News: Candystand adds a daily sweeps wheel!

I love daily stuff, and I love spinning wheels, so this is PERFECT for me!

No, not THAT kind of wheel. (Although it is quite pretty!)

To spin the wheel just log onto Candystand! Right now there’s a big picture of it on the front page and a link in the top corner.

Ooooh! I wanna win!!!

You get 1 spin every day, and your prize may range anywhere from 50 tickets to $500!!!! There are also several gift certificates, which is pretty nice!

So far I’ve won 1,000 tickets a few times, which isn’t too shabby. ^_^

Candystand has also done something a little different here. When you open the prize wheel you’ll see a clear link to the sweepstakes rules and facts. Most of the time that stuff is hidden, and I REALLY like that they’re being up front about your odds and the prizes. Take a look!

 

Being open about odds is quite refreshing. ^_^ I approve!

Since the inclusion of the wheel, I’ve been making more of an effort to stop by Candystand each day. Do you think it’ll affect how often you visit Candystand?

News: Chocolate hour at Winster means FREE SPINS!!!

I got an email from Winnie Winster today, and she confessed that she’d gotten a talking to from the candy fairy.

Aww! But she looks so sweet!

To be exact, here’s what Winnie told me.

Oh My! The candy fairy here at Winster notified me that we just missed that all-important holiday, American Chocolate Week! She gently urged me to make amends. So I've cooked up something new, and you are invited to help us test it.

This Thursday, March 31, from exactly 4pm to 5pm Pacific Standard Time, we will have a Chocolate Hour at Winster. During that hour, all spins will be free - that is, you can spin away to your heart's content, and it won't count against your daily spin allotment!

Join us and be sure to invite your friends and family to toast the god of chocolate. (And you may want to buy them a gift of chocolate from the Winster Gift Shop - after all, it's fat free and guilt free!)

An hour of totally free spins? AWESOME!!! ^_^ Just realize that the hour is only for today, so don’t miss it!

News: Gamesville players will soon be able to EARN prizes!

The Gamesville team has been hinting for some time about a new way to earn prizes, using GVs. Well, they’ve finally released some more info about it! And we have one teaser picture to work with. ^_^

*Squints* I need mah glasses!

If you can’t see the pic, here’s what the text says.

Gamesville.com awards more cash prizes to more people than any website on the planet. And unlike other game sites – where some people win prizes but most don’t – every eligible player at Gamesville can win prizes. See, it’s not a matter of “if” you’ll win a prize at Gamesville; it’s only a matter of “when”!

Below that is a table that looks something like this:

Prize Amount	Description	Cost	Availability
$5	Cash	1,500,000 GV Rewards	77 (Claim)
$10	iTunes Gift Card	2,000,000 GV Rewards	22 (Claim)
$25	Amazon.com Gift Card	3,000,000 GV Rewards	3 (Claim)
$50	Cash	4,000,000 GV Rewards	2 (Claim)
$100	Cash	5,000,000 GV Rewards	1 (Claim

Since this is still a work in progress, the prizes AND costs may change, so please don’t yell at them if they come out with something different!

Having a limited number of prizes is interesting, but I wonder how they’re going to do it. If there’s only one $100 prize a month, when does it restock? If it’s at the start of the month, there’s going to be a mad rush and I imagine a lot of people will fuss about it restocking at a time when they’re asleep, or at work.

A random restock would be more fair (and fun), but could frustrate those who *really* just want one prize. Would you want to check numerous times a day for a month, only to find out that it restocked and you missed it?

So yeah, I’m really curious about how they’re going to handle restocks. ^_^ They hope to release it sometime in April, so start saving your GVs!!

What do you think of the new “earning” option? Do you think it will satisfy the players who are mad that they never win anything?

News: Pogo pitches in to support Japan.

Pogo is doing two things to help Japan. One of them is great, the other is kinda… pointless. You’ll see. ^_^

The Great: Pogo, along with EA & The Sims, will donate up to $50,000 to the American Red Cross. It’s one of those deals where they match what you donate, which is always really neat.

You do not have to be a Pogo member to get in on this! Click on the American Red Cross link above and donate away!

Now, the second thing that they’re doing is offering free items for minis to show support for Japan. I took a look at the items and they’re t-shirts.

 Lookie me! I’m socially aware!

Aaaaaaand I totally don’t get the point of them. It’s on par with changing your Facebook avatar to a cartoon to take a stand against pedophilia. (Yes, that was a real thing that went around Facebook. Useless? Uh-huh.)

I think it would be REALLY cool if they made items that you could only get by donating. But maybe their system isn’t set up for that. *Shrugs*

What do you think of companies that match donations? Is it generous, or just clever marketing scheme? How about the “support” items? ^_^

News: Playtopia seeking admins. Also, their Jigsaw Puzzle and Picture Logic games get a boost.

Playtopia has really been busy this month! First off, they are looking for volunteer admins to help with the site. Admins will work from home and help players with any questions they have, in addition to enforcing the peace for all. If this sounds like the job for you, you can apply here!

I really like Playtopia and I wish that I had more time to spend on their site. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for underdogs. *^_^*

They also have added 10 new pictures to their Jigsaw Puzzle game, and two new food themed books to Picture Logic.

I’ve tried both games, and Jigsaw Puzzle isn’t very good, to be honest. However, Picture Logic is AWESOME!!!!! If you enjoy logic puzzles then you absolutely must try this one. ^_^ Seriously.

This week’s Playtopia challenges are:

• Drive 3km in Trains, any difficulty level and win 5000 tokens
• Get a 12+ streak in Heidi Hunt (it’s a hidden object game) and win 5000 tokens

The weekly challenges change each Tuesday, so you have a few days left to tackle them! ^_^ I’ve never played Trains so I have no idea what it’s like. If you try it let me know what you think!

News: New Slingo chat feature & the Slingo Daily Challenge gets an upgrade!

 

Slingo has had a rank system for some time now, and they’re really trying to draw more attention to it. One thing that they recently did is add rankings to chat!

 It’s in the upper left corner, in the red box.

Now you can see what everyone else’s rank is, which I think is kinda fun. ^_^ And it really makes me want to increase my rank! Right now there isn’t any bonus for achieving any specific rank, but yeah, I dig bragging rights.

Not sure how to increase your rank? Check the rank breakdown for full details, but basically you earn points for making friends, playing games, and entering tournaments. In other words, you increase your rank by being active and getting involved with the community. Not a bad thing!

The Slingo Daily Challenge recently got another powerup, which means I need to go update the guide again. *Facepalm*

The new powerup lets you get extra spins, so you can go beyond the normal 20!! Woot!

Also, they added a leaderboard to show you how you compare with your friends for that day’s challenge.

 11th place? Pfft.

I like it, but I kinda miss having the option to chat with other people who are playing. Slingo Daily Challenge has never had that option, but I still would like it.

And that’s the latest and greatest from Slingo! They’re getting pretty active on their blog, so be sure to check it now and then to catch any news that I may have missed.

What do you think of ranks being included in chat now? Do you like the leaderboard in the Slingo Daily Challenge?

News – KadoKado smooshes clan tournaments.

If you’re not familiar with KadoKado then this will all sound pretty weird. Bear with me. ^_^

I joined a clan a few months ago, and finally figured out how they worked! KadoKado calls every two weeks a “Kalendar period,” and clan tournaments consisted of 2 periods. So one tournament lasted a month. (Yes, it felt like forever.)

Period 1 consisted of missions, where the clan got a group of game scores to beat. You had 24 hours to beat a mission. Whenever you finished it (or if the time ran out) you got a new mission. Completed missions earn points.

Period 2 consisted of attacking other clans and defending your own clan from attack. To attack a clan you play a game of your choice, and your score is the “attack.” If they can’t beat your score within 12 hours then you win points, and they lose points. If they do beat your score then nobody loses or gains anything.

Confused yet? ^_^ Well now they’ve taken the mission & attack periods and combined them into one freakin’ period!!

GAH!!

The most confusing part is that now each clan has two rankings at a time: The mission rating and the attack rating. Totally makes my head spin right now.

But then, I don’t always adjust well to change. *^_^*

For more info you can read up on this KadoKado forum thread. It’s not perfect, but considering that there was NO official news update for the English site and the FAQ still lists the “old” clan info, it’s definitely better than nothing.

Right now I’m not sure what I think about the change. Shorter tournaments will be nice, but I’m trying to figure out how to use my Green Gems (game plays) now. Since you can play missions even after you have an attack out, I think I’ll focus on defense first, attack 2nd, and then mission whatever is left. Maybe. o_O

News – Candystand (potentially) adding a BIG prize!

I love the games at Candystand, but the prizes have generally been on the “meh” side of things. They’re looking to MAJORLY shake that up!

*Squints* You’re overestimating my visual capabilities.

Don’t hurt yourself. That message, posted on Candystand’s Facebook page, says:

We’re working on a prize giveaway on Candystand of EPIC proportions… Imagine if playing games on Candystand could make you a millionaire! What would you do with $1 Million???

This would be freakin’ incredible if it becomes a reality. ^_^ IWON is the only other free-to-win site with a prize that big, and even then you win either $100k or $1 million. (Always read the fine print!)

I’m really interested to see how this turns out! And you’d better believe that I’ll be entering it. ^_^

News – Spigo revamps Gold membership!

Spigo has been hinting about this for a while, but they’ve finally released the new Gold Membership program! Alas, you can’t buy individual days anymore (which I rather liked) but you can still buy a month’s subscription or a year’s subscrip.

The whole thing is streamlined and simplified, which is fantastic! But uh, I’m a little confused about the “Price Reduction” that they’re touting. I don’t remember how much the monthly price was, but the yearly price is the exact same. How do I know this? Because I wrote it down and included it the Who Can Win post, published in August of last year! ^_^

But since I didn’t write down the previous monthly price, I can’t compare it. Oh well. (It’s now $6 a month.)

One REALLY neat thing they’ve added is a seniority feature for Gold. Here’s what it says on the site.

As a Gold Member on Spigo, you automatically earn seniority which gives access to otherwise hidden functions. The longer the time you have been a Gold Member, the more seniority you have and the more functions you get.
You can see the next function which will be available below.

The first function listed for me, a non-Gold member? Extra scratchcards. I freakin’ LOVE scratchcards. *^_^*

I think it’s a really neat idea to reward your customers for sticking with you, and it’s a brilliant marketing tactic to boot. I wanna know what the other functions are!!

*Ahem*

On a last note, Spigo is kinda-sorta trying to keep their Facebook page active. Periodically they’re releasing daily challenges (with Spigo bonuses) that you can only find on the FB page, so pay attention!

And they just added a Behind the Scenes photo album where you can see pics of Spigo HQ! Looks like they were having quite a party. ^_^

So that’s what’s new in Spigo-land! What do you think of the new Gold membership? Do you miss the Gold days, or does the new “function” bonus make up for it?

New games on IWON!

IWON is really working to make their blog active, which is fantastic!! ^_^ I’ve started checking it every day, and today I read this:

Even MORE NEW Games on IWON!

Posted by Angie | February 15, 2011

 

Hi Gamers!

 

How are you? I think after yesterday I need to go to candy rehab! I love the big holidays, but I am so happy that they’re finally over! It’s time to break out those skinny jeans and hope by summer that I’m back in them!

 

So while I ramp up my physical exercise, I figure I should ramp up my mental exercise as well! Luckily, IWON has just released NEW games that will help me out!

 

One of my new absolute favorites is Bananagrams! This new social game on IWON lets you play solo or with your Facebook friends to complete a giant word puzzle.  The goal is to use all the tiles in the bunch to create words! The faster you complete the puzzle the more points you earn! There are so many interesting components of the game like the live multiplayer aspect as well as the “My Stuff” section! Try it out and comment me here on the blog what you think!

 

 

Are celebrities your guilty pleasure? Do you have an insane knowledge of movie trivia? If so, Well Connectedis the game for you! To play, you have to connect the co-stars before time runs out! The more quickly you answer, the more points you earn! You can even use the “Free Connection” life line if you get stumped. Now, I thought I knew my celebrities pretty well, but this game really stumps me sometimes! Play a round and see if you fall in love like I did!

 

 

I know Match 3 games are all rage these days, but have you ever seen one with…Cupcakes?! Love Match 3, but ready for a new look? Come check out Cupcake Mix! Create clusters of 3 or more matching cupcakes – like strawberry, chocolate, and caramel crunch!  After matching 3 the cupcakes are gobbled up! It’s a really fun and cute game, and hey if you’re just looking for a new game to help you earn coins on IWON this one will do the trick!

 

 

I hope you enjoy these new games and I will definitely update you when more come through the IWON door!

 

Happy Gaming!

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

-Angie

 

Ps. Remember our Sweepstakes is still on! Enter and YOU could walk away with a $1,000 Carnival Cruise Gift Card!

I tried out the Cupcake Mix game and now I really want to eat cupcakes. o_O Haven’t had a chance to try the other two games though. If you do, let me know what you think!

We seem to be having a few problems with Disqus today. If you don’t see a space at the bottom to leave a comment, reload the page and see if that helps. Thank you for your patience!

I like eggs, but not on my face.

Last week I posted a press release that turned out to, um, have nothing to do with GSN Oodles. *^_^* Since it wasn’t about free-to-win gaming I took it down and have reposted it on my other blog, casual observation. If you missed the post and would like to see what it was about, head over to casual observation and read it! ^_^

And I’m so sorry about the massive mixup!

Now, to finish the new Kanji’s Adventure guide…

Fairy Tale Slots at Spigo!

There’s a brand new slot game at Spigo, and it’s quite impressive!

Whoa!! o_O

Fairy Tale slots follows a Fairy Tale theme (duh) and it has a lot of minigames going on here. It’s similar to Olympics in that regard, but so far I like Fairy Tale slots better. The graphics are easier on my eyes. *^_^*

Anywho, it will be a while before I have time to make a full guide for this one, but don’t wait for me! Give it a shot and see what you think!

If you’ve already played it, what’s your favorite minigame? (Mine is the cauldron. Finally won it!!) Do you have a least favorite minigame?

In the works.

This is a brief update to let you know what’s coming soon. ^_^ I’m workin’ away, but the next few guides may be a little slow. (Sorry!) Here’s what you can expect!

• Guide for the Slingo Daily Challenge
• Kanji’s Adventure – Advanced Class (more tips!)
• OODLES of stuff for the 1 year blogiversary!! ^_^
• New prize for the February P4P prize table!

If you haven’t noticed the new calendar, take a look! You can scroll ahead to see what’s coming up in future weeks. The calendar isn’t completely finished yet, but it’s still pretty neat! You can scroll through the days and even see what February’s bonus is going to be!

I’d like to let people add birthdays to the calendar, but I haven’t thought of a safe way to do that yet. Any suggestions?

Oh, and there’s less than a week left to get the triple bonus on comments. If you’re desperate for points but don’t know what to say, check out the Open Discussion threads!

Lastly, I’ll be out of town next Monday-Tuesday, so if the site explodes or something goes wonkus and needs fixing, you’ll have to wait until my return! (No, I don’t have a 3g/4g phone. I rarely go out so I don’t even have a cell! Seriously!)

I fibbed about the last “lastly.” Tonight I scored 193k in Kanji’s Adventure. Just wanted to brag a little. *^_^*

Winter Holiday Break!

I had stuff planned, but then I realized that most of you are busy right now. SO, Free2WinGames is taking a winter break! ^_^ P4P and game guides will resume on January 4th, 2011. All comments will get regular points, but I probably won’t update the points total until the new year. Don’t worry though. If you make a comment, you WILL get credit for it! (Assuming that you’re in the Points4Prizes program, of course!)

If you feel chatty you can always drop in on the Open Discussion threads. I already have those written and scheduled!

 

Upcoming Events

Here’s a few things to look forward to!

The P4P invite-a-friend bonus will continue through January! This is a fantastic way to earn points. Don’t be shy!

As extra incentive, I’m going to see if I can get a few more prizes for the January prize table. We’ll see how that goes. *Knocks on wood*

Also coming up are guides for the newest Spigo, Slingo and Gamesville games! Club Bing will finally get a site review, so you have a better idea of what the heck it is.

 

Winster News

I got an email from Winster today, letting me know about the new holiday eCards that they have up. They’re pretty cute! To send one, log in to your Winster account, and click (or mouse over) the link at the top that says Inbox. From there you’ll get a link to send eCards!

If someone joins Winster via your eCard, you’ll earn referral points for them. Up to 1,000,000 points per referral!

I like the eCards because it’s a non-pushy way to get more referrals. I approve. ^_^

 

Sometime in the next few days I’m going to post about Treasure Trooper. (That’s my referral link.) Technically it isn’t a game, but I like it and I figured that if I’m going to advertise it I should probably tell you how it works.

More on that later. ^_^

 

Have a wonderful holiday! And if you’re lucky enough to see the lunar eclipse, I want pics!! It’s too cloudy over here. I can’t see a darn thing. :(

News!

In Spigo-land…

First off, Spigo has a new scratchcard for the holidays! It’s like an advent calendar and you scratch off one “door” each day, up until December 24th. You can visit it every day or wait until the 24th and scratch them all off. No penalty!

The top prize is $300! That would make for a NICE holiday bonus, don’t you think? ^_^

Spigo also added a new game to their catalog. It’s called Crossword, and there’s one new puzzle a week. It’s pretty hard!

Oh! Oh! *Jumps up and down* I almost forgot! Spigo now has an AVATAR system!!! WOOHOOOO!!!!

There aren’t a lot of options to it right now, but it’s a blessing for non-gold members. No more blank faces!

 

In IWON-ville…

Next, IWON has re-entered the world of Twitter! After being inactive since January, @IWON_Team started chatting again in mid November! Yes, it took me over two weeks to notice. Shush! *^_^*

They also redid the site layout. It looks a lot cleaner, and I don’t feel quite so hammered with ads!

Looks sharp!

 

At Free2WinGames…

December is a month full of celebration for many people. I love to make people smile and feel happy, so… For the month of December, P4P members will earn double points for inviting a friend! If they stick around that means you’ll get 300 points!! (Max of 1,780 pts for the month.)

To qualify, first have your friend register with Disqus. It will take only a minute or two. ^_^ (If they already have an account then they can use that.) Once that’s done, both of you should post in an open discussion thread. There’s a new one each week, so you don’t have to look far!

If your friend makes 25 non-spam comments in a month, you’ll get 300 points! And since I’m feeling generous, if your friend signs up for P4P too, I’ll award hir 100 points too!

These bonuses only apply for December, so get going!

Oh, and I promise I’ll finish the Olympics guide. I’m just annoyed at it right now. *^_^*

New Slingo Game!

Today marks the launch of a new game at Slingo: The Slingo Daily Challenge!

Oooooooooh! Fancy!

Each day you get new power-ups and a new challenge score to beat. You’ll get 10,000 Slingos each time you play, and 150,000 Slingos for the first time you beat that day’s challenge!

Since it’s only been out one day, I haven’t had a chance to experience different challenges. But so far it’s pretty fun. ^_^ I really like that you have 5 minutes to play, so you can spin as fast as you want. No need to wait for the rest of the room to finish, and no more frustrated searching for a last number before the time run out!

I’m interested to see the different power-ups! And I’m really curious whether we all have the same challenge/power-ups each day, or if it’s unique to each person.

Go play and tell me what you get! ^_^

Gamesville Policy Change

This really isn’t a big deal, but Gamesville is switching to a one account per person rule. From their blog:

Over the years, we’ve generally had a laissez-faire attitude toward individual people playing with multiple accounts. However, starting this month, we’re actually adjusting our policy to match the facts on the ground such that we’re only allowing one account per person.

 

The reasons why are multiple:

 

1) It’s easier for you and it’s easier for us. Many of the customer service tickets we get around member name and password issues stem from people confusing the password of member name #1 with the password for member name #2. If everyone’s playing with just one account, that problem goes away.

 

2) Our accounting department is hard-working, and they’ve asked us to reduce some of their burden, which includes reconciling multiple accounts for tax purposes. Our accounting department does a lot of good work for us, and rarely asks for anything in return, so when they make a special request it’s hard to turn them down.

 

3) To ease concerns about players using multiple accounts to game others in Spades and other table games; and to make things fairer overall for everyone.

To be clear, when we say “one member account per person,” we mean exactly that. It’s not one per email or one per personality

There are already a few comments on their blog from people worried about multiple people playing accounts and in different locations, etc.

So let me add a two more key things.

• This is one account per person, not per household! It’s perfectly fine to have several people playing in the same house, as long as they each have no more than one account.
• One account per person rules are largely based on trust. They (most likely) won’t take action unless there is a clear problem. Don’t be a problem. ^_^ Just use one account!

Also, I went back and edited the post about multiple accounts to include this new info, and I think I may see another reason for limiting the number of accounts a person can have.

I remembered reading this little gem on the Gamesville Blog, back in August.

Coming Soon: A New Way To Win

Speaking of prizes… I wanted to let you know that we’ve been discussing at GV HQ many of the ideas and thoughts you all have been discussing in the Blog.

 

And while it’s a little premature for us to talk about this, I did want to let you know that there will be an exciting new feature coming to Gamesville this fall: the ability to earn prizes.

How Will This Work?

Basically each registered member of this site, free or Gold, will be able to exchange their current GV Rewards for prizes.

 

These prizes will not be water bottles or t-shirts or hats or board games you could pick up at the grocery store (you know how I feel about those things as “prizes”).

 

And this will not be a sweepstakes where many enter but only one person wins.

 

This will be a guaranteed prize for you, as an individual, to save up GVs to redeem.

 

We can’t really say much more about it at this point because we’re still finalizing all the details. But we’re excited about this project, and hope you are, too. More details to come in the weeks ahead.

Many of the sites that are one account per person create that limit because players can “buy” prizes with points. Remember, these sites are businesses! They have to balance income, prizes, and pay their employees too!

It’s possible that whittling away the extra accounts now is just one step toward balancing the prize-earning future.

Weather advisory.

Grrrrrr…

I did something silly. Life was going just great, and I decided to “mix it up” a little by getting sick. What was I thinking?? *Facepalm*

So, for the past few days I’ve been doing a LOT of sleeping and alternately dripping snot and/or coughing. Bleh. >_<

I’m behind on comments and writing, oh, stuff like new posts. Please bear with me! And P4P members, don’t forget that you get double points this week for any comments you leave on Slingo posts! ^_^

Moving furniture around.

Updated! (Scroll down)

Good news: I finally got the bugs worked out of the new nav bar! (Well, most of them at least.) Hopefully you’ll be able to find your way around a little better. All feedback is welcomed! But uh, if you think it looks like crap, please phrase it in a nicer way. Something like, “I appreciate that you worked your buns off making this, but I kinda like it better the old way.” ^_^

And you’ve probably noticed the bad news already. The program I used to make the nav bar was free to use, but puts up a “buy license” button each time you visit. >_< I tried to find another site using this bar for free so I could see if the “buy” button was bad. Alas, I did not find a site, and now I can see that the button is pretty darn bad. *Facepalm*

I’m not going to make a decision about the license thingy right now, cuz it’s really late and I should have been asleep hours ago. *^_^* So in the meantime, I apologize for the annoying button. Bear with me!

 

UPDATE: As lovely as that nav bar was, I didn’t think it was worth paying $140 to make the “Buy me” button go away. So I made a new nav bar and put it in a new spot. Explore and let me know what you think!

For some reason it’s not displaying correctly in Internet Explorer, and I haven’t figured out why. I’ll tackle that after I get some sleep.

Now Hiring!

Both Gamesville and Spigo are currently looking for assistance! Spigo needs some new admins, and you can reply on their facebook page. Be sure to include your Spigo username!

Gamesville has two spots open right now. They need a flash developer and a backend developer. I have idea what either of those things are, but if you do and you want to join an awesome team, you can apply here. ^_^ If the link confuses you, just remember that Lycos is the parent company of Gamesville.

As for Free2WinGames, well, I’m not exactly hiring, as that would imply I have money to spend. *^_^* But if you’re at all interested in helping out, there’s a new link in the menu bar titled “Opportunities.” Check it out!