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A huge new release of Winter-themed decorative items have been released in CityVille this evening, giving you enough snow and ice-covered goodness to really send a chill down the spines of all of your imaginary little citizens.

There are plenty of items here for both City Cash and general coins, giving everyone a chance to pick up something for their towns, whether they want to splurge on a premium item or not. To give you a bit more incentive to purchase the premium items, most are animated, so keep that in mind. Here are the new items, along with their prices:

Crab Ice Sculpture - 30 City Cash
Reindeer Ice Sculpture - 15 City Cash
Giraffe Ice Sculpture - 500 Coins
Christmas Tree Lot - 2,000 Coins
Polar Bear - 30 City Cash
Snow Angel - 5,000 Coins
Sled Hill - 30 City Cash
Bunny Slope - 45 City Cash
Ski Run - 65 City Cash
Kids Building Snowman - 20,000 Coins
Frozen Pond - 35 City Cash
Ice Rink - 40 City Cash

As of right now, there aren't any time limits associated with any of these items; however, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will stick around after Winter itself has passed on. Either way, you should have plenty of time to stock up on these new items (we can only hope they are semi-permanent, as some of those City Cash items will take a while to earn).

We'll be sure to let you know when Zynga adds even more items to CityVille for your shopping pleasure, so keep checking back with us!

[Image Credit: Zynga]

What do you think of these new Winter items? Will you purchase any of them to decorate your town? Let us know in the comments!

The countdown to the new year has officially started in Cafe World, as Zynga has launched a completely new mission line entitled "New Years Party" that will have you, you guessed it, preparing a grand celebration for the coming of the new year for all of your cafe's guests.

This mission series consists of eight parts, will reward you with three new and exclusive recipes, and will challenge you through a Catering Order. We have everything you need to know about how to complete these various goals behind the break.

For some time now, we've been able to experience just how great the FarmVille Fertilize All can be on our farms. What better way to boost your experience total in the game, than to earn extra experience for each and every crop on your land? Such is the function of the Fertilize All, as it rewards an extra experience point for all fertilized crops.

While you can normally earn free Fertilize Alls when harvesting from your Beehive, or receiving them as bonuses posted by your friends on their walls, for a very limited time you'll be able to send these fantastic items to friends for free, from the game's Free Gifts page.

If this is like any other "Limited Time" situation that has occurred over the past few months, this item likely won't be available to send for long - possibly not even a full day or more. That being the case, if you'd like to stock up on these helpful items, make sure to ask your friends to send you as many as possible, while the item is still available on the free gifts page.

What other freebies would you like to see added to the game's Free Gifts page? Do you like to use Fertilize Alls each time you harvest? Let us know in the comments.

The incredibly rapid growth and potential success of CityVille has not only piqued the interest of the media, but folks in the field as well. Game designer Tadhg Kelly, in the second half of a two-part feature on Gamasutra, claims to have discovered the secret to the game's success. And it's not exactly pretty.

According to Kelly, the social features in CityVille are "all incentive driven." He goes on to say that at every turn, the game prompts players to make use of their friends with the incentive of Energy, coins, experience points and more. "In each case, the dynamics exist to tantalise a player with a tangible reward," Kelly asserts. "If you visit your friend, you get a prize. If you send them a free gift that costs you nothing, they might send you one back. If you set up a bakery in their town, you will both gain from that. If you harvest their crops for them, you will gain reputation points."

Because of this, the designer claims that social games aren't actually social. That type of interaction is useless to the developer, so instead these social interactions are built as amusements, Kelly claims. "Socialising in amusements is more akin to having spare Poker chips at the table that you give to someone else, and maybe they'll give you some back later," Kelly says. "It is reciprocal trade, assistance for incentive, not charity. While this does not preclude the possibility that some players will engage in acts of charity for personal reasons, the social dynamics are not created with that in mind. They are built to work with self-interest."

The poignant feature goes on to explore CityVille's financial model and how it works, but more importantly, it goes on to explain why social game developers have little hope of combating Zynga in the social games race. In his eyes, Zynga won a long time ago. Comparing Zynga to Google, he finishes with the claim that social game developers aren't going to beat Zynga at its own game, advising them to utilize different strategies for personal success.

"Hearing a social game company talk about how they are going to spend $300k on development, making their own cheap knock-off games, and then become The Next Zynga is like listening to small startups convincing themselves that they just need to make a better search engine to take down Google."

Do you agree with what Kelly has to say about CityVille? Do you think it's possible for social games to succeed on a level comparable to Zynga using a different strategy? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

Aside from the burgeoning and indisputably successful social and mobile games markets, video game sales suffered a year long slump in 2010. Industry professionals predict that game sales for this year will total four percent lower than 2009. But if a recent Reuters report is any indication, 2011 will be the year of the mobile and social, bringing revenue growth to the industry. And of course, that means more money to make even better social games, which Mark Skaggs, vice president of product development at Zynga, says will have "deeper gameplay, more polish, and be much more and better social experiences."

Carnegie Mellon professor and game developer Jesse Schell predicts that 2011 will ring in games that exist on all platforms from the PC to our phones and to our consoles and TVs, Reuters reports. The news service also predicts that 3D and motion gaming will grow in 2011 thanks to the oncoming Nintendo 3DS, the Xbox Kinect and 3D TVs that will be on display at this year's CES. (Well, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, at least.)

But as for social and mobile gaming, we've already seen signs of this predicted boom in 2010 with marvels like Angry Birds on iPhone and Android along with the recent CityVille explosion on Facebook. So, 2011 could very well mean even more growth for social and mobile, but don't expect leaps and bounds when it comes to cross-platform play. Well, unless companies like Zynga continue to make use of HTML5 and the mobile web--then we're onto something.

[Via Kotaku]

What do you think 2011 will mean for social and mobile gaming? Will cross-platform games be the next big thing or will the focus fixate on better games? What does this mean for console games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.