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With new game, Zynga spells B-I-N-G-O

Bingo is getting the Zynga treatment. 

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Reuters
Zynga this week rolled out a new online bingo game. Here, the corporate logo for Zynga is seen on a screen outside the Nasdaq Market Site in New York.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Zynga, the San Francisco-based developer behind FarmVille, has released a range of popular parlor games in recent years, including Zynga Poker, Chess with Friends, and Words With Friends (the Scrabble-based game that it acquired from a smaller developer). The latest addition to the company roster is Zynga Bingo – a game which has already been described by one blogger as a "visually beautiful" experience. 

Zynga reps said Bingo would go live this week, on a limited beta basis, with a complete version available sometime in the next couple of months. "Right now, we're only letting a limited number of people into the game to make sure our players are getting a primo, Zynga Bingo experience, before officially open the floodgates," Zynga reps wrote on the company blog. 

According to Zynga, gamers will be able to choose from a variety of rooms, as in a casino – there's a Vegas-themed room, a pirates-themed room, and (inevitably) a FarmVille-themed room, which will probably be full of Zynga-style cows and pitchforks and rows of pixelated corn. Meanwhile, as in Words With Friends, you'll be able to invite Facebook friends to a friendly Bingo match. 

The main difference between old-school Bingo and its Zynga counterpart is the "social aspect," Leena Rao writes at TechCrunch. "When you start the game, you’ll be promoted to enter themed bingo rooms and compete against friends or other random players on Facebook simultaneously, challenging buddies in a race to get B-I-N-G-O faster. Similar to Zynga Poker, players can chat and see which rooms their friends are in."

As Rao points out, in December, Zynga launched its long-awaited IPO, only to see shares fall hard. Since then, Zynga has introduced a handful of new titles, which Rao argues could help boost the company's bottom line. 

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