Once again, Mafia Wars is offering a survey related to mobile gaming. This one is short and sweet and all they want to know is what mobile devices you use. Based on this and the last survey it looks like they are thinking about offering Mafia Wars on a mobile platform [1]. I don’t think there are enough players for it to be a success but it would be the first step in moving away from Facebook [1]. Although it may come in handy at times, playing Mafia Wars on a mobile device won’t be ideal without the aid of unless scripts.
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If they push mafia wars either partially or fully to mobile, I am done. Data charges in my region are completely insane, and unlimited plans are a big lie. I have unlimited, and consume data sparingly. Despite this, about halfway through the month, everything slows to a crawl. I wouldn't be able to play for half the month.
ReplyDeleteI have a tablet tab2 that is wifi only, and play with fashfox from google play, works fine for manual.
DeleteThe script writers knows there are tablets and phones that are interested, but the only way to play with scripts, is to have a home computer running, and use teamviewer or similar remote access on tablet and computer. Atleast untill scripts crossover. Though tablets and phones do not have the power of an amd 8 core 4ghz 64 bit processor with 16gigs of ram, or using many older computer with Linux parallels in parallel processing creating 1 large and fast system.
Mafia Wars wouldn't last very long on mobile only they changed the game to much now for it to survive on mobile only
ReplyDeletePerhaps Zynga should look at fixing the existing platform that Mafia Wars runs on, before porting it to mobile devices
ReplyDeleteI could not even imagine how awful this game would be on a tablet or worse a tiny cell phone.
ReplyDeleteThere are no new players in the game and manual play is nothing but aggravating waiting for anything to load. No way i would ever play on mobile platform
I have done mw on my phone, but its very slow and it drains your battery in minutes due to the flash player thing and you need fast internet, I own a smartphone, but in the survey I said I didnt own anything either tablet or phone, just to make the not push this to smart devices, a PC will always be the best for gaming and games in general.
ReplyDeleteLove how they exclude windows mobile users though.
No one is naive enough to think they would move this EXACT version of Mafia Wars to mobile? Of course they wouldn't. It would be tweaked and slimmed down for mobile play. Scripts would not be needed because they would have to change the game play style of the game to move it to mobile. Can you even use scripts on mobile? They would only be interested in moving the established name "mafia wars" over. Perhaps even trying to recruit whatever loyal MW players they could out of the move, especially the ones who spend. It is inevitable that it will need to move off of FB. The question is could they credit MW players in a move to mobile in the same way they did Myspace MW players when they moved to FB?..i.e. giving them credit in the new game comparable with level of account and actual monies spent?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, if they drastically alter the game to adapt it to mobile, the essence of mw will be lost, along with players who enjoy the game as it is, and they will lose millions of dollars, not only in loss of players if/when the game goes to mobile, but also in loss of developer time and conversion costs (forgive my lack of knowledge for technical terms on this but hopefully you'll know what I mean). Surely they can come up with a web-based solution, if they do have to get the game off facebook.
DeleteI also think many of those who play mw are older (30+) and enjoy playing on big screens and would have trouble adapting to a hand-held version of the game.
Finally, judging by the number of notices I'm seeing from players in the facebook newsfeed in the past few weeks, saying they have quit or are quitting soon, I don't really think zynga has to worry about wasting time or money moving mw over to mobile. They should just leave things be and the game will die of natural causes in the next few months. Judging by the comments I'm seeing, the uncertainty of both facebook and zynga (people are freaking over all the mobile surveys) changes have caused a lot of players to decide to quit now rather than wait out the changes and see if the game can still be fully enjoyed after the changes are complete.
When you mentioned 30+ year olds not wanting to play on their mobile devices (which include tablets) all I could do was think of my 72-year old mother sitting there with her Kindle Fire playing Candy Crush. I'm not saying she is a wiz at Candy Crush, but she plays the hell out of it none the less. Older people like mobile devices. They are less intimidating than computers. I am in my 40's and I have played MW since before it caught on on FB. I now prefer mobile games played on both my phone and my tablet.
DeleteI cannot speak for Zynga but if you just google Zynga and filter it on Google by "news" all of the articles, including interviews of Zynga employees, specify that they are working towards mobile. That their one big mistake has been not embracing mobile.
As for the essence of Mafia Wars, that was long since diluted. This is why people left in droves. Truth is games like Clash of Clans and Game of War are superior games. Superior in playability, strategy, and in sociability.
As for Zynga worrying about it's players freaking out over mobile surveys, Zynga does not nor will it ever care about your opinion. It sees the servers running dieing FB platform games as a liability and it is looking to see how many they can count on to move to mobile. Z is all about the numbers. All about the metrics. Never about the player. They did the same to MS players back in the day. This is why I could see them giving credits to spenders to move to a new mobile mafia game. They will try to keep as many spenders as they can.