• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 10, 2010

Games are serious business nowadays. Two of the biggest companies on the Internet, Google and Facebook, are facing off to control the way bored people waste time online. With popular games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, Facebook currently has the home field advantage (boy, these game clichés just write themselves) but Google has the advantages of size and sheer will ... and oh yes, lots and lots of money. Don't forget that money.

Facebook is keenly aware of the threat to its dominant position, and is taking steps to counter the threat from Google. At least, that's how I interpret the social network's decision to create a new executive position, head of game partnerships, for which it is currently seeking candidates. According to the job posting on Facebook, the head of game partnerships will lead a team aiming to "enhance successful partnerships and influence internal and external partners and industry stakeholders in the Gaming industry... [and] to help both large, incumbent gaming companies as well as venture-backed gaming start-ups develop innovative social gaming experiences building on Facebook Platform."

In short: games good, get more games!

This is the same strategic outlook underlying Google's current efforts to create a new social network to rival Facebook, which includes buying stakes in social game developers (like Zynga, which developed Farmville and Mafia Wars ) or acquiring developers outright (see last week's acquisition of Slide). Seeing off Google's threat will require a lot of wheeling and dealing, including listening to pitches and making pitches to social game developers of all sizes, because little games (and companies) can become huge overnight; neither company can afford to be seen as unresponsive to new ideas, since there's really no telling where the next big social gaming hit will come from.

Meanwhile any developer who gets the brush off at one corporate office may well get a sympathetic hearing at the other -- and with the battle lines drawn between Facebook and Google, each new partnership will be as much about denying talent to their rival as it is about building up their own offerings. Like it or not, it's looking like a "zero sum game."