heins’ claim that “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” and other infamous tech predictions from the past. Notable examples include Michael Dell’s 1997 suggestion that Apple Computer shut down and return their money to shareholders, Sir. Alan Sugar’s claim that the iPod would be dead by 2005.
