Joel Brodie

I like Coinstar. I like to play games. So, once Rixty announced their partnership with Coinstar to turn spare change into game credits, I had to talk to them. Rixty sat down with Gamezebo to fill us in on what they are all about, how they are making games accessible to people without credit cards, and what plans they have on the horizon.

What makes one quit your day job at a bank to start a games company and create a game on Facebook that does not involve growing crops? And how do you make a role playing game work on Facebook? We posed these and many more questions to Robert Winkler (Chief Operating Officer) and Stephen Pladson (Chief Executive Officer) of 5th Planet Games, the developers of the hit game Dawn of the Dragons on Facebook.

The SF Weekly, one of two of San Francisco's free weekly papers, has published a scathing tell-all article about how Zynga operates, based on numerous interviews with investors, lawyers, and anonymous ex-employees (who are nameless for fear of being sued).According to the article "FarmVillians" (great headline), Zynga management has actively executed a business strategy to copy successful social games, eschew innovation, and focus entirely on making money. Per the quote as attributed to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus by an ex-employee, the strategy has been to "steal somebody else's game, throw millions of dollars at it, and then, if it doesn't have it already, add virtual coins."

Zynga has released a games toolbar for FrontierVille allowing users to earn free energy bonuses every 8 hours, see when their friends visit their homestead, and be notified when their crops are ready. Just as significantly, users who install the toolbar to their browser (IE 7.0+ and Firefox 2.0+ for now) earn 20 free horseshoes (game credits) and an additional one per day for 15 consecutive days. The FrontierVille game bar represents yet another feature that Zynga is offering that gets its users outside the Facebook environment.

Peanut Labs, RockYou, and Playdom and a dozen other social gaming companies have joined together to raise money for relief efforts for Pakistan flood victims, as reported on Inside Social Games.Here's how it works. Users are quizzed on their knowledge of the country's floods in exchange for virtual currency and at the end of the quiz you can donate money through reputable companies such as The Red Cross and Oxfam. According to Peanut Lab's Twitter page, they have raised $55,000 so far.

Facebook and Target announced a partnership together whereby Target will be the first bricks and mortar retail store to sell Facebook Credits gift cards. The cards will be available for sale September 5 and will be available in $15, $25, and $50 increments. By itself, this is not huge news (in fact, many of you may be noticing, slow news week). Zynga has been doing this for years. But in the big picture, however, it's quite large.

Get ready for some football on Facebook! As reported by Games.com, Electronic Arts and Playfish have launched Madden NFL Superstars on Facebook.