MAFIA SPIRIT: 09/25/12

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

More About The Silver Elephant Bundle

When we took our first screen shot of the Silver Elephant Bundle banner (shown below) there were 1416 bundles left to be purchased.

That was around 11 am EST. About 8 hours have passed and Zynga has sold about 273 of these bundles since our original post. As you can see below there are still 1143 bundles left for sale.

This means that at $99.00 per bundle Zynga generated around $27,027 in about 8 hours just from this sale. If Zynga manages to persuade buyers to purchase the remaining 1143 bundles Zynga will generate another $113,157 in sales of these bundles.

Lets assume there were 1500 bundles upon release of this sale and Zynga sells all of the bundles. That would equate to a gross income of $148,500 made by Zynga just on the sale of the Silver Elephant Bundles.

If Zynga did in fact sell these bundles at the crossed off amount of $173 then Zynga could have (presumably) grossed $259,500.

Now consider this, there are still about 300,000 daily users. If Zynga had sold enough bundles for ALL the daily users for just $1 then Zynga could have generated more revenue.

It is true that not ALL of the daily players spend money on this game. Allegedly about 1-3% of the player base does. That would mean that approximately 9000 Mafia Wars players do spend money on Mafia Wars. That means that Zynga could have offered these bundles to 9000 players at a cost of $40 per bundle and potentially generated $360,000.

The real trick to this game is getting the current non-paying players to open their wallets. At what price would those who currently not pay to play decide to buy in?

If Zynga could get just 10% (or 30,000) players to buy these bundles for $5 then Zynga could generate $150,000 and potentially make many more players happy.

The question is would you have spent $5 on these bundles?

What price could Zynga set for these bundles to get you to buy them? What’s a fair price?

Bermuda Triangle Crates Coming Soon

Stock up the RP and pack your crates because we’re going to Bermuda.

The next Crates will be called Bermuda Crates.

These crates will be very nice for those of us who need Henchmen because there will be one in each quality level. That means you will have a 38% chance to get a Henchman for each Bermuda Crate you purchase. Know and Zynga the odds in the back code are probably more like a 3% or 5% chance.

The loot items in the Bermuda Crates include a Lost Compass, an Experienced Seaman, and an En Route as the 3 common loots. The 3 uncommon loots are a Triangular Termination, a Sunfish, and a Veteran Pilot. The 2 rare loot items are a Bon Voyage and a Returned Explorer.

I do a lot of fishing and Zynga’s image of the Sunfish bothered me so I had to do some research. I found that Zynga’s image of the Sunfish (which resembles the one shown below) is in fact an Ocean Sunfish.

I live nearly seven hundred miles from the nearest ocean so I do not fish the deep blue seas very often. Therefore, I did not know that there were Ocean Sunfish. The Sunfish that fill the waters in my neck of the woods look more like this one;

They are small and numerous and easy to catch. They make a good sandwich.

Super-Thriller Sales Event Coming Soon

There is a new Marketplace sales event coming soon. This one is going to be a ‘Super-Thriller’. It will include Serial Killers and Morphine Kits and more. Goldilocks better not hang ‘round for this one.

If this event is similar to the Spotlight and and Double Agent sales events then I would expect that we will need to purchase 5, 10, 15, and 25 qualifying items from the Marketplace to earn the Ruby level Serial Killer.

There will be 4 other Limited Edition Loots to accompany this sales event. These 4 loots include a Hooded Katar, aMorphine Kit, a Goldilocks, and a Coffee Snake (see images below for details).

Now, let’s explore more about that Serial Killer.

Zynga held a Mafia Wars Crate Contest back in June 2012. Around August 8th, 2012, the Psychology Crates were announced as the winning crate of the contest and the Psychology Crate contained an item that was originally called a Suicide Blade. The name of the Suicide Blade upset some players and we made a post that defended it’s name. Our post was called; Zynga Appeases Whiners.

We questioned why the name was changed and believe that it should NOT have been changed. We now have a Serial Killer in the game and we can only wonder who the name of this loot item will offend and how long it will be before the name of it will be changed? Maybe the name of this loot item should be changed to ‘Playing With Kitty’.

We stated before;

Mafia Wars, by it’s name alone, can be construed as being cruel and insensitive. It implies that there will be killing and murder and thievery and much more cold and sinister deeds. All these things ARE a part of the game within the virtual world of Mafia Wars. It IS these radical concepts that once made Mafia Wars an award winning game. It IS what set Mafia Wars apart from other games. It is these concepts that appealed to the millions of people who once played and to many of those who still play Mafia Wars.

And we also stated;

I don’t mean to sound callous but for Zynga to change what an item is called just because someone WHINES about it is BULLSHIT! This is a game about criminal activities of all sorts. These players need to get over themselves and either learn to deal with it or GO PLAY FARMVILLE!!!

We now plead to Zynga to grow some and leave the name of this loot item as it is! We don’t look at this game as GLORIFYING anything but rather as a gateway that can bring awareness to many of our REAL LIFE difficulties and struggles.

The Pros And Cons Collectable Stat Cards

The Pros And Cons Collection will be the 9th set of Collectable Stat Cards.

If you happen to be interested, or maybe you are just curious, the following are the images that will be revealed for each card as you purchase this set of collectable stat cards;