Celebrating Its Five Year Anniversary Milestone in 2014, New Words With Friends Delivers Brand-New Features Requested Most by Players
New Features Include Offline Solo Play to Enable Play Anywhere, Anytime Without an Internet Connection, Community Match to Find the Ultimate Opponent, and Dictionary With Word of the Day
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 9, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In celebration of the game's five year anniversary milestone, Zynga (Nasdaq:ZNGA), a leading social game developer, launches New Words With Friends to players around the world today on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and for Google Play. As the most significant upgrade to Words With Friends since its launch in 2009, players will find the same game-play they love, now loaded with brand-new features they have requested with a more immersive playing experience and dynamic redesign.
A photo accompanying this release is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=28270
"We're proud to deliver a vastly enhanced playing experience with New Words With Friends that offers the same entertaining word game players have loved for the past five years with an abundance of new features that players have asked for," said Jonathan Knight, Vice President of Games at Zynga. "From offline Solo Play to Community Match to Dictionary, players now have more opportunities to play, more people to play with, and more ways to keep their minds sharp through wordy competition. Five years is an incredible achievement for the game and we want to thank all of our loyal Words With Friends players who are the reason we've reached this meaningful milestone."
New Words With Friends builds on its roots as a word-building game that challenges players to create the highest-scoring words while playing against friends, family or random opponents. Its new features seamlessly fuse with an innovative redesign that delivers stunning animations, easy navigation, and simplified interactions throughout game play. Launched in 2009, and named by Apple as the App Store's No. 1 free game of all time, Words With Friends continues to be the world's most popular mobile word game with an estimated 55 million matches being played around the world at any given moment.
New features providing players with a more immersive social and playing experience include:
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Solo Play – As the most requested new feature, players now have a way to practice on their own without a direct opponent and without an Internet connection. Solo Play adjusts to a player's level, so winning a game is within reach, yet still challenging.
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Community Match – Looking for the ultimate opponent? Community Match provides players with a personalized way to find more opponents and opportunities to play more games. 'Opt-in' to browse profile cards that showcase stats and photos of potential new opponents and then tap or swipe to start a game. Players can choose to 'opt-out' at any time. In addition to Community Match, players can still enjoy the Smart Match feature to find new opponents.
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Dictionary and Word of the Day – Build your vocabulary and learn the meaning of more than 170,000 words in the Words With Friends lexicon using the new Dictionary feature including definitions, audio pronunciation, and a word's frequency of play. Word of the Day presents a new word each day directly on the main screen to expand players' vocabularies and word savviness. Dictionary and Word of the Day are powered by Dictionary.com, the leading online and mobile dictionary.
- Profile and Stats – Present your game face and show-off your victories with new Profiles and Stats. Players can now track their all-time playing history including high score, number of games completed, and their average word score. Player Profiles also enable players to compare their stats with friends and recent opponents in a fun, animated format.
Five Years of Word-Play
The five-year legacy of Words With Friends has been remarkably organic, leading to an enduring mainstream appeal that contributes to an online word culture thriving on passion around word-play. Millions of players have made special connections through the game either by strengthening an existing relationship or meeting and fostering a new one. Some players have even found the perfect match beyond the game as their friendly competition expanded to a relationship in real-life.
"Words With Friends has been such a big part of my daily life these past years, and it's both the sense of connection to a wider community combined with the skillful challenge and fun that keeps me playing," said Megan Lawless of Chicago, an avid Words With Friends player who was the first known to have made a love connection through the game to a random opponent in Amsterdam. "It never occurred to me that people from all over the world were playing Word With Friends, and I loved the idea of making a new friend from 4,000 miles away – who would've thought it would be my future husband that I'd meet as a Smart Match opponent! Words With Friends is truly a great way to challenge your mind and you never know what types of connections you'll make."
Early to fuel a mainstream appetite for mind games on mobile that provide a mental challenge, Words With Friends has stood the test of time with more than 58 billion words played and an incredible 1.2 trillion points scored over the past five years.
Additional anniversary game stats that equate to five years of wordy competition include:
- 217 billion letters played since day one – the amount of tiles it would take to wrap around the Earth 5.4 times
- 7.7 billion games played in five years – more than five times the amount of smartphones that currently exist in the world
- 9,678 games is the longest winning streak– 172 times longer than the longest hitting streak in baseball history by Joe DiMaggio
- 5,478 words have only been played once
- Top 5 words played over 5 years: qi, it, he, re, jo
- Top scoring cities worldwide:
- Makati, Philippines
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Kingston, Jamaica
- Singapore
- Santa Cruz, California
- Top scoring US cities:
- Santa Cruz, CA
- Boulder, CO
- Sunnyvale, CA
- Santa Barbara, CA
- Honolulu, HI
New Words With Friends is available to download for free on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and for Google Play, which will offer Android players the benefits of Google + Sign-in, and on Facebook.
Game logo and images can be found here:https://zynga.box.com/s/sivr51xtwwd5euz2d71l
About Zynga Inc.
Zynga Inc. is a leading developer of the world's most popular social games that are played by more than 100 million monthly consumers. The company has created evergreen franchises such as FarmVille and Words With Friends. Zynga's NaturalMotion, an Oxford-based mobile game and technology developer, is the creator of hit mobile games in popular entertainment categories, including CSR Racing, CSR Classics and Clumsy Ninja. Zynga games have been played by more than 1 billion people around the world and are available on a number of global platforms including Apple iOS, Google Android, Facebook and Zynga.com. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. Learn more about Zynga at http://blog.zynga.com or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Forward Looking Statements
This release contains forward looking statements relating to, among other things, the launch of New Words With Friends to global audiences on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and for Google Play,features for the game, the player and game experience, the impact of new features on player experience and integration of new features in game design, and the success of the game. The success of the matters covered by such forward looking statements involves risks. Actual results could differ materially from those predicted or implied. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, among other things, player interest in the New Words With Friends, the impact of new features and game design on the player experience, changes in player interests, our relationship and agreements with platform providers, our ability to anticipate and address technical challenges that may arise and competition. More information about the risks Zynga faces is included in our quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC, copies of which may be obtained at http://investor.zynga.com or the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this release. We assume no obligation to update such statements.
The photo is also available via AP PhotoExpress.
