Click to Harvest!

Hello social game fanatics! We just wanted to let you know that we’re attending the world’s biggest video game conference, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, in Los Angeles this week.

The good news is we’re meeting up with many of the folks that create the biggest and best social games, so we should have lots of exclusive scoops and news for you, when we get back. The bad news is that we’re going to be on our feet running around the Los Angeles Convention Center non-stop for four days straight! Because we’re going to be away from our quiet and distraction-free desks, keeping to our normal update schedule will be very tough.

So, we’ll do our best to cover the biggest social game stories this week, but we most likely will not be able to bring you our normal comprehensive coverage.

Normal updates will resume this Friday, June 14th.

Social City developer Playdom finally opened up access to the game’s southwest district – the third district released, counting the initial land players begin the game with. A variety of other small tweaks and improvements were also rolled out, today.

Players have two ways to unlock the district: they can buy it outright for 40 City Bucks, or they can enlist the help of their friends and attempt to get 30 “votes.” Players can earn votes by making a Facebook wall post. Each player that clicks on your wall post earns you one vote. Most players are (quite correctly) guessing that obtaining 30 votes in this manner is a pretty tall order, so they have taken to trading votes on various official and unofficial Social City forums.

A new tweak was made to the game’s gift tab, as well. In addition to sending gifts to friends, players can now request a specific gift, as well. Players simply need to highlight the gift they want, and then click the “Ask for Gift” button.

Finally, players were given a couple different options for placing rush orders at their factories. The easiest way to rush an order is to buy a Mandatory Caffeination for your workers for 1 City Buck, to finish the order instantly. Players can also request and then spend Motivational Posters from their friends.

Treasure Isle developer Zynga released a new gift fruit today: Lava Mangos. We probably wouldn’t normally devote an entire blog post to one new gift, but in this case, we’ll make an exception.

These Lava Mangos provide players with 20 energy, but only when the player is “inside a volcano.” This is the latest hint that the release of the Fire God Mountain volcano maps is coming soon.

Maybe it will be too hot inside for normal fruit to work? Zynga did hint that players would need a special piece of equipment to enter the volcano (our bet is on something players have to construct with the help of their friends), but perhaps only special fruit can be used, too?

We’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, better start stocking up on these Lava Mangos!

Hotel City developer Playfish released another unthemed collection of items in their Hotel Sim, this week. It seems as though Playfish is still stocking up the game’s decoration “basics” – more elaborate, themed item sets are most likely coming eventually.

New items include: Peach Bathroom Set, Ironing Board, four pastel wall colors, Peach Toilet, Fire Escape Sign, Window Blind, and several more. The items are available for a mix of coins and Playfish Cash. We have pictures of all the new additions below.

FarmVille developer Zynga caught World Cup fever tonight, adding a handful of soccer (or football, for our international readers) decorations and animals to the FarmVille marketplace.

The new items are: Soccer Field, Referee Cow, and Kick Ewe. All three are for sale for Farm Cash, and all three have considerable charm. The soccer field features animal players, including a very large elephant. The Kick Ewe sheep megafan is probably our favorite, though.

All three additions are available for 31 more days, so it is probably safe to assume that more World Cup items are on the way.