Zynga Needs Ideas For A New Mafia Themed Game

On the Mafia Wars Fanpage on Facebook Zynga announced that it is looking to develop a new ‘Mafia’ themed game. The announcement was accompanied by the image shown to the left and reads as follows; Mobsters! We’re trying out ideas for a new mafia themed game. Please share your feedback here-->http://zynga.tm/hpH

Zynga does NOT state the state of Mafia Wars (which is clinging to life with a DAU hovering just above the 200,000 mark).

May 30th, 2013, was the last time Mafia Wars had a DAU that crested above 240,000. May 19th, 2013, boasted the highest DAU in more than a month now.

This continued downward spiral of the DAU has many players concerned as to how long Mafia Wars will continue to be updated with loots and events.

The ever-declining DAU has been attributed to many things from many differing perspectives. Players decide to play or quit based on their own reasons. None of which are wrong.

When it’s all said and done, All things come to an end and new things take their place. This may be what Zynga is hoping to happen. Zynga may be looking to create a new ‘Mafia Themed’ game to replace Mafia Wars.Zynga is asking for your cooperation in providing ideas for this new ‘Mafia Themed’ game.

The first question of this questionnaire leaves me cold since Zynga is asking about our experience with other games. If you look at the list of games ALL the games (except Mafia Wars 1) are ‘Flash’ based games where you have a character(s) running around a screen doing tasks.

It implies that Zynga wants to design another Mafia Wars 2 type of game. Mafia Wars 2 failed miserably. If this is the case then I am NOT INTERESTED!

I can reasonably assume that millions of players once liked Mafia Wars (and possibly still do) since the Mafia Wars fanpage on Facebook still has 18 million ‘likes’. If Zynga could just figure out why an estimated 17,800,000 (+/-) former fans no longer play Mafia Wars and correct those issues then they might find that they don’t need a ‘new’ Mafia themed game at all.

Questions 2 and 3 of the questionnaire try to do just that by asking what you like the most and least about Mafia Wars.

Question 2 asks what you like the most about Mafia Wars 1 and provides the options;

• Gearing Up (Constant Loot Updates That Become Useless Too Quickly! Never Able To Catch Up Unless You Spend Tons Of Cash!!)
• City (The Only Obvious Choice)
• Property (Most Despise Them Due To Constant Begging – Yet Adds To The Game)
• Mastery (Mastering What? The Impossible Things Like Family Progression? Missions? The Lucky Streak?)
• Earning Money To Level (When Did We Have To ‘Earn Money’ To Level?)
• Fighting (It’s A ‘Mafia’ Game – NOT A STREET THUG GAME! – One Of The Biggest Reasons Players QUIT! SHOULD NOT BE THE FOCAL POINT OF A MAFIA THEMED GAME!)
• Marketplace (Necessary Evil)
• Collections (?? Limited And Some Have Ridiculous Requirements! Yet Provides Purpose To Do Certain Things)
• Becoming Stronger (EVERYONE WANTS TO BECOME STRONGER! – Isn’t That The Point Of The Game?)
• Arena (You F***ED THIS UP ZYNGA – Be Ranked In Top 1500 To Receive Certain Loot?? Impossible Feat For The Vast Majority Of The Remaining Player Base! Ridiculous Achievements! Script Use Is The Only Way To Fight In It – Otherwise You’re F***ED! Unless One Finishes First The XP SUCKS!!)
• Power Ups (Unnecessary – Counter Productive – I NEVER Use Them)
• Do Jobs (Isn’t This Or Shouldn’t This Be A Part Of ‘City’?)
• Other

The true answer to question 2 is ‘NEXT TO NOTHING’…. Which is kinda funny since I love this game…..

 

Question 3 asks what you dislike the most about Mafia Wars 1 and provides the options;

• Power Ups (Unnecessary – Counter Productive  – I NEVER Use Them)
• Graphics (One Of The Best Things About The Game Is The Graphics – When They Load Properly)
• Too Many Numbers (Not Clear As To What You Mean?)
• Mastery (Mastering What? The Impossible Things Like Family Progression? Missions? The Lucky Streak?)
• Do Jobs (Isn’t This Or Shouldn’t This Be A Part Of ‘City’?)
• Earning Money To Level (When Did We Have To ‘Earn Money’ To Level?)
• Gearing Up (Constant Loot Updates That Become Useless Too Quickly! Never Able To Catch Up Unless You Spend Tons Of Cash!!)
• Marketplace (Necessary Evil)
• Fighting (It’s A ‘Mafia’ Game – NOT A STREET THUG GAME!) – One Of The Biggest Reasons Players QUIT! SHOULD NOT BE THE FOCAL POINT OF A MAFIA THEMED GAME!)
• Property (Most Despise Them Due To Constant Begging – Yet Adds To The Game)
• City (Most Players WANT MORE)
• Collections (?? Limited And Some Have Ridiculous Requirements!)
• Becoming Stronger (EVERYONE WANTS TO BECOME STRONGER! – Isn’t That The Point Of The Game?)
• Arena (You F***ED THIS UP ZYNGA – Be Ranked In Top 1500 To Receive Certain Loot?? Impossible Feat For The Vast Majority Of The Remaining Player Base! Ridiculous Achievements! Script Use Is The Only Way To Fight In It – Otherwise You’re F***ED! Unless One Finishes First The XP SUCKS!!)
• Too Hard To Compete With Players Who Have Been Around Forever (NEED TO LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THE LEADERBOARDS!! WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?)
• Other

green = things I Like

gold = thing I am neutral on

red = things I believe need fixed or I dislike

I know many will not agree with my synopsis of each of the options in the previous 2 questions. I do hope that those who disagree with my thoughts above will agree that the one great thing about Mafia Wars is that the game offers options for many styles of game play and appeals to a broader audience than most other games do. It’s not a game where all players have to complete task A before they can move onto task B and then task C and so on. Each player builds their characters accordingly to their style, likes, and desires of how they see best to suit their in-game goals. It is these widely varying characters that makes Mafia Wars a great game.

Most players do have their own ideas of what they like or dislike and their own ideas as to what they believe might improve the game.

Question 4 provides a comment box where you can express these ideas that you believe would improve a Mafia Themed game.

That’s all great and good. But, many players do not believe that Zynga will listen to them.

Allow me to say that Zynga does listen. To a point, at least. In my response to this question I provided Zynga with evidence as to how they took a couple of my suggestions and then modified them into what they felt was either suitable for the game or what they wanted in the game. It is possible that the original ideas may not have been programmable into the coding of the game.

Unless you plan on developing your own games, or you just don’t have any ideas, we encourage you to complete question 4 with as much detail as possible. It, also, would be recommended that you screen shot your response for future reference. You never know if you might need to fall back onto your idea.

Questions 5 and 6 ask you to rank the importance of some of Zynga’s ideas of a Mafia Themed game.

Since it is my belief that true ‘Mafia’s’ are more about money and power than fighting I answered accordingly. Fighting, to me, is more of a means to an end and is done out of necessity as opposed to being the practice of Mafia’s. 

Answer these 2 questions as to your likings, not mine. Hopefully you’ll agree with my ideologies and Zynga will make a much better game than we are playing now.

When you are done with the questionnaire let Zynga know who you are and submit your responses to them.