Topic: Resolved

Please be advised, there was a problem this weekend with some game rooms not loading properly. This issue has been resolved. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the issue; your very specific comments helped narrow down the issue and enable us to fix it that much faster.

Topic: Feedback

Over the last week, we've been testing different styles for emoticons and badge, in an effort to improve the chat  experience at Gamesville.

Well, the tests are over and you pretty much universally told us that these styles were not going to work for you. As a result, we've decided to stick with the old style and not move ahead with any of the new styles we were testing. Effective about two hours ago, we reset all emoticons and badges back to the old style.

If your emoticons or badge still looks different now compared to a week ago, please exit your browser, start it up, and reload your game. If that doesn't work, please let us know which game and room in particular are causing a problem. 

Topic: Feedback

If you had an account with Skilljam through Gamesville, then you have likely received an email from WorldWinner to let you know that our new skill gaming partner, WorldWinner, is handling the Skilljam refunds.

Refunds are in process, and we've been working with WorldWinner to get you a firm timeline on when all the refunds are expected to be completed. We now have that timeline.

If you had a VIP subscription with Skilljam through Gamesville, or you had money in your Skilljam account through Gamesville...

• Skilljam VIP subscriptions will be refunded by May 11.
• Skilljam account balance refunds by credit card and/or PayPal will be refunded by May 11.
• Skilljam account balance refunds by check will be refunded by June 1.

Please note: Refunds are issued via credit card, PayPal, or check based on your individual deposit method. For example, if you made your deposit by PayPal, your refund will come by PayPal; if your deposit was made by check, your refund will come by check.

As long as there is no delay in normal bank processing times (a rare occurrence), this will be wrapped up very soon. Thanks for your patience in this matter.

If you have questions or comments about your refund, please contact WorldWinner customer service.

And please be sure to let us know if you don't receive your correct refund by the dates above, as well, so we can follow up with our friends at WorldWinner and get the problem resolved.

Thanks,
Chris

Topic: Jokes
Gamesviller "mc07200" from LaFollete, Tennessee, sends us this joke:

On some far flung day, Dolly Parton and the Queen of England both died and, naturally, went to Heaven.

St. Peter was there to greet them at the gates. "Before I can let you in," he said, "please state why you think you should enter heaven."

Dolly said, "Well, the Lord gave me these two large boobs as a gift, and I have used them to create a great career and bring happiness and joy to many people on earth."

The Queen of England spotted a toilet behind St. Peter; without a word, she went over to the toilet and went to bathroom. After she finished, she came back over to Dolly's side. Dolly looked confused and a little disgusted. St. Peter looked pleased.

"Very well," St. Peter said. "Come on in, Queen."

Dolly tilted her head, her brow furrowed. "What the heck is going on?" she asked. "Why does she get in before me?"

To which St. Peter replied,"I'm sorry, my dear. But everyone knows a Royal Flush beats Two Pair."

Thanks, mc07200; your GV Rewards are in your account as of today.

Do you have a joke to share with the Gamesville community? Do you want some extra GV Rewards?

Post your joke here--and please remember to include your Gamesville member name so we can credit the joke to you.

If we use your joke as a featured post, you'll receive 100 GV Rewards.

Please note: All submissions become the sole property of Gamesville, which reserves the right to hold, reject and/or edit submissions without notice and without limitation in perpetuity.

Topic: Feedback
Today, we're bringing back Quick-Draw Poker to Gamesville after a brief hiatus. All known bugs have been fixed, so if you see weird behavior in the game, please let us know.

Perhaps more importantly, we're looking to make some enhancements to the game over the next few months so that it more lives up to its name.

If you have ideas of what you'd like to see in Quick-Draw Poker, please post them here and we'll take them under consideration as we start building out the plan for where to take the game next.

UPDATE - March 4, 2009

Quick-Draw Poker's 10th anniversary is coming up this spring--and we have some big plans for celebrating--including an all-new version of QDP. Keep your eyes peeled for big changes coming Spring 2009! 

Topic: Feedback

Several people have written into the blog about bad ads slowing down their games or interfering with their games.

If you encounter ads on Gamesville that slow down your computer, here are things you can do on your own to help yourself and a couple things you can do to help everyone (including you and us).

• How to resolve bad ads on your own:
• How to take a screenshot:

How to resolve bad ads on your own:

If advertising appears to be interfering with your games by making them slow or freezing them up, it's likely that the advertisement you're seeing uses Flash technology which siphon your computer's resources away from the games. Fortunately, you can adjust the Flash settings for individual ads to regain your computer power and apply it back toward your games.

To do this...

• Right-click on the troublesome ad
• Uncheck "Play and Loop"
• Click "Rewind"

This should stop the animation and restore the normal performance of the game. If it doesn't...

• Right-click on the ad and choose "Quality"
• Set "Quality" to "Low"

This will display the ad at a lower quality, which will use much less of your computer's processing power, leaving more resources for your game.

If there are particular advertisements that cause problems for you time and again, please take a screenshot of the ad and send it to us so we can work with the particular advertiser to resolve the problem at the source. For instructions on how to take a screenshot, please go to

How to take a screenshot:

Being able to take a screenshot (that is, a picture of the activity on your computer screen) is a very handy trick because pictures can sometime explain what words cannot, and will likely help us better understand the particular problem you're encountering or bad ad you're seeing.

The easiest way to capture a screenshot using Microsoft Windows is to press one of the following on your keyboard:

• Alt + Print Screen to capture the active window, or
• Print Screen to capture your full computer screen

You then need to paste this screen capture into a graphic to create the screenshot.

To paste this screenshot into an actual graphic...

• Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint. This will open the Paint application.
• Press Ctrl + V to paste the screen capture into Paint.
• Now go to Select File > Save As.
• In the Save In field, select a location to save the file, such as your Desktop.
• In the File name field, type in a name for the file.
• In the Type field, select .bmp, .gif, or .jpg.
• Click Save.

If you're using a Macintosh computer, the process is a little more streamlined: With the window up that you want to take a screenshot of, click these three keys simultaneously: Shift-Apple-3. This will save a "Picture" file to your dekstop automatically.

Send us your screenshot and a description of your issue using our ticket submission form.

Topic: New Games

Hi, everyone. Today, we'd like to reaquaint you with some long-lost friends: Collapse, Pop & Drop, Text Twist, and What Word. Please take a moment this weekend to drop by and let them know how much you've missed them.

Also, a number of you have written in, commenting that the multi-page format for our blog comments is pretty annoying. Well, we agreed with you, so we spoke with our friends at Tripod, who provide the technology for our blog, and they agreed, too... so now comments for a single post appear on the same page as the post itself; no more clicking through page after page of comments to find the latest one. (Thanks, Tripod!)

We have a couple of new games scheduled for next week, so stayed tuned.

Thanks,
Chris
Manager, Gamesville.com

PS: phmaness, we've added The Rise of Atlantis to our downloads section. Enjoy!

Topic: Feedback

Sometimes when you undertake a project as big as redesigning an entire site, a page or two falls between the cracks. As many of you in the blog have noticed, the GV Rewards winners list is one of those items that didn't make the transition from the old site to the new site. Well, that's not the case any more.

As of today,  you can now see the most recent 10 GV Rewards sweepstakes winners by visiting either the monthly or weekly entry page. Even better, you can now view all the GV Rewards sweepstakes winners since the dawn of these sweepstakes by clicking the "See more results »" link at the bottom of those pages or going directly to http://www.gamesville.com/rewards/winners.php

Thank you, everyone, who reminded us that we needed to bring these pages back online. Later this week, we'll be bringing back some old favorites that people have been asking about ... so stay tuned.

Chris
Manager, Gamesville.com 

Topic: New Features

At this point, you know we're making changes to Gamesville--sometimes, it feels, on a daily basis!

Let me tell you about something that's not changing: Poker Inferno is not going away. Neither is Three-Eyed Bingo, nor Magic 21. See, over the last couple days, we've heard rumors about this game going away or that game being cancelled, and these rumors just aren't true.

In fact, it's pretty much the exact opposite.

Over the coming weeks and months, we're going to be introducing (or, in some cases, reintroducing) a number of games, and also making over some of our classic games, such as the aforementioned Three-Eyed Bingo.

Actually, we already made over Three-Eyed Bingo.

Here's the before picture, circa summer 2000...

Here's the after picture, from April 2007:

Making over an existing game like Three-Eyed can be tricky because the existing players have certain expectations that need to be met, and what we need to do is balance those expectations against the needs of new players, and hopefully make something that can be enjoyed by our loyal players as well as the new players who are just finding out about Gamesville.

Ultimately, it's up to all of you to judge if we succeeded or not, and to help us make improvements that will take the game to the next level. (For example, is anyone interested in side-games that could be played during bingo..?)

Please let us know what you think of the new look for Three-Eyed Bingo, and anything else; we hope you enjoy playing!

Chris

PS: We've already made some tweaks to the new Three-Eyed Bingo based on your feedback, including changing the color of the gold daub so it contrasts better against the cards, and updating the "free space" to remove the eyelash artifact that was being left behind when the eye blinked. Thanks to "hanky75", "sarahpa15666", and everyone else who has written in about these issues.

PPS: While we're talking about Three-Eyed Bingo and dismissing rumors... please be advised, there is another Three-Eyed Bingo rumor out there that says if you leave the gold balls dabbed in a certain way and you win, you won't be paid your winnings. That is completely false. Our system is only checking to verify that you daub the balls that match the stated pattern. As long as you daub the balls that match the stated pattern and click "Bingo" before the game ends, you will win the game; simple as that; nothing else matters. If you know someone out there who is spreading this rumor, please point them to this blog entry and set them straight.

Topic: Feedback

If you read the comments in this blog, you know that tournaments are kind of a hot topic at Gamesville. 

As of this moment, Gamesville does not host any official tournaments or leagues. However, we are aware that various sites, including Rankmonster, use our game rooms for player-run tournaments and similar activities. We've heard from players who like these tournaments and we've heard from players who don't like these tournaments.

Here's what we've done to try and meet the needs of both groups of players...

As of April 6, we've started offering rooms that are specifically for tournament play. These rooms are easily identified by their names: "Tournament Room" followed by a number (e.g., "Tournament Room 1").

Right now, we offer tournament rooms for the following games:

• Dominoes
• Euchre
• Frantic Fish
• Hearts
• Magic 21
• Miami Dice
• Pool
• Spades
• Spite and Malice

If you're a member of a tournament or league, please be polite to your fellow players and use ONLY these tournament rooms for your tournaments.

If you're not currently a tournament player and you're looking for a tournament or league to join, please enter one of these new tournament rooms and ask a tournament host or member for more information.

If people are using a non-tournament room for their gameplay, please politely ask them to use a tournament room. If that doesn't work, simply use your block button to silence them.

Thanks for your assistance in this matter. As always, please be sure to give us your feeback on this topic, or any other.

Chris