Role playing games have never been my thing so I’ve always ignored invites to MafiaWars until this morning. This morning I decided to take 10 minutes to explore the game playwhile I had my coffee. 10 minutes turned into an hour and as I left the house I downloaded the iphone app so that I could take the game with me on Bart. It’s no surprise that the game is very addicting and the reason why it has 11,709,569 monthly active users on Facebook (across all networks, 45 million people per month play Zynga games).

The MafiaWars game itself seems complex at first but by the time you get to level 2 you know what’s going on and it becomes apparent that the game logic is actually very simple. The goal is to keep advancing levels and much like a traditional console video game, there are challenges you have to overcome to advance to the next level. The first few levels are rather easy to get through the challenges as you use up your new user Cash, Health, Energy, and Stamina (this part seems straight up borrowed from D&D). Once those are used up from doing too many “jobs” in a row, the copy and game play makes it seem totally logical to want to pay for or take an offer in order to refill my lifeline levels so you can keep playing… Otherwise you have to wait as they slowly refill over time. BORING. Other challenges involve “mafias” or gangs of friends who fight… hence the MafiaWars title. Bigger gangs will kick you ass unless you recruit friends to increase the size and strength of your gang. At least I think this is how that part works.

I’m still getting the hang of this game (I’m still a NOOB!) but I do get how reports of Zynga being profitable in under 2 years and bringing in $100 million in revenue makes sense. Zynga and Playfish are successfully making the Asian model work in the US with micro-transactions and virtual currency. Zynga recently transitioned this model to apps on the iPhone. The iPhone apps are pretty sick as they allow you to compete in real time against all friends and other players currently active on the Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5 social networks. WHAAT?? Yeah, it’s awesome!  Currently, the iPhone doesn’t yet allow for in-app purchases so they’re selling different priced versions of their apps, like their Texas Hold’Em app, that comes packaged with different amounts of chips. There are probably 5 different price points starting at free and goes up to $49.99. I can’t see anyone passing up the free version of the app for the $49.99 version (I went for the free one, duh), however the model is going to change once the iPhone 3.0 software is released this Summer which will allow in-app purchases much like the social app experience. If you have 10 more minutes to kill on the bus and you just ran out of poker chips, you might shell out $1 or $2 to refill your poker chips, right? I think this mentality would make sense to most people. Zynga could get insanely profitable soon.

If you’ve lived in Asia sometime during the past 10 years this might all sound familiar to you. I haven’t lived in Asia but I’ve read a little about the kids and their frivious micro cell phone purchases times billions of transactions. The West is finally figuring out some other ways to make money online other than with remnant ads and the Yanks aren’t reinventing the wheel… They’re following the lead of their successful Eastern peers. James Currier always had the vision to “follow the money.” We evolved Tickle, originally a fun test site, into a social network, a matchmaking site, a photo sharing site and a few other things along the way. Those were all just different store fronts to sell the same old thing everyone else was selling in the consumer internet industry… banners ads. We are in a different time. The banners no longer work like they used to… no one clicks on them anymore and companies don’t pay what they once did to run them. This leaves sites with a lot of page inventory (Friendster, Yahoo mail, etc.) displaying crap remnant ads everywhere. That experience can’t last… The game is changing. Advertising is becoming highly targeted and integrated into experiences. Giant IAB standard banners will soon become extinct. We will begin to see more and more destination websites, not just apps on platforms function more like games, games that you have to pay-to-play much like in the arcade.

I’m really exciting about this opportunity! Or maybe I’ve had way too much coffee. Either way, there is a map in front of us showing the way to how to become a multi-million dollar in almost no time. We just need to follow the directions set forth by companies like Zynga. I highly encourage all of you to install all the top social app games on Facebook, even if they’re not personally your cup of tea, just so you can get your head around the game dynamics, strategy and pitch for users to hand over real money. Invite me. I’ll add you to my Mafia and we’ll go fuck people up!

~ Z

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