I. Zynga Launches Pioneer Trail Expansion For FrontierVille, Migrates Base Game to New App ID

A little over a year after launching FrontierVille on Facebook,Zynga is ready to release the first major expansion for the title as a standalone gameplay experience called Pioneer Trail (originally titled Oregon Trail). The new content goes live on Facebook today.

In Pioneer Trail, FrontierVille players can form a party of three companion characters each with a unique role — doctor, hunter, carpenter. These roles can be filled either with non-playable characters from the player’s homestead, or by the player’s friends. At a later point, Zynga also plans to add a community functionality where players can meet and recruit other FrontierVille players to their Pioneer Trail game. Once each role is filled, the player’s party sets out on the Trail, which is made up of three unique locations through which the player must progress on the way to a final destination called Fort Courage.

Read More >>

II. A Quick Walkthrough of the Google+ Games Payflow

While not all of the games currently available in Google+ are attempting to monetize, Kabam’s Edgeworldmonetization flow serves as a model for the same basic flow for payments in games on the Google+ Platform.

As They’ve previously reported, Google+ utilizes Google Checkout for its in-app purchases, meaning game developers (currently) only pay 5% on each transaction to the platform. It also means social games customers on Google+ can only make purchases using credit cards, debit cards, or gift cards branded by American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, or Visa Electron.

By contrast, Facebook (and many other online games services) have either partnered with and aggregated many other payment methods around the world or simply partnered with local payment aggregators, but Google has not confirmed plans to integrate additional payment methods yet. For now, there is no PayPal, no mobile payment options, no prepaid cards, etc.

Read More >>