We understand from comments here in the Blog and from emails into customer service that some of the ads running on some Gamesville games are causing playability issues for several of you.

Our ad operations group is investigating and removing ads that are causing problems, and we need your continued help to identify exactly which ads are causing problems for you.

The next time an ad starts to interfere with your game, please take a screenshot of that ad and send it to us so our ad operations group can investigate and remove that ad from our site.

The easiest way to capture a screenshot using Microsoft Windows is to press one of the following on your keyboard:

• Alt + Print Screen to capture the active window, or
• Print Screen to capture your full computer screen

You then need to paste this screen capture into a graphic to create the screenshot. To paste this screenshot into an actual graphic…

• Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint. This will open the Paint application.
• Press Ctrl + V to paste the screen capture into Paint.
• Now go to Select File > Save As.
• In the Save In field, select a location to save the file, such as your Desktop.
• In the File name field, type in a name for the file.
• In the Type field, select .bmp, .gif, or .jpg.
• Click Save.

If you're using a Macintosh computer, the process is a little more streamlined: With the window up that you want to take a screenshot of, click these three keys simultaneously: Shift-Apple-3. This will save a "Picture" file to your dekstop automatically.

Send us your screenshot and a description of your issue–including the game where the ad appeared–via our ticket submission form.

Thanks for your help, and your patience as we work together to address these issues.

Sincerely,
Chris Cummings
Manager, Gamesville.com

This morning, we launched a few changes to the My Gamesville box on the homepage that we think will answer a lot of the questions coming into customer service; namely, "How do I edit my account information?" and "How do I switch users?"

Here is a screenshot of the revised My Gamesville box (using my new Gamesville member name, "Cinemachris") with callouts explaining the new features: 

We hope this makes it that much easier to find and edit your account information. As always, we are listening to your feedback and are working as quickly as we can to address your concerns and bring you the best games site possible. There are many new, exciting games and features coming to Gamesville this summer and fall; get ready, the best is yet to come…

Gamesviller "maureenbennicoff" wrote in recently saying: "It would be nice to have some idea of how many GV Rewards are necessary to compete in the weekly and monthly drawings. Can you share how many GV Rewards the winners have used?"

Good question, maureenbennicoff. While we won't reveal exact numbers for any individual sweepstakes or member, here are three stats that should give you a good picture of what it can take to win…

• One member has won with as little as 3 entries
• Half a dozen members have won with 10 entries or less
• Over 1 in 4 of all GV Rewards winners have used 100 entries or less

For more information on the GV Rewards program, please see our help page.

Tomorrow, we'll talk more generally about sweepstakes and how to improve your chances of winning the sweepstakes you enter.

Is a Gamesville game getting slowed down because of an ad? Here are

The way Gamesville works, as soon as someone wins a jackpot game or is selected as a sweepstakes winner, our computers automatically send out a confirmation email to the email address the player registered with us.

Recently, several winners have mentioned having trouble receiving these confirmation emails from Gamesville. We've looked into this issue and there are some common threads.

Sometimes, the email registered with us is an old email address or has a spelling error in it. Sometimes, the email address is 100% correct, but the spam filter used by the player's email provider or ISP classifies Gamesville emails as junk mail and funnels our emails to a junk mail folder.

We at Gamesville.com want you to receive your winnings, so here are some ideas we have on making sure you receive your claim forms via email.

• Verify the email address you registered with us. Is it spelled correctly? If you use multiple email addresses, is this one that you check routinely?
• After a win, check your junk mail folder (or spam folder, or bulk mail folder, depending on the email provider you use) for a message with Gamesville in the subject line.
• Before a win, add the following email addresses to your email address book: prizes@gamesville.com, members@gamesville.com, and nobody@gamesville.com, nobody@gamesville.lycos.com

If you've tried all these steps, and you're a winner, and you still haven't received your confirmation email, please contact customer service so they can help you out.

As always, thanks for playing at Gamesville.com. We appreciate your patronage and look forward to one day seeing your name on our winners list!

Over the last week, we've been testing different styles for emoticons and badge, in an effort to improve the chat  experience at Gamesville.

Well, the tests are over and you pretty much universally told us that these styles were not going to work for you. As a result, we've decided to stick with the old style and not move ahead with any of the new styles we were testing. Effective about two hours ago, we reset all emoticons and badges back to the old style.

If your emoticons or badge still looks different now compared to a week ago, please exit your browser, start it up, and reload your game. If that doesn't work, please let us know which game and room in particular are causing a problem. 

If you had an account with Skilljam through Gamesville, then you have likely received an email from WorldWinner to let you know that our new skill gaming partner, WorldWinner, is handling the Skilljam refunds.

Refunds are in process, and we've been working with WorldWinner to get you a firm timeline on when all the refunds are expected to be completed. We now have that timeline.

If you had a VIP subscription with Skilljam through Gamesville, or you had money in your Skilljam account through Gamesville…

• Skilljam VIP subscriptions will be refunded by May 11.
• Skilljam account balance refunds by credit card and/or PayPal will be refunded by May 11.
• Skilljam account balance refunds by check will be refunded by June 1.

Please note: Refunds are issued via credit card, PayPal, or check based on your individual deposit method. For example, if you made your deposit by PayPal, your refund will come by PayPal; if your deposit was made by check, your refund will come by check.

As long as there is no delay in normal bank processing times (a rare occurrence), this will be wrapped up very soon. Thanks for your patience in this matter.

If you have questions or comments about your refund, please contact WorldWinner customer service.

And please be sure to let us know if you don't receive your correct refund by the dates above, as well, so we can follow up with our friends at WorldWinner and get the problem resolved.

Thanks,
Chris

Today, we're bringing back Quick-Draw Poker to Gamesville after a brief hiatus. All known bugs have been fixed, so if you see weird behavior in the game, please let us know.

Perhaps more importantly, we're looking to make some enhancements to the game over the next few months so that it more lives up to its name.

If you have ideas of what you'd like to see in Quick-Draw Poker, please post them here and we'll take them under consideration as we start building out the plan for where to take the game next.

UPDATE – March 4, 2009

Quick-Draw Poker's 10th anniversary is coming up this spring–and we have some big plans for celebrating–including an all-new version of QDP. Keep your eyes peeled for big changes coming Spring 2009! 

Several people have written into the blog about bad ads slowing down their games or interfering with their games.

If you encounter ads on Gamesville that slow down your computer, here are things you can do on your own to help yourself and a couple things you can do to help everyone (including you and us).

• How to resolve bad ads on your own:
• How to take a screenshot:

How to resolve bad ads on your own:

If advertising appears to be interfering with your games by making them slow or freezing them up, it's likely that the advertisement you're seeing uses Flash technology which siphon your computer's resources away from the games. Fortunately, you can adjust the Flash settings for individual ads to regain your computer power and apply it back toward your games.

To do this…

• Right-click on the troublesome ad
• Uncheck "Play and Loop"
• Click "Rewind"

This should stop the animation and restore the normal performance of the game. If it doesn't…

• Right-click on the ad and choose "Quality"
• Set "Quality" to "Low"

This will display the ad at a lower quality, which will use much less of your computer's processing power, leaving more resources for your game.

If there are particular advertisements that cause problems for you time and again, please take a screenshot of the ad and send it to us so we can work with the particular advertiser to resolve the problem at the source. For instructions on how to take a screenshot, please go to

How to take a screenshot:

Being able to take a screenshot (that is, a picture of the activity on your computer screen) is a very handy trick because pictures can sometime explain what words cannot, and will likely help us better understand the particular problem you're encountering or bad ad you're seeing.

The easiest way to capture a screenshot using Microsoft Windows is to press one of the following on your keyboard:

• Alt + Print Screen to capture the active window, or
• Print Screen to capture your full computer screen

You then need to paste this screen capture into a graphic to create the screenshot.

To paste this screenshot into an actual graphic…

• Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint. This will open the Paint application.
• Press Ctrl + V to paste the screen capture into Paint.
• Now go to Select File > Save As.
• In the Save In field, select a location to save the file, such as your Desktop.
• In the File name field, type in a name for the file.
• In the Type field, select .bmp, .gif, or .jpg.
• Click Save.

If you're using a Macintosh computer, the process is a little more streamlined: With the window up that you want to take a screenshot of, click these three keys simultaneously: Shift-Apple-3. This will save a "Picture" file to your dekstop automatically.

Send us your screenshot and a description of your issue using our ticket submission form.

Sometimes when you undertake a project as big as redesigning an entire site, a page or two falls between the cracks. As many of you in the blog have noticed, the GV Rewards winners list is one of those items that didn't make the transition from the old site to the new site. Well, that's not the case any more.

As of today,  you can now see the most recent 10 GV Rewards sweepstakes winners by visiting either the monthly or weekly entry page. Even better, you can now view all the GV Rewards sweepstakes winners since the dawn of these sweepstakes by clicking the "See more results »" link at the bottom of those pages or going directly to http://www.gamesville.com/rewards/winners.php

Thank you, everyone, who reminded us that we needed to bring these pages back online. Later this week, we'll be bringing back some old favorites that people have been asking about … so stay tuned.

Chris
Manager, Gamesville.com