Classic video games are making a comeback on Facebook, and Bossa Studios is bringing back the defend-a-city-from-monsters scenario with the release of Monstermind.

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A delicate dance of moves and counter moves between Facebook, Google Plus and app developers has broken out — evidenced by the changes in social games both companies announced on Thursday —  and is leaving some wondering if the competition is getting to the social networking site.
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Users playing “Call of Duty: Black Ops” on Facebook have been reportedly getting spam messages of a nonexistent video of a guy killing his roommate.
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Disney is making a major foray into social gaming with the purchase of Playdom for up to $763.2 million. The games company, which has titles such as Mobsters, Social City, Sorority Life, Market Street and Bola on Facebook and other social networking sites, claims 42 million active players a month.
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It was only a matter of time before all those anti-Farmville Facebook Groups got a cause to get behind, and that patient wait is over.  Jolt Games has released a game called “FarmVillain”, and it’s got over half a million users and is growing fast.  Described by fellow gaming site Kotaku as being so low-brow that “it’s leaving little brow trails on the ground behind them”, the game revolves around, well, nothing!  The game simply involves posting fake Farmville stories that are crude and disgusting and kind of hilarious.

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PETA, the animal rights group, posted a blog post criticizing Zynga’s Mafia Wars for promoting cruelty to animals with its latest ‘animals’ update.  The animals update allows players to bring animals along with them on their missions and can use them to attack other animals and people.  It’s certainly something that happens in a lot of games, but just because it’s common doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.  What do you think about this?  Let us know in the comments and read more after the jump.
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In a recent interview, Mark Pincus encouraged Facebook to be more like XBox Live, “where there are achievements, a consistent user experience, a way for web publishers and networks and sites to participate and an easy way for developers to develop amazing game experiences that enhance relationships among people.”  He discusses a series of analogies to describe the current landscape of the app economy, where independent application developers create competing applications on a standardized platform.  We analyze the interview and make a few assessments of our own after the jump.

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By purchasing virtual goods, Zynga users have raised over $130,000 to support clean water in Haiti and research for Huntington’s disease.   Zynga ran two separate five-day campaigns last month, and encouraged users to purchase limited edition items in Mafia Wars to benefit the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) and in Fishville to support Water.org, a non-profit co-founded by Matt Damon for bringing safe water to developing countries.

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Playdom, hot on the heels of a few gaming acquisitions and new hires, have launched their newest social game, Big City Life, and it’s all about becoming as popular as possible. The idea is that you create an avatar, dress it up, and then go out on the town and do tasks with your in-game friends, like taking them out on dates and just being popular in general. The more you do, the more experience and money you gain and the better you look.

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This week we had a chance to interview Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and Digital Chocolate about his new NanoStar platform, Nick wrote a report from SXSW about the economics of Facebook Games, we looked at 3 ways social gaming is mimicking the Atari games revolution, we reviewed Gangster City and Friends for Sale and published a report that suggests Users Buy More Virtual Goods on New Years and Valentines Day Than Christmas.

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