edition 1 (May 10 2009) Year 2
Redaction: Solution (founder,editorial, marketing) Kyle (Author,editor)
Hey its Solution,
This is it, the first edition of the "new " community news, it took long enough... 7 months to be precise. If your a member that joined PlayFire a long time ago then its possible that you still remember the topic's. The Community news is a new beginning, a new era, a new possibility to bring the community closer, we all agree on the fact that PlayFire is all about the community, its the main drive force of PlayFire, just think about it for awhile.. the community keeps the forum active, the community makes new Quiz questions for you to answer, the community organizes new events where you can participate in, proof enough for you?
I am hoping that you guys will love to read it but most importantly will love to participate with the Community News topic's, because let's not forget what I mentioned earlier: without a great community, its very difficult to publish a great "Community" news
Kyle wanted to say the following to you, readers of the Playfire's community news:
Welcome back guys! Hope you didn't miss us! With Slamo..GameInv...Er, I mean Solution's return, the Community News is revived again! In fact, it's back, and better than ever! With issue-exclusive interviews and news items, from real game developers, the CN is positioning itself to be the pinnacle of Playfire journalism. With the return of the CN, we hope to institute a more community presence-a community presence that has been lackluster as of late. Please, stay involved..If there are games, participate in them; if there are trivia questions, try your best to answer them!
Cheers,
Kyle
written by Kyle
Seeing how this is the first week back, we are still getting things worked out. However, we still managed to have a variety of content. With SayYourSay to Community Watch and even an exclusive interview with Creat Studios, makers of such titles as Magic Ball and Cuboid. We all hope you enjoy this issue, and bear with us as we fix the bugs.
Written by Solution
A community update without some kind of Member of the month is impossible! The member of the month is decided entirely by YOU, PM me your favorite member and in Playfire's Community News edition 2 you will find the top 5, then you can vote on which member should win.
Oh and you cant vote on yourself! 
What to do:
Send a PM to me " solution " with the subject; MoTM and the members name.
Written by Solution
We will have a small Q&A with a Playfire staff member every week, you can submit your Questions by PMing me.
Besides the small Q&A we will also announce or explain new feature's for Playfire.
For this edition we talk to Benji, he's the Co-founder and chief technical wizard, if you want to submit Questions to the Playfire staff then you can do that by joining the CN fanclub.
Q1: Recently the forum got more then 500.000 posts, not bad for a site that started last year. What would you like to say to the active forum posters on Playfire?
Keep up the good work! The worst thing about my job is that I don't have time to get as involved in the forum as I'd like. It's thriving and I often lurk and read even if I don't have the time to chat myself. It's great to see so much varied conversation going on and not just in the main forum but in the clans and groups as well.
Q2: We all had to struggle with the economic crisis, although we don't know a lot about how it effect internet sites. Did you have to reduce the free alcohol and candybars at the office or is everything going fine?
Haha, everything is fine here. We've actually had to get another fridge to fit the fizzy drinks and beer in!
Q3: Whats the main vision of Playfire in 2009? what do you wish to accomplish?
We want to continue giving our members new, great features. The past couple of months we've had to focus on keeping the site up and running to cope with the 100,000 members we currently have, and to deal with the anticipated growth over the next 12 months. However, Sasira and Seb have been designing some great new things that we'll be rolling out in the near future so watch this space.
written by Solution
The community watch is the main part of the Community news, its all about what the community has done in the past weeks or invites the community to participate.
Entertaining forum posts.
Killzone 2 Gamer card
By now you should have played or heard about Killzone 2, Its a awesome PlayStation 3 game and a lot of PlayFire users are playing it. The Playfire lads have started a thread to show of your stats with the Killzone gamer card. Be sure to check it out! CLICK HERE (thread made by achmetha)
Sony timeline
Sony has made a lot of machines by now, it didn't only release the PlayStation but a lot more. You can check a detailed timeline in this thread. CLICK HERE (thread made by Guitarasdeamor)
Funny post.
sc4r3cr0w said:
Myspace is a 2D game where you get points for having "friends", looking "cool" and fitting as much crap on 1 webpage as technologically possible.Playfire is a place where people who play 3D games go to share their knowledge, opinions, reviews, intelligence, and experiences. I guess the losers are the people who choose to play a 2D game you never win at.....
PLAY
This edition's PLAY will have the mission to photoshop the below image. The topic is " what would the world be without Playfire " The best 5 entries will be shown on the next Community news. I know that its not easy to come up with something with the provided image, but just give it a shot!
Coming in edition 2 for the Community Watch:
- PS3 and Xbox 360 community games.
- A specific challenge for a Game.
Written by Solution
In every edition we will interview a member from Playfire, some members may still remember this feature from before but its a little different now, the guy that has been interviewed chooses the next person and asks two Questions, besides that he is allowed to ask two Questions to the Playfire staff.
This edition's victim is BlazinCloud.
Q1: By looking at your groups and avatar it seems that your a big fan of RPG games and comic's. Are those two the biggest activities that you do daily? Let me ask it different, how does a average day look for you?
An average day for me would be to go to school, later on come home either play some games or just relax.
Q2: You have been gaming for 14 years now, what is your number 1 memory since the very beginning regarding: Gaming.
My number 1 memory would have to be when my cousin had a little tournament in his house a couple of years ago. I ended up winning that little tournament. I was only 9 at the time too.
On that day I beat 12 of my relatives and won a Big Cookie
Q3: Does BlazinCloud have a deeper meaning or is it just a random name?
Well it Kinda is a random name.I just used it one day for a profile name and I ended up using it for everything now.
Q4: You have been on Playfire for 9 months now, has your internet activity changed a lot when you came to Playfire?
It actually has changed a lot over those nine months. Usually i can never stay in a site for too long. As you can see that didn't work out for this site.
Q5: If you had to say your top 5 playfire members in no specific order who would they be and why?
They would have to be Jaded, Dimman, boxman120, Wizziokid, Fox. Mainly because there cool people all around, I get along just fine with them and I cool always have a good chat with them.
The next to be interviewed is JADED, she will have to answer these 2 Questions from Blazin:
Q1 Why do you come in to Playfire everyday?
Q2: What is your favorite thing to do regarding:Gaming.
And she's have to answer our Questions of course, be sure to check back for edition 2 to read the entire thing!
written by Solution
Playfire.com has a traffic rank of: 45.900 of all Websites.
Playfire users mostly come from 
(US) 33.9 % 
(Saudi arabia) 14.3 % 
(UK) 10.2 %
Random countries: France 2.2 % , Australia 1.0 % , Thailand: 2.9 % , Spain : 5.4 %
Total clans: 2380 Total groups: 1130
Total Posts: 515.176
Total threads: 31.085
We all use a search engine to find specific websites, even 34% on Playfire comes from search engines! Here are a couple of the most popular keywords that users click on to come to Playfire.
1. Playfire
2. PS3 trophies
3. PS3 trophy card
4. Playfire.com
5. fpsbanana (wtf lol)
6. fps banana
7. ps3trophies
Moving on to people that accidentally find Playfire because another site has a link (or trophy card).
17.63% comes from google
8.96% comes from Playstation .com
6.63% comes from google. com.mx (Mexico's google)
5.20% comes from Youtube
4.34 % comes from live .com
3.74% comes from Facebook
Enough with all those % numbers! Here is some information about the average Playfire member.
Average age: 23
Average gender: Male
Has children: 70% No , 30% Yes
Education: 40% No education, 15% some sort of college, 20% college and 25% Graduate school
Browsing from: 65% Home 35% work
And lastly the following % numbers present the grow in a 2 month period.
Pageviews: 5% 
Searching Playfire: 41%
Bounce: (people that click on more pages on Playfire) 9%
Did you know that..
-You can join CN game events or join your friends Killzone 2 event? Just check out the events with the Playfire game planner!
-You can add Quiz questions that the Playfire community can answer? You can even upload a image and ask something about it. That's just awesome! Just click on the Quiz tab and choose: submit your own question!
written by Solution
Capcom has recently confirmed that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network is coming, so I thought it would be appropriate if this edition's Game of the Past is MvC2.
551 Playfire members have played this game
The Average Rating by 46 gamers is 
= 4.5 / 5
The following reviews are taken from the User reviews, Did you play the game but didn't give it a user score? CLICK HERE if you wish to do so.
SlimSilver03 said: by far one of the best playstation 2 fighters of all time, the fun of it never stops
DoubleStacker said: One of Capcom's greatest fighters. There's a reason why this sells for hundreds on eBay.
SoloShadow said: must have instant classic fighter!!
Red 2269 said: LEGENDARY
The game features a incredible fighting roster with 56 characters, favorites like Captain America, Hulk, Spider-man, Wolverine and Iron man from Marvel but also Akuma, Ken, Chun-Li, Ken and Zangief from Street fighter.
The upcoming Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 version is based on the Dreamcast code base and will feature Online Multiplayer using the online system from Street fighter 2 turbo HD, has 3 different graphical effects, custom soundtracks and Trophies for the PlayStation 3. You wont have to unlock characters since they are unlocked from the start.
Written by Solution
Why stay alone when you can join groups? Here are three groups that you should check out
Group from KatMassive
The Qore group CLICK FOR LINK
PlayStation's 3 Game show called Qore now has a fan group on PlayFire, if you have a annual subscription or pay Qore once in a while then this is your group to be! Talk about the content, beta's and more!
Group from SuperSlasher
The teenage Gamers group CLICK FOR LINK
This group is for all teens out there who think video games are freakin awesome. Get together, chat, and play online together in ultimate groups that will defend our title (idk). They prefer that your around 13-19, but EVERYONE is welcome to join at any time.
Group from Daryl
Playfire's improvement group CLICK FOR LINK
For all Playfire members who want to help improve Playfire. Rules(So far) Have manners Try to voice your opinion with some thought and respec. A great group to make Playfire the ultimate gamers place!
Written by Solution
starting next episode EVERYONE can submit his Blog (or something similar), so other Playfire members can read it. Maximum 3 blogs will be published, and the entries will be choosen by me, however your blog wont be lost since it will be published in the " CN fanclub " group.
Written by Kyle
Think you know classic games? How about movies, you think you are a movie whiz? Well, test your luck in the CN Trivia. This is where you can test your knowledge against other users.
This weeks trivia features a classic game in which you lead a small army of rebels, taking back a certain city from an invading army. On the other hand, this weeks movie is a classic flick, featuring some of the most notable personalities in Hollywood.
Think you know the answer? Send a PM to Kyle, with the title, "CN Trivia".
WARNING: Do NOT post the answers in the your reply! Let everyone else have the opportunity to solve it.
Written by Solution
Creat Studios, inc. Special, with a interview with Scott hyman, Director of Business development.
For this edition we had the opportunity to speak to M. robinson from Creat studios, earlier you could submit your questions and I picked a few so he could answer them. Firstly I want to talk a little about Creat studios, I am sure that you all heard of them before, they have released the PlayStation store games Magic ball, Cuboid and Mahjong tales and are now working hard on delivering yet another exclusive for the Playstation store: Smash cars.
Mahjong Tales: ancient wisdom 222 Playfire members have this game
Magic ball 180 Playfire members have this game
Cuboid 420 Playfire members have this game
Creat Studios, Inc. was founded in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1990, specializing in pre-rendered animation. After launching a PC game development program in the mid-1990s, Creat ventured into console game development. Creat's Canton, Massachusetts office opened in 2005.
As a leading publisher for Sony's PlayStation Network, Creat Studios paves a road towards the future of video games. Working both independently and with our partners, Creat takes the lead as we develop and publish a variety of well-reviewed, high quality titles for direct consumer download. Racing, puzzle, strategy, action... Creat's downloadable portfolio continues to expand into all gaming genres.
Interview with:
Scott Hyman -- Director of Business Development
Scott brings fifteen years of experience in the video games industry to Creat, and has worked on multiple platforms, from PC and PlayStation to XBOX and mobile. Prior to Creat Studios, Scott managed mobile game production for dozens of titles as a Producer for Vivendi Games Mobile in Los Angeles, as well as JAMDAT (now Electronic Arts Mobile). Previously, Scott created art and animation for Pandemic Studios, DreamWorks SKG Interactive, Tremor Entertainment and other studios, developing games for high-profile properties such as Star Wars: Battlefront, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Sesame Street's Elmo and Pitfall 3-D. Scott holds a Master's degree in Business and Administration from Pepperdine University.
Q1: Almost every gamer has atleast heard your studio name before, lots of PlayStation gamers love your Playstation store games but it was only around 2008 that Creat studio has become known for the most people. Whats the big difference between that time and now, is it easier to develop games now because you are getting a lot more costumer feedback?
Well, first off, thanks for noticing us. It really means a lot. We’ve been working hard to build up our studio over the past few years, and taken some risks as we jumped into PlayStation Network publishing. The difference you mention can be attributed to a number of things: 1. We are developing titles that we are also publishing on PSN. So, we get much more creative control, along with the customer feedback you mention. 2. Creat has recruited some top notch talent in the U.S., like Linda Currie and Jason Benham, our Creative Director and Technical Director, that has helped our focus. 3. Our Russian team has really pushed themselves and turned it up a notch. Their work has always been strong, but right now they’re on the top of their game. 4. We’ve assembled a marketing and public relations team that makes sure that all of the above gets recognized.
Q2: (Jordy_23 asks:) For Magic Ball, will there be constant updates, add-ons & trophies....Things like more new episodes & themes, objects & characters..along with power ups possibly? Or was the recent DLC the last update for Magic ball?
Oh yes, Magic Ball will continue to be updated so long as the demand is there. And, currently, there’s plenty of demand. The feedback from our customers has been invaluable, and there’s plenty of it. Keep it coming!
Q3: (Kluv asks:) I noticed you like to take popular addictive games that you can find on the internet and incredibly enhance them for the psn, is there any other types of those games you're eyeing?
There’s always something we have our eye on, but it’s not something I can comment on at this time.
Q4: (MatthewSFC asks: What are your plans for the future? Are you considering Publishing or contacting another publisher for bringing out retail games? For example, Awsomonium asked: If Magic ball, Cuboid and Mahjong tales could be on 1 Blu-Ray disc?
We hope to have some really cool announcements in the coming months, but it’s just a bit too early to reveal. But rest assured, we have our hands on every aspect of the gaming industry, and hope to start expanding quite a bit in the next couple of years.
Q5: (Bobbypick asks:) How long has Smash Cars been in the making and What is the size of the team that is working on it?
Smash Cars has been in some stage of development for the past year, but the gears have been turning, so to speak, for the past six months. The team is comparatively small, under 20, but don’t let the size of the team fool you. It looks and feels like a game from a team two to three times that. Our folks in Russia have been working that hard.
Q6: (Kluv asks): By "no rules" does that mean it's open world? or is it on a track but there's plenty of ways to win? And How fast-paced is the game? Is it like hot wheels speed or realistic RC car speed.
“No rules” is more about the attitude. While the game is indeed on a track, the gameplay is not simply about racing. Many of the competitions do not reward coming in first. Often, the tricks and stunts the player can perform, or the number of other cars that the player can force of the track, will be rewarded more than speed. And the game is fast… very fast. While the cars are RC, this isn’t a simulator. It’s arcade style action all the way.
Q9:Could you tell us something about yourself? What do you do for Creat studios and how long have you been working for them?
I’ve been with Creat Studios for just over a year; I’ve been working in games for fifteen years. I got my start as an artist and character animator, working on titles like Lost World: Jurassic Park and Elmo’s Letter Adventure for the PS1, and Star Wars: Battlefront for PS2 and Xbox. I moved into business and management a few years back, jumped into mobile gaming at Jamdat (which became EA Mobile) and Vivendi Games Mobile, before switching coasts and settling in Boston with Creat. So, I’ve been around a while, and can’t imagine doing anything else. Making video games is truly the greatest job ever.
Q10: Have you ever visited Playfire.com before? If so, what do you like about it?
I like it a lot. I wish I could comment more, but I don’t know much about web design. J
Q11: Last question, most members of the Playfire community loves Marvel, whats your favorite Marvel character? And a harder one: How would you kill Wolverine without decapitating his head.
Ok, you asked for this…
First off, I’m a big X-Men fan, and Wolverine in particular. I’ve been reading actively since around Uncanny X-Men #180, and own every issue from #94 on up (plus a bunch of classic era, as far back as Uncanny #4). I’m not too thrilled with how Wolverine has been treated lately, as how he’s been watered down and stuck in the Avengers and all these other books. When Logan is written well, he’s the most fascinating character Marvel has. I liked some of the Origin series, I’ve enjoyed the presentation of the Daken character, but now that we have Daken, X23, Pixie, along with Jubilee and Kitty, I think the poor guy is just mentored out. And while the M-Day memory twist has allowed for some great potential stories, the Romulus concept does nothing for me. Keep Wolvie as mysterious as possible, and the integrity of the character will remain.
To answer the next question, why would I want to kill off Wolverine? But seriously, I think he only way Logan gets killed is to incinerate his entire body faster than it can regenerate. That’s it. Nuclear blast, thrown into the sun, etc. Even the decapitation wouldn’t necessarily work.
Does that cover it?
Q12: Any last thing that you wish to share?
Just to thank Playfire.com and all of our loyal customers for their support and feedback. We make these games to entertain, and we couldn’t do it with you all. Please keep sending the comments our way, and I promise that we’ll keep working as hard as we can to bring you the best games we can. Oh… and go Red Sox!
I hope that you guys enjoyed the interview, below are a few screenshots of the coming PlayStation 3 exclusive Smash cars. Coming to the Playstation Store soon.
When Smash cars launches on the PlayStation Store we will have a couple of Playfire's community games on it, everyone that shows up gets 10 extra experience points, so be sure to buy the game when its available!
Written by Solution
You have by now passed the Creat studios inc. special and of course the CN team wants to know if you have any of thse games from Creat! If not, your missing out on something friend!
Click for Creat Poll
In the previous Community news editions we had some Moie related content, like actor of the week, Movie information, Top box office of movies... Would you like to read that again or did it not interest you?
Click for Movie content in CN poll
Hopefully you took the time to read the Game Of the Past article, we talk about Marvel vs Capcom 2 which is going to Re-release soon for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will you buy that game?
Click for Marvel vs Capcom 2 Poll
Written by Solution
The CN fanclub has some exclusive content for people that join it, its a must join group for every person that likes to read the Playfire's Community news. Below are the main beneficial reasons why you should join the CN fanclub group.
- A easy way for searching every released Community news. (also the first edition's of 2008)
- You can ask Questions to the Playfire Staff.
- You can ask Questions to Game developers like EA, sony, Ubi soft and more.
- Every Member of the group can earn CN experience points, below are the currently available experience points.
Give 1 on-topic reply to the Latest Community news (you will have to reply in the first 3 days). (you can earn these points for every new CN edition) Points: 3
Your thread has been in Community watch. Points: 3
Submit your MoTM member Points: 3
You have participated in the community watch: PLAY Points: 2
You have succesfully participated in both CN trivia games Points: 2
You have joined a Community news event Points: 3
Join the Playfire's community fanclub Points: 5
Your post has been in Community Watch Points: 5
A blog that you submitted featured " member blogs " Points:10
Remember you can only get all those benefits if you join CN fanclub! Below is the link !
http://www.playfire.com/a/group/playfires-community-news-fanclub
Ideas , suggestions , Questions or anything please 
PM me
This was the Playfire: 
Provided by the Community news author group.
Comics from PlaystationPure
SayYourSay with Jaded
Exclusive Q&A with Guerilla dev, ask your Question! (join CN fanclub)
New article " What have we been reading "
Member of the month article
New article " real talk "
Movie section (depending on PollDaddy vote)
