Get ready to run!

Our newest game takes you and your friends to the streets of Pamplona, Spain, where you’ll see who can outrun some not so pleased bulls the longest.

We’ve crammed this endless runner with so much action, effects and surprises that it’s a delight to behold. You’ll dodge speeding cars, flying barrels, even boxes of TNT! You’ll jump off ramps and soar above buildings. And you can run as a ninja, ballerina, zombie or some characters our Hanging With Friends players will recognize.

We’ve topped it off with With Friends fun, so you can gloat to your friends when you leave them in the dust. Give a try today; it’s free!

Download Running With Friends Free

(iOS for now, but an Android version is already underway).

We asked a few questions of our Audio Director, David Chow, who has been with us from way back when we were known as Newtoy. He created the music and sounds for all the current With Friends games, as well as Newtoy’s game for Ngmoco:), We Rule.

What did you do before you came to Newtoy/Zynga to make delightful music and sounds?

I double-majored in Biopsychology and Music in college. Just before I joined the Zynga With Friends family, I finished my Ph.D. in Neurobiology at UCLA where I was researching the genetics and biology of Autism. I miss science, but working on audio in games has been the most fun I’ve had in a loooooooong time!

Where do you get your ideas for game audio?

1. Our artists! The work of our artists is so fun, lively and beautiful that I have to work crazy hard to build a soundscape with enough color and joy to live up to their work. The lead artist on Gems With Friends, Shannon Dees, helped me imagine a shimmery, airy and open toned set of sounds with which to create the audio for the game.
2. Old games! 
3. New games!
4. Thin Air!

…In that order.

How do you come up with sound effects? (For example, back with Words With Friends you used a “bloop” sound you made with your mouth for the placement of tiles.)

Everyday activities!

Mouth pops, wooden floor squeaks, finger snaps, door locks and latches, cinder block impacts — you name it. Everything in the world makes a sound and most of the time those sounds are awesome.

To create the sounds for picking up and dropping gems in Gems With Friends, I went on a treasure hunt around my house to find all manner of trinkets that might make the most glorious and satisfying “plink” sound. I scavenged my fiancée’s  bracelets, rings, and earrings, as well as small pieces from boardgames, push pins, magnets, paper clips and my Magic The Gathering dice…

Then I started dropping them into bowls, counter tops, sidewalks, tile floors, mugs, shower stalls, etc. One of my fiancée’s rings combined with a mortar (from a mortar and pestle set) worked the best! My fiancée had to replace a few pieces of jewelry, but it was all worth it (to me)!

What are your musical influences?

I love ALL kinds of music. Though I don’t keep up with them as much, I grew up listening to country, folk/folk blues and classical music. Since college, I’ve found something to love about almost every genre, but have become especially obsessed with various corners of jazz, electronic/dub-step, underground hip-hop and different versions of rock music ensembles. 

Currently, I’m listening to: James Taylor, Herbie Hancock, Sepalcure, J Dilla, Niki and the Dove and Hammers of Misfortune.

***Disclaimer! Neither I, nor Zynga, in any way endorse the language or messages represented by these artists :-) ***

Also, I just went back and listened to early Whitney Houston, and OMG, she was otherworldly…very sad she is gone.

What video games have inspired you?

For music and audio: the Zelda games, Secret of Mana, Command and Conquer, Braid, Flower, Journey, Final Fantasy VIII, MegaMan II.

Games I played the crap out of: Super Mario Kart, Tetris Attack, Quake III, Left 4 Dead I and II, World of Warcraft and Metroid.

Anything else you think our fans would find interesting?

I love to hear people’s favorite music and game recommendations. Anyone have any???

[post your suggestions on our fan page or tweet us]

###

P.S. David made one of his music tracks for Gems With Friends available as an MP3. Download it here!

From left to right…

• Kevin Holme, Game Director - The man with the plan. Designed and directed the game from inception!
• Lori Martella, QA Manager - Our stellar bug hunter!
• Jonathan Duty, Principal Engineer - One of the guys who built the game. Literally.
• Beau Yoder, Audio Designer - Helped David Chow make the audio awesome.
• Linbin Yu, Engineer - Another one of our awesome game builders. 
• David Chow, Audio Director - You know how amazing Gems sounds? This is the guy to thank!
• Jason Williford, Senior UI Artist - Helped Shannon Dees make the game look great, plus did most of the marketing.
• Shannon Dees, Art Director - You know how awesome Gems looks? This is the guy to thank!
• Tony Shih, Product Manager - Number cruncher extraordinaire. We’d have no idea how the game was doing without him.
• Geof Dagley, Director & Principal Engineer - Built the game, particularly all the tricky server stuff. 

We get a lot of feedback from our players and we do our best to read and consider it all. One of the main requests we get is for the ability to play more games. We get it. You love playing but are stuck waiting for slower players to take their turn. Well now in Gems and Matching With Friends, you can just start up a new game and keep on playing! That’s 10 more games you can have going than you could before (a 50% increase)!

Also, if you’re looking for faster players, we suggest posting your username on our fan pages (go now: Gems…Matching). You can specifically request faster players in your post (while you’re there, don’t forget to start up a game or two with a fellow game requester).

Lastly, keep sending us your feedback. We actively monitor @ mentions on Twitter and post on our fan pages’ walls. Together, we can make our games even more fun!

From left to right…

• Jessica Oyhenart (wearing glasses) - Senior Artist. As one of two artists who worked on Matching, Jessica helped shape how the game looks and was responsible for marketing materials.
• Lori Martella - QA Manager. Lori’s out there hunting and squashing bugs all day. Big round of applause to her!
• Eric Shen - Product Manager. When he’s not making us laugh with wise-cracks, Eric is crunching the numbers and guiding the team on how to further tweak the game to make it as fun as possible.
• Shawn Casey - Principle Engineer. Shawn joined Zynga With Friends about a month before the game launched, but he hit the ground running. With a keen eye for detail, he’s helped us make sure the game was as polished as possible.
• Jeff Wilkinson - Game Director. Jeff not only runs the show, but the idea for the game was entirely his! He’s also our resident Android guru and is working hard on the Android version :)
• Dan Hurd - Game Designer. Dan helped Jeff fine-tune the rules and flow of the game to maximize the fun. It took countless iterations to get the game to where it is today.
• Mike Coker (the photo on the laptop) - Principle Engineer. While Mike left the company a couple months after the game’s release, his coding contribution to Matching will last as long as the game does!
• Brent Dunham - Principle Engineer. Brent lent his considerable software coding skills to Matching to make it work. And work it does!
• Andy Gotcher - Art Director. Andy created the game’s amazing visuals. He’s especially proud of the tile explosions and bomb effects in the most recent version.
• David Chow - Audio Director. Everything you hear in the game came from David, including his brilliant idea to make placed tiles sing when you tap them!

(Apologies for the cheesy photoshop editing — not everyone was in the office when we took this photo :-)

Words With Friends will always hold a special place in our heart, but these days we are sadly a bit removed from it now that it’s managed out of the San Francisco office. 

So we were pretty excited to hear about the celebrity challenge that kicks off today. A whole slew of celebs are in on it, including Kristen Bell, Sophia Bush, Jonah Hill, John Legend, Snoop Lion, Eva Longoria, Edward Norton and Paul Pierce. They’ll be competing against each other for a chance to win a piece of $500,000 for a charity of their choice.

The best part is you all can get in on the action too! Looks like you can join a team and help them climb the leaderboards by playing games against your friends.

Find out more details here: http://zynga.com/play/everywordcounts

Celebs, charity, and playing Words With Friends…sounds like a winning combo to us!

The folks over at the Zynga Toronto studio (who’ve been the caretakers of Hanging With Friends since June of this year) just let us know they’ve ported Hanging With Friends over to Kindle Fire!

If you’ve got a Kindle Fire, head over to the Amazon App Store to get it for free: http://bit.ly/HWFkindle

It’s no secret we’re big fans of the iPhone here at Zynga With Friends. Most of us either pre-ordered the new one or camped out last night to be one of the first to have one.

To celebrate, we’re dropping the price of Gems With Friends and Matching With Friends to $0.99! These are our most polished games to date. We’re both incredibly proud of and extremely addicted to them.

If you love playing them as much as we do, here’s your chance to get rid of the ads. Links:

• Matching: http://bit.ly/paidMWF
• Gems: http://bit.ly/paidGWF