Social games news roundup: PopCap wants to stop "Zombie Mouth", Zynga's gaming with celebrities and Grumpy Goats gets it snack on

PopCap and ADA roll out Plants vs. Zombies trading cards — The American Dental Association and PopCap Games kicked off their joint "Stop Zombie Mouth" campaign. A million packs of trading cards with characters from Plants vs. Zombies have been distributed to dentists across the U.S. and contain coupons for a free copy of the PC/Mac edition of Plants vs. Zombies. Zynga's Words With Friends Celebrity Challenge begins — Zynga and American Express teamed up this week to launch the the first Words With Friends Celebrity Challenge event. Through October 3, players can join celebrity teams and help their asociated charity earn a part of a $500,000 winning pot. You can learn more about the event at its official website. Grumpy Goats partners with Billy Goat Chip Company — Verge Game Studios and The Billy Goat Chip Company announced a new branding partnership this week. The latter company will distribute its snacks with game pieces that include codes for virtual currency in Grumpy Goats on Facebook. This is the second high-profile partnership for the Grumpy Goats dev; back in June, Verge partnered with World Vision to bring goats to communities in need. John Davison gets assimilated by Red Robot Labs — Video game journalist John Davison joined Life is Crime publisher Red Robot Labs this week. Davison is coming on board as both a director and the company's new GM of Content and Publishing. Davison tells VentureBeat his first project is "an app that is relevant for gamers, to be unveiled in the not so distant future." Monopoly gets another shot at social games fame [Launch] — Hasbro launched its own Monopoly social game this week with Monopoly Millionaire Mansions, now that EA's lackluster Monopoly title seems to have faded from everyone's memory. The game uses Facebook Connect to connect users via location-based gaming using Google Maps. Players build the home of their dreams. YoYo Games launches B.A.S.E. Jumper across nine platforms [Launch] — YoYo Games launched B.A.S.E. Jumper, which was made in-house using GameMaker: Studio, across nine different platforms including iTunes, Google Play, the Amazon AppStore, Chrome and Facebook. Players are tasked with making incredibly difficult BASE jumps while avoiding hazards on their way down. Jackpotjoy Slots gets new grizzly-themed game — Gamesys just added a new slots game to its social casino title Jackpotjoy Slots. The game is called Bear Cubs and features a grizzly bear theme and is based on the standard 50-lines, 5-reel slots game. Facebook security purge loses lots of fans for Zynga — Facebook's new countermeasures to get rid of forged or hacked Likes from app pages has cost Zynga (and other developers) thousands of fans. Texas HoldEm Poker saw its number of Likes dip by over 100,000, FarmVille lost 41,000, CityVille dropped by 25,000 Likes and Mafia Wars shrank by 21,000. Gameloft Live gets its own iOS app [Launch] — Gameloft Live (Gameloft's social gaming network) now has an app for both Android and iOS, with the latter having launched this week. The app allows users to create and customize an avatar, as well as purchase Gameloft games from within the app using virtual currency. The Android version of the app launched in February. Zynga launches official FarmVille 2 trailer — Even though FarmVille 2 came to Facebook earlier this month, developer Zynga has launched an official trailer for the game, which you can view below.

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Social games news roundup: PopCap wants to stop "Zombie Mouth", Zynga's gaming with celebrities and Grumpy Goats gets it snack on

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