Zynga and Tencent launch China online game

The free online game is a version of a "Cityville" game playable in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English when it was released in December.

In the game, players build dream cities complete with businesses, homes, park and landmarks and then invite friends to take up virtual residence in the form of animated characters that run shops, enforce laws, and more.

Zynga boasted that "Cityville" is the most widely played game at social network Facebook, citing figures from industry tracker AppData.

"Cityville" had slightly more than 80 million monthly active users as of Monday, according to the AppData website.

The test version of the game launched on the month-old Tencent Open Platform lets people in China play in their own language.

"We hope that Zynga City will be a success on Tencent Open Platform," said platform general manager Lin Songtao.

"We are expecting that more and more international social game developers will bring their popular games to Tencent Open Platform for Chinese Internet users and this will support the rapid growth of the social game market in China," he continued.

The development of "Zynga City" is led by the San Francisco-based social game creator's studio established in Beijing in May of last year with the purchases of XPD Media.

The game features decorations, architecture, storytelling, quests, events, and action mechanics tailored to Chinese culture, according to Zynga.

"Zynga is committed to building a truly local offering in China and the announcement today is a continuation of the company's overall international initiative of creating high-quality games that can be enjoyed across all cultures and languages," the company said in a release.

(c) 2011 AFP