Distinguishing Personality Traits

Mm2009017 says, "This is my cat, Daire. She loves sleeping on the computer, especially when I play bingo at Gamesville. When I begin to play she will leap up onto the table and prop herself right onto the keyboard. She's very stubborn, so moving her usually doesn't help. Many times I let her stay on the keyboard and come back to find her sleeping there. The bingo caller's voice must be like a lullaby to her!"

Want to share photos of your own favorite pet with the Gamesville community?

Send photos to: members@gamesville.com

In addition to your pet's picture, please be sure to include:

• Your Gamesville member name
• Your pet's most distinguishing personality trait

If we publish your pet as a "Best Pet," we'll give you 5,000 GV Rewards. Submit your pet today!

Today we're happy to announce that the minimum jackpots in two of our most popular game shows have been given a boost! Starting today, once a game winner has been declared in Three-Eyed Bingo the new starting jackpot will be $333, up from the previous minimum of $33. The same goes for our CatchUp CoverAll, which will now have a starting jackpot of $100, up from the $50 we introduced when we launched the game in December.

And how are we able to shell out even more cash? Because of YOU!

As Chris has elaborated many times: The more people play at Gamesville, the more advertising money we generate and the more GV Gold subscribers we sign up. The more money we make from advertising and GV Gold subscriptions, the more money we can pump back into the site as bigger prize payouts, new games, and new features.

Good gaming, everyone!

Dollhouse is a new scifi series about identity and mind control--and we recently sat down with the show's lead actress and executive producer Eliza Dushku, to talk about the shows beginnings and her take on playing a different character each episode. Be sure catch up and read our interview with Joss Whedon from last week.

Gamesville: Can you tell us a little bit about the premise of the show?

Eliza: We pick up in the Dollhouse where these programmed “Dolls” are starting to have these memories and develop these little flickers of self awareness and recognize one another. Of course, that’s considered a glitch in the Dollhouse system and that’s where all hell breaks loose. That’s kind of where the show expands and that’s where it gets interesting to me.

What would you say is the main theme or message that Dollhouse is going to explore?

It’s about not only the search for one’s true identity, but also identifying what makes us who we are and our thoughts and our surroundings. What happens when you start to allow other people, a big corporation or a mass of people define that? I think objectification is a huge theme of the show and  how and why we are authentic individuals.

Is there a reason that your character Echo is the one that is becoming more aware?

I can tell you that you’re going to find out what kind of time frame the Dollhouse has been operating under and what maybe happened to previous dolls. I think that we just come into the story with Echo, but there have certainly been dolls before her and there will certainly be dolls after her.

You’re essentially a different character every episode; is that a large part of what sold you on the show?

Well, Joss and I came up with the show together and we were talking about what kind of show would suit me right now in my career and in my life. So the premise of the show was based on my own life and on keeping things moving and on keeping me active and having the chance to play and jump around in between these characters every week and sometimes multiple times every show.

What are the best and worst parts about getting to play such a variety of people, yet playing a single character as the base?

The base character, Echo, is in a word simple. She’s blank. She’s had her personality and memories erased and she’s a child with no inhibition, no fear. She’s sort of a blank slate and it’s exciting in the sense that every week there’s a new star of the show and it’s whatever character I am imprinted to be.

We found out early on that one of the challenges was each character, when they’re introduced they need a good scene full of story. You basically need to give this character’s background and we found that it was nice to get me in the role in some of the easier scenes first, before having me step on set in the outfit as the person with five pages of dialogue explaining who I am. It’s nice to get in the skin and find something to latch on to that makes that person distinct. Some scenes are easier than others to slide into and I have worked with Joss specifically on certain roles. I also have a coach that I’ve worked with since I was ten-years-old and I’ve taken it very seriously. It’s been humbling, exciting and I’m ready for more.

Four years from now when you’re working on season five do you still think that you’ll have places to go with this character?

Absolutely. I look at how much we as human beings evolve everyday. There’s constant evolution, if you think about how many desires and how many scenarios occur in daily life. Apparently Joss has had a five-year plan for the show from day one and we’ve talked about what some of those are. I think that’s one of the things that’s so exciting about this show is that it’s so open for endless possibilities.

Has your new role as executive producer of the series given you any new perspectives on making a TV series that you might not have had before?

It’s sort of been what I expected. I have been in this business now for over 15 years. I grew up in this business and it was exciting and validating to have a friend and a partner like Joss in this. I have picked up and learned a lot about how the machine operates. It was more exciting than anything and it also made me that much more invested in the fine details of the show. There are just so many elements, but I absolutely loved it because, again, this is something that I asked for. It’s been the best kind of challenging, because I’ve learned so much and I’ve gotten the opportunity to be more hands on than project I’ve ever worked on.

Dollhouse airs Fridays, 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific Time on FOX.

Five new winners in CatchUp CoverAll!

Yesterday we had yet another big jackpot win! This time congratulations go out to lucky Gamesviller Weezertn of Canogapark, CA, who hit the jackpot in CatchUp CoverAll and took home $427 in cold hard cash!

The jackpot winner was camera-shy but our four Lucky Ball winners sure weren't! Say hello and congrats to our Lucky Ball winners:

Lahotsauce

Terrierox

Dethunder

Starborn05

 

Officials have discovered the source of a mysterious maple syrup smell that has occasionally wafted into New York City and northern New Jersey at various times since 2005. The harmless scent has finally been traced back to a Bergen County facility which processes fenugreek seeds in their New Jersey plant. Fenugreek seeds are a spice used in Indian cuisine, frequently used in the production of flavoring for artificial maple syrups, which emits a sweet odor during processing.

Read the full story...

Distinguishing Personality Traits

Tuesday3721 says, "This is my cat, her royal highness Princess Anastasia (Annie for short). In this photo I caught her reaction when I only needed ONE NUMBER to win in Bingo Zone with 14 balls left to be drawn. Unfortunately we didn't win that day.  She really likes when I play bingo, probably because it means I won't be moving for awhile, and comes running when she hears the bingo caller's voice.  I have a true bingo-manic cat!"

Want to share photos of your own favorite pet with the Gamesville community?

Send photos to: members@gamesville.com

In addition to your pet's picture, please be sure to include:

• Your Gamesville member name
• Your pet's most distinguishing personality trait

If we publish your pet as a "Best Pet," we'll give you 5,000 GV Rewards. Submit your pet today!

Another big CatchUp CoverAll jackpot!

Yesterday we had yet another big jackpot win! This time congratulations go out to lucky Gamesviller Peachcobbler602 of Commerce, GA, who hit the jackpot in CatchUp CoverAll and took home $443 in cold hard cash!

But that's not all! When Peachcobbler602 scored the jackpot, FOUR OTHER players with the same Lucky Ball choice as Peachcobbler602 each won $25 cash! Just like that! Congratulations to all our Lucky Ball winners:

Okiegal91800

Sueleo88

Tarheelgirl1nc

 

Allen_40342

 

Best known as the creator and head writer of the well-known television programs Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, the Gamesville team humbly considers Joss Whedon to be a television visionary. The Academy Award-nominated writer is now prepping for the premier of his newest project, FOX's Dollhouse. The premise of the show revolves around the illegal operation of the "Dollhouse" where a series volunteers work to enhance human "Dolls" who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. We recently had the chance to talk with Joss about Dollhouse and his reflections on the project.

Gamesville: Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of the show?

I had lunch with Eliza Dushku, where we started talking about what kind of stuff she should play. I thought she should play lots of different things, and then the show happened. As for the other characters, I wanted to have a strong ensemble around Eliza, because I didn’t want her to have to carry the burden of every single day of shooting.

Beyond that, I’m very interested in concepts of identity-- can people actually change, what do we expect from each other, how much do we use each other and manipulate each other, and what would we do if we had this kind of power over each other?  And in this, our increasingly virtual world, self-definition has become a very amorphous concept, so it just felt what was on my mind.

Are these “Dolls” supposed to be empty vessels with new personalities each week?

They’re supposed to be empty vessels and the constant struggle with Dollhouse is that they’re not quite empty and that Echo is clearly evolving in a way that they have not imprinted her to do. The idea is to create people that people can relate to, because they were so helpless and so innocent, and then let them have these latent senses of identity and of their surroundings, and create sympathies through that, as well as through the characters that they become.

Why was Eliza the right actress to build this around?

Eliza has a genuinely powerful, electric, and luminous quality that I’ve rarely seen.  She’s also a really solid person.  She’s a good friend, a feminist, an activist.  She’s interested in the people around her.  She has a lot of different things going on, and I’ve watched her over the years, as a friend, try to take control of her career and protect the ethos and the message of what it was that she was doing, and I respect that enormously.

What can you tell us about the other dolls that are in the Dollhouse?

Obviously we start out focusing on Echo, Eliza's character, but the friends that she makes, in particular, Sierra, all have their own stories, their own reasons for being there, and their own reaction to things.  As her friendships are formed more, we get to spend more time with the other dolls, and we get real tastes of how difficult their lives can be.

There are a lot of other Whedon alumni in your cast, can you talk a little bit about your other cast members?

The basic mandate for me was to find new people, because I had Eliza and I didn’t want to feel like it was going to be just a reunion for my pals or anything like that, and I found some not only amazing new actors, but amazing new friends.

What is your reaction to the Friday night time slot and what challenges or maybe even opportunities you see there?

I really do see the opportunity. It’s about growing a fan base, both for Dollhouse and Terminator.  I’ve always worked best under the radar.  Most of my shows people have come to after they stopped airing, but I would like to buck that trend, and at the same time, it is part of how I work that you stay with it and it grows on you and it becomes family, and the Friday night is a much better place for that to actually happen.

You’ve gone through the process of launching this show several times now, so how has the process changed for you since you launched Buffy?

You know, in many ways, it hasn’t changed at all.  We were held to mid-season on Buffy.  There was a certain amount of birth pains.  We were re-shooting things for the first episode during the last episode.  So I think part of this is either the same, or I just really haven’t learned anything about how to do it better.  But I think the changes have really been that the media is constantly making new demands. There’s just more to it than going in there and telling your story.  The marketing of the thing and the story itself are intertwined in ways that create opportunities

Given the pressures of being a creative person working within television, what keeps you going?

Ultimately, it’s two things.  It’s the story and it’s the people I’m working with.  I’ve gotten pretty good at putting together a group of people, both in the writing and in the acting fields who are not just really gifted and delightful to learn from and to watch, but are just good people to be around.

Dollhouse premieres on Friday, February 13th, 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific Time.