The Mafia Wars Profile Image Bug

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For at least a month now, many players have been without a image in Mafia Wars. The Mafia Wars image is always the same as your Facebook profile image (from a few hours to a week for each update and months for some players). This gives players the opportunity to uniquely express themselves.  Players without images get a generic square instead of their chosen Facebook image. Some could care less but for many a lot of time, effort and pride go into their in game image. I found many of my own mafia members are without profile images. This is a much bigger issue than it appears. This could also be easily fixed. While asking Team Spockholm to explain the cause of this bug, they went above and beyond. Within 10 minutes, they were able to fix it and we see it soon in their Toolbar. Below are some examples how this bug can interfere with your game.

For fighters, the profile image is very important. When being attacked, many want their attackers to remember them.  A generic square doesn’t have the same effect.

Vikki Heinrich (shown above) is a true fighter. It’s all she really likes in the game. She recently updated to her photo to this sexy warrior but all anyone in game can see is the broken image icon. It’s just not the same.

Most of us know each other more by image than by name. When you can’t see an image, you often don’t have recall of who the player is. This can be especially frustrating in the Family Boss Fight where there isn’t even a name. Players without images often find that they don’t receive as many boosts.

When you take the time to send gifts, you would like for the recipients to remember you. Players affected by the image bug look like a blank square in the ZMC.

Images are also blank in Robbing, Family Battles, the Arena, Robbing, the Vegas Slot Machine, the Mafia Ladder, the Family Roster, the Crew Queue and anywhere else your profile image would appear in the game. You can see how widespread the issue is just by looking at your Robbing Boards. Of the 9 players I robbed, 3 of them have this bug.

Below are some of the more bad ass and elaborate images players are using to represent their Mafia Wars characters.

We see all different kinds of images. From those of cartoon characters, movie stars, singers, athletes, cars, children, pets, places, shoes, symbols and even ourselves. Some just want to be funny or make a statement. Some just want to give a friendly hello.

Regardless of what image you choose to represent yourself, you obviously want people to see it or you would have stayed with the default Facebook image.

A little over a year ago, the Mafia Wars Team proposed the idea of Avatars to the community [1]. The feedback must have been enough for them to drop the idea because we haven’t heard anything more about it since the survey was released. Players want freedom to uniquely express themselves in this game and Avatars would have been a bad idea. I was able to see what one of them would look like and it was super cheesy.

If you aren’t convinced that profile images are a big deal in this game, then you should check out all the third party sites made specifically for this purpose. Some charge a fee for the service and others do it for the enjoyment.  When it comes to in game profile images, it should be clear to Zynga that players want to express their individuality and they would like their images to be seen by all other players.

Gorilla Warfare Designs

Avatar Framing Emporium

Avatar's Pit

Blue Light Design & Avatar

ƇƛԼԼƖЄ'Ƨ ƧƬƲƊƖƠ

Joerys Mafia Design World

Avatar Dees-Zigns

Avatarism

Thanks to everyone in the Scripts|Mod Group who helped me gather this information. Also a big thanks to Team Spockholm for identifying, explaining and fixing the image bug. Once beta testing is complete, the fix will be added to the toolbar. It would be nice if Zynga would fix this problem so all players can see each other without the aid of a 3rd party tool.