FarmVille: CityVille Sam asks "Won't you be my neighbor?"

In an attempt to get FarmVille players to try out their new city-building game CityVille, Zynga has released a two-part cross-promotion in FarmVille, adding a new "neighbor" to players' friends bars at the bottom of the gameplay area, in addition to adding a large billboard to one side of users' farms.

If you attempt to "visit" Sam by clicking on her picture in the neighbor bar, as though she were any other friend, you won't be taken to a new farm; instead, you're shown a large ad asking you if you'd like to check out CityVille. If you agree, CityVille simply loads in a new window. If you decline, the window will disappear and you can go back to farming as usual.

However, where Sam's presence in your friends list really doesn't affect gameplay, the billboard truly can, as it is so massive that is actually blocks the better part of three or four plots' worth of land from your view (for perspective, the picture at the top of this post is the billboard's size after zooming out three times). Since it's placed outside of your farm's limits, it doesn't technically stop you from using this portion of your land, but you won't be able to see what's behind it.

This can be rectified, however, as Zynga has added another function to clicking on Sam's picture - that being to click on a check box that will allow you to "Remove sign from farm." Make sure that you're certain about removing the sign, though, as it doesn't appear that there's any way to get it back once you do.

With most Zynga games now offering some sort of pop-up advertising CityVille, it doesn't surprise me that they've added such a large cross-promotion to FarmVille. We're just glad that you can remove it once you're done looking at it.

What do you think of the addition of the CityVille billboard to FarmVille? Did you remove it from your farm, or are you happen to see the sign when you login to your game? Let us know in the comments.