Topic: Best Pets

Today's best pet comes from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska...

Pet Owner:
Gamesviller "chainsawlollipop"

Distinguishing personality traits:
Chainsawlollipop says: "Denali (our husky) and Dorian (our Angora mix) are best friends. They never fight and regularly share a bed ... but Denali still won't share his treats or toys! If Denali has been out in the back yard too long, Dorian will start meowing at the back door until Denali comes back in."

 

Want to share photos of your own favorite pet with the Gamesville community?

Send photos to: members@gamesville.com

In addition to your pet's picture, please include:

• your member name
• your pet's most distinguishing personality trait

If we publish your pet as a "best pet", we'll give you 200 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: Members
Mary Ryan (a.k.a., Gamesviller "kaseycat") of St. Johns, NF, Canada, recently won $1,000 US in our monthly GV Rewards sweepstakes. What will she do with her winnings? And what is her St. Bernard so afraid of? Read on...

Mary, congratulations on your win.
Thank you!

How do you plan to spend your winnings?
Well, it's the beginning of May and we just had snow flurries here, so I'd like to go someplace warm. The Dominican Republic is looking good right about now.

Any pets you'll be taking with you?
We have a six-month old St. Bernard named Beethoven.

He must be a cutie...
Oh, he is. But he has this weird thing where he's afraid of ducks.

Why?
We don't know! We have a pond out back and whenever the poor thing sees a duck out there, he just freezes. He won't move.

What's your favorite Gamesville game?
Bottle Rocket and Frantic Fish.

Favorite movie or book?
Dirty Dancing.

If you could host a dinner party and invite anyone, living or dead, who would you invite?
Patrick Swayze, obviously. Julia Roberts. And Elvis.

Any final thoughts for your fellow Gamesvillers?
Keep playing! I won and you can, too.

 

Topic: Members
Everyone, please put your hands together for Gamesviller "as_gayle" of Naylor, GA, who won $2,990 cash today, Monday, May 7, playing Magic 21. Congrats, as_gayle!

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!