According to reports out of Japan, the president of social gaming giant Gree, Yoshikazu Tanaka, is being sued for allegedly making a young woman get an abortion.

Some devs like to keep it simple: no in-app purchases or microtransactions—hell, no app at all; no forcing you to rope your friends to play. Just, you know: player gives dev money, player gets entire game. That game is probably priced at more than 99 cents to boot.

There's nothing wrong with social games, m'kay? Social games are fine. But maybe it's time to ditch that moniker. According to Takehiro Ando, a mobile game producer at Square Enix, recently did a post on Famitsu titled "Sayonara Social Games", that might not be a bad idea.

Meet Tweeria. It's one of those web 2.0 social games where your real-world actions translate to in-game stuff. As the name implies, the game takes information from Twitter. Any retweets, favs, even Tweet number and follower count affect things in the game. You're playing it right now if you have a Twitter account,…

You joined Facebook, which just proves Zuckerberg's plan is working. Whatever it is.

You know how people ask where you were when something important happened? Usually it's for really huge things—a big baseball game, an assassination, a presidential election. They tend to be generation-defining things, stuff that permeates our cultural consciousness.

"You are not alone!"

For the past couple of years the social network Facebook and the social gaming company Zynga have enjoyed a rather cozy relationship. Zynga games have been a substantial source of revenue for Facebook, and the game maker has relied on the network to drive millions of players to its stable of titles. It's been a good…

The second Zynga posts a message on the app page for a game like FarmVille 2 it fills with posts from people seeking friends to help them in-game. Now there's a new feature in beta for Facebook developers that will allow for apps and games to create their own groups, giving players another place to fill with "add me…

This past weekend, I took a trip out of town. I went outdoors, I sat in the sun. I drove through Northern California, past vinyards and polo fields, plots of land with a strip of earth out front for growing tomatoes and corn. I didn't really have my computer with me.

"I went over to my neighbor's farm and watered her pumpkins."

"What does a re-imagination of virtual farming look like?"

Zynga has had a lot of success creating various types of what they refer to as "The Ville Genre." CastleVille, CityVille, FrontierVille, and the monster that started it all, FarmVille.

Some people believe that Japanese role-playing games are meant to be single-player experiences, enjoyed alone in the dim blue light of your living room during marathon binge sessions involving little to no contact with other human beings.

Think you had a bad day? Japan's youngest self-made billionaire, Gree honcho Yoshikazu Tanaka, just lost US$700 million bucks.

He was a stranger. I knew his first name, and he mine, but that was the extent of our acquaintance.

Blogger and financial investor, Ichirou Yamamoto recently wrote for website 4Gamer on the danger and "slot machine-like" gambling nature of mobile and social games.

Namco Bandai's idol simulator is taking the Japanese mobile game market by storm and burning holes in players' pockets.

Namco Bandai's idol simulator The Idolmaster seems to be getting more than inspiration from an online retailer.