Joel Brodie

Last Day of Work and 3 Blokes Studios have announced the launch of Virtual Villagers on Facebook. Fans of little villagers of Isola rejoice! The game promises to bring the island world of Isola with its "island events," explorations, and discoveries to Facebook with an added democratic twist. Players will actually be able to join together and vote on important matters ("Archipelago Events") which will have an impact on the persistent game world for everyone.

Zynga has announced that since launching on June 9, their latest game FrontierVille has grown to 20 million users. In other FrontierVille-related news, 2.3 million people have gotten married, 1.1 people have had a kid, and Cobert Nation will be happy to hear, 3.6 million people have scared away at least one bear (for a total of 128 total bears scared away)!

FarmVille is losing players at a phenomenal pace, from 83 million in May to 62 million users today. And between June 13 and July 13, the game has lost an additional 3.7 million users. What can be done to turn the tide back? Our friends at Frisky Mongoose has some possible answers.

PopCap Games has announced that Zuma Blitz will be launching next month on Facebook. Zuma Blitz, of course, will be based Zuma, PopCap's second most popular franchise where you are a frog that shoots marbles to pop before the row of marbles reaches the evil end but with added social features. These include weekly tournaments, leaderboards, experience points, virtual currency, and new "Hot Frog" speed mode (Prefab Sprout would be so proud).

When you think of PopSugar, you think of celebrity gossip, trendy styles, and now, Facebook games? Sugar Inc, has quietly released Retail Therapy, a new social game on Facebook where you run your own stylish fashion boutique.

Hi5 announced it just closed a new round of funding of $14 million led by Crosslink Capital. The new funding will be used to continue to expand into virtual goods and creating a viable platform for social games. In other words, Hi5 wants to stop competing with Facebook as a social network but instead to compete with Facebook as a social gaming network.

There was lots of interesting news coming out the of the world of social games, none warranting it's own article entry though. Hence, our social games news wrap-up for the day!