New Facebook® Platform Game—Family Village Now Open to Public

First social game tied to real-world family history is now available

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Funium announced today the immediate public availability of its free Facebook game, Family Village. Family Village is the first Facebook® Platform game to help players explore their real family trees while building an online community. As players enjoy building fortunes, houses, businesses, immigrating family members and assigning jobs, Family Village matches inputted data with relevant real-world documents about the users’ living and deceased relatives. These include census records, newspaper articles and other documents. Players can then examine the records, print them or store them in their personal game library.

“Conversely, Family Village engages players with not only Facebook friends, but living relatives in a quest to discover their ancestors and family history. With a total linkable global family estimated at 600 million, Family Village has a potential social graph larger than Facebook.”

“Family Village is ready for players to immigrate real ancestors into their own personalized virtual village,” Funium CEO Jeff Wells said. “The game is easy to learn thanks to thousands of volunteer game testers already having fun and building on to their villages daily.”

More than 8,000 Facebook-game and family-history enthusiasts provided feedback during game testing. Their suggestions accelerated upgrades to the game, including an easy-to-follow tutorial, an enhanced family tree viewer, in-game challenges (or “quests”), a comprehensive villager appearance editor and improved interaction with Facebook friends.

“I think Family Village makes family history more personal and up-to-date,” said Sandra Gwilliam, a grandmother playing Family Village with her children and grandchildren. “If people can play the game with their ancestors, it makes the ancestors seem more real.”

Family Village integrates FamilyLink’s Facebook application, We’re Related, a top-300 social application. FamilyLink’s database provides Family Village players with access to billions of online historical records for a unique family discovery experience. Family Village will continue to integrate with other services in coming months.

“Most computer games eventually lose their luster for players who reach some prescribed goal. Even FarmVille average usage is starting to shrink,” stated Paul Allen, FamilyLink founder. “Conversely, Family Village engages players with not only Facebook friends, but living relatives in a quest to discover their ancestors and family history. With a total linkable global family estimated at 600 million, Family Village has a potential social graph larger than Facebook.”

In the coming weeks, to celebrate the availability, players can win fun prizes including Vacations, Kindle devices, ZAGG products, Family Village cash and gift certificates. Watch the official Facebook page (Facebook.com/FamilyVillage) or Twitter account (@familyvillage) for details.

About FamilyLink

FamilyLink helps individuals find and connect with their living relatives and discover their family history. Millions of people have built family trees using our Facebook application, We’re Related, and FamilyLink. We’re Related has been a top family application on Facebook since 2007. FamilyLink‘s subscription site, WorldVitalRecords.com contains billions of names, allowing users to find relatives and ancestors in newspapers, yearbooks, photographs, census indexes, and other historical records. www.familylink.com

About Funium

Funium is an emerging leader in the creation of Facebook® Platform games with social value that produce real-world, useful content. Funium’s flagship game, Family Village, is the first Facebook game that enables players to explore their own family tree while building a virtual, online community. Integrated with FamilyLink, the game enables players to connect with billions of family history records using the Facebook platform.

Website: http://www.familyvillagegame.com

Blog: http://www.familyvillagegame.com/blog

Facebook Page: http://www.Facebook.com/FamilyVillage

YouTube: http://www.YouTube.com/FamilyVillage

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc. FarmVille™ is a registered trademark of Zynga, Inc. Kindle is a registered trademark of Amazon.com. ZAGG is a registered trademark of ZAGG, Inc. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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