Up until this point, I’ve avoided Mafia Wars, which I’d previously known as “that multiplayer game on Facebook with all the annoying status updates.” However, since I’m trying to look at ways that we can use social gaming to help influence and change offline behaviors (especially in the areas of disaster / personal preparedness), I figured I’d better give it a shot.
Mafia Wars is just a current incarnation of online crime games (predecessors include Drugwars, Dopewars, and Pimpwar). It’s basically a resource management strategy game (with a lineage that goes all the way back to Oregon Trail) with a strong multiplayer component: Since it’s tied to your Facebook profile, you’ve automatically got a built-in pool of potential teammates and adversaries.
So what makes it work? Why are people so willing to spend time on what’s essentially a number-crunching exercise? I’m not a gaming expert (also, I’m still learning the game mechanics), so there’s probably more thorough analysis out there. But here are a few of my thoughts:
* Who’s Bad (or at least, Bad-Ass)? Clearly, people like pretending to be bad, especially when bad is exciting, violent, and sexy. Reframe “Mafia Wars” as, “Lemonade Stand” or “Office Manager,” and it loses its allure, even though the game mechanics are the same.
* “First Taste’s Free”: The game is free-ish (you can buy premium upgrades), but more than that, getting rewards and moving up through the first few levels is really easy, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. This moves you up not just through the learning curve, but the addiction on-ramp. (Most games do this.)
* Casual, packetized gaming: The game clock is always running, and you can pop in and out as needed — it doesn’t require your constant attention or presence. So you can plausibly claim you’re multitasking (even though playing the game is a distraction). However, insidiously, there are…
* Incentives for frequent participation: Certain resources (like property revenue and energy points) max out over time; there’s an opportunity cost if you don’t check in at minimum intervals to spend them, much like keeping a savings bond after it fully matures and you stop earning interest.
It’s a bit of applied psychology — explicitly requiring you to check in at regular intervals would quickly become a chore (Tamagotchi, anyone?), but framed this way, it’s something you end up wanting to do. Not only that, it encourages you to stay online by putting things…
* Just out of reach: You don’t have to sit there watching the game — you might only need to check in a few times a day (or less) to extract maximum value. However, watching indicators of incremental progress (countdown timers and progress bars) is oddly compelling, and probably pulls on the same brain reward mechanism that keeps people at slot machines.
Here’s another example of “just out of reach”: one of the more lucrative properties available early in the game — a Mafia Mike’s bar franchise — is really, really cost-effective. In fact, it’s absurdly underpriced: It’s just that, to get it, all you have to do is recruit a few more members to your gang.
* Achievements and Rewards: Arbitrary goals are arbitrary, but they can be stunningly effective in getting people to do stuff. Just ask any Xbox Live player.
Now, I haven’t really touched on how the multiplayer-specific aspects of the game encourage participation. This is because I’m still learning them, and because I told myself I would try not to annoy my Facebook friends with silly Mafia Wars communications (the game does enough of that by itself). We’ll see how that goes.
I know there are folks out there who play Mafia Wars — any of you have any thoughts on how the game mechanics encourage participation, and how we can use them either to develop games meant to change real world behaviors, or how we can incorporate those mechanics into non-game activities? Leave a comment and gain +1 energy.
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