CityVille: Help Zynga create the next in-game character

While Zynga has been known to throw contests in CityVille, asking players to decorate their towns to a certain theme, or even simply post on the game's official forums, a new form of player interaction has launched this week, with the CityVille development team asking for the community's help in designing the next CityVille character.

Like Sam or Ruth, this new character will come to us for goals and will be found in in-game artwork. We'll have a chance to design what this character looks like through a series of surveys and character mock-ups. To be specific, over the next few weeks, Zynga will post surveys on the game's official forums asking questions about what you think the character's gender or age should be, as just two examples. In fact, those two questions are already available in this activity's first survey.

Sure, Zynga could throw out the most popular answers and we'd never know, but according to this feature, the options that are chosen by the majority of the community will help to form the game's newest character, and in the case of questions concerning the character's ethnicity or marital status, can even help shape the sorts of activities he/she will take part in once they arrive. If nothing else, this is an incredibly interesting attempt by Zynga to engage users outside of gameplay itself, and I for one can't wait to see what we all come up with.

What sort of new in-game character would you like to see in CityVille? Do you think Zynga will listen to community options, or will they just choose their own favorite options and run with them? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.