With the warm weather upon us, the Gamezebo crew can’t help but want to get outdoors. And what better way to get outdoors than with a little travel? As such, Gamezebo will be on the floor at not one, not two, but three events in the coming weeks. Are you a developer that’s attending these events who’d like to meet with Gamezebo? Good. Here’s how:

Crowdfunding seems like a dream to many video game developers – just post up a pitch for an unfinished gaming project, and watch the pledges and donations roll in. But as veteran crowd funders will tell you, the actual process can be something of a nightmare, and success is far from certain. Certainly, crowdfunding can be a powerful too for launching and marketing any new business or startup. But before diving in, make sure you understand the benefits and risks associated with the practice.

Full-on social online gambling might not becoming a part of our everyday lives especially soon, but that hasn’t stopped casino games from becoming the most popular social gaming genre. DoubleDown, eager to push its casino presence while it’s hot, has announced the addition of Texas Hold ‘Em poker to its array of DoubleDown Casino games. It seems only fitting that Facebook’s largest virtual casino adds the most popular variant of poker.

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Zynga was one of the first well-known developers on Facebook, but that pedigree doesn’t guarantee the company’s future success; in order to stay competitive in the increasingly competitive social game arena, it’s got to keep innovating. Of late, the mega-developer – best known for its “Ville” titles – is making new flavors of casual entertainment, and one of the best thus far is jungle-themed bubble popper, Bubble Safari.

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If you’re wondering why Gamezebo’s a little late in its coverage of the release of Ravenshire Castle, the answer’s simple–for a couple of days, I was unable to do anything past the third or fourth quest thanks to a bug that prevented new missions from appearing. That in itself speaks of the obstacles surrounding the game’s release, and as I’ve ventured into the castle itself and beyond, I’m surprised to find less threatening shortcomings at almost every turn. It’s a shame, really, since there’s a good game lurking behind all these issues, and Ravenshire Castle goes to great lengths to prove that there’s still room for innovation in an aging genre.

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If you’ve been on Facebook in the last few months, you’ve noticed that the games banner is dominated by titles with the word “saga” at the end of them. These popular pasttimes all come from the same place – international casual game company King.com. The folks at King.com have more than proven they get how to make obsession-inducing gameplay, as their latest effort, Pyramid Solitaire Saga, readily attests.

Plenty of games companies like to remain secretive about their upcoming games. That’s fine, we get it. Why spread word about a game that’s not quite ready for prime time yet? But when you need to beta test those games, eventually something’s gonna pop up. Like this: a new game that’s allegedly from Zynga that’s testing in the Philippines right now under the name Big Harvest.

Well that certainly didn’t take long! Hot on the heels of yesterday’s speculation that mobile giant Rovio was looking to purchase the rights to indie physics-puzzler Casey’s Contraptions, the transaction was confirmed by the big bird itself. Goodbye, slingshots and pigs, hello scissors and balloons!

Developers rejoice! Gamers rejoice! Rejoicers? Well, you already beat us to the punch, but I guess we’ll let you join in anyway. A little social network you may have heard of named Facebook announced earlier today the long awaited introduction of a formal platform for app and game discovery. Dubbed the “App Center,” Facebook’s centralized marketplace looks to take the black hole that is the company’s apps catalogue and bring to it much needed order.

1 billion is a might large number. So large, in fact, that I actually had to stop to think about how many zeros were in it. It’s nine. I think. Rovio doesn’t have to guess, though – because today they announced that the Angry Birds franchise has seen 1 billion downloads. That’s one download for every 7 people walking the Earth.