Joel Brodie

What's the secret to being one of the profitable and biggest players in the casual and social games space? According to a fascinating interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from Inside Facebook, it's to not get games or care about making money.

Techcrunch has a fascinating article about Zynga's recent customer service snafus in Mafia Wars. Here's the scoop: Zynga is closing the game on Tagged and offered a coupon for free virtual currency to move to the game on Facebook. Problem is, it was an open-ended coupon that got spread around to tens of thousands of users. When Zynga found out, instead of ending the coupon and moving on (the right move), they deleted the currency and rolled back any actions taken during that time. That was the wrong move.

Playdom has quietly released Verdonia, a new strategy on Facebook. The game looks what happens when you mix Age of Empires with Civilization for Facebook. And, it's definitely not another FarmVille clone. Be first to check it out and set an alert on our Verdonia's game page to be updated.

Google's announcement that they will launch a Chrome Web Store may present an opportunity for social game companies looking to expand and become less dependent on Facebook, according to an article in the Social Times. Google could be a leading casual games destination by the end of the year?

With casual games on Facebook being released every day around the world, we can't report on them all, but we sure do try. Today, we've spotted Party Resort, a vacation cabana themed game from iWin (Jewel Quest, Family Feud); The Settlers - My City, the latest empire builder from video game publisher Ubisoft; and Vinyl City, a very clever music game for old-school DJs by Backstage.