The problem with social network games is that all of your friends have to be members of the same social network for you to be able to play together. A virtual world called Mytopia does things a little differently, however. Operating with the slogan "Helping the World Play Together," Mytopia is a community that lets people play with each other whether through Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 or Friendster.

To get started, you simply add the Mytopia application through the social network of your choice – in my case, it was Facebook. Since it was my first time logging in, I was given a guided tour of the Mytopia main page, which is set out like a little town with different buildings to visit.

You can jump into different types of games by visiting the Clubhouse, Casino and Cardroom. So far, Mytopia offers more than a dozen, card, board and parlor games including variations on Poker, Hearts, Backgammon, Chess, Bingo, Slots and Sudoku.

Mytopia is free to join and play, but you have to buy your way into a game by using the in-game currency called Silver nuggets. For example, one Bingo card costs 2 silver, and Slots start at 1 silver per pull. You'll earn currency by doing winning, referring friends and trying new games. There are also Gold nuggets, a premium currency awarded for prestigious accomplishments like winning a jackpot.

While in a game, you can chat with the other players and see which country and social network they're from. It was kind of neat to find myself, a Canadian, playing Bingo against two women from New Zealand and Puerto Rico.

If there aren't enough human players to play with at a given time, you can still play some of the games in "Practice" mode by yourself.

Another place you can visit from the town map screen is Home. Here you can view the progress and success you've had with different games. Each time you play a game you earn experience points (XP) for it and eventually increase your rank to earn Gold nuggets. At the Town Hall at the center of town, you can look at the Hall of Fame to see which players hold high score records.

Mytopia is still in beta, and new features seem to be added and tweaked on almost a daily basis, but even now it's a fun place to be. The games I sampled were intuitive and easy to interact with, and I liked the fact that players can adjust the settings to create an experience that suits them best, whether it's selecting a certain difficulty level, the number of players that are allowed to join the game, and so on.  Cute features like regular raffle prize drawings and a shop that sells fun items are a couple of examples of the extra touches that help build a sense of community.

There also seems to be very good lines of
communication between the developers and players to help shape the
community as it continues through the beta phase. Several times I received messages from "The Mytopia Team" explaining new
features that were being added based on user feedback.

Of the "Coming Soon" content that I saw, I'm looking forward to the Teams feature. There's also a new game in the works called WildWords, a word game that promises to let word game fans get their revenge on hardcore Scrabble nerds by not allowing those weird, short words like "Za," "Qi" or "Jo."

Click here if you want to learn more about Mytopia and join the community.