Martha Stewart guest stars in Zynga’s CastleVille social game

Social games are becoming a mass-market medium. A clear sign of that today is Zynga’s announcement that Martha Stewart will make a cameo appearance in the social game CastleVille.

This is the first celebrity integration for the game, which has 26 million monthly active users. Players can interact with Martha’s avatar and get special in-game rewards. Martha has her own neighboring kingdom, designed after her home in Bedford, Conn. The property has new animals such as a Friesian horse, Araucana chickens, and black sheep. It also has new flowers, black orchids and white tulips, and the largest building ever introduced in CastleVille (her home).

Stewart will host an Easter egg hunt in her kingdom and celebrate with a party. Players can create a special gazebo and work on crafts such as egg decorating. I’m not exactly sure where, but somebody is making some money off this. Stewart certainly hits the older female demographic of Zynga’s games on Facebook.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.