Social networking sites have changed the way we communicate and spend our free time. And the popularity of social networking sites can be attributed to the user friendly interface and the fact that in the fast pace world of today, hardly anybody has the time to visit friends and family. Another thing the networking sites have changed for sure is the way we indulge in gaming. Online social gaming is the hottest trend right now and the best example of it is Mafia Wars online.
Mafia Wars currently has around 19 million users on Facebook and still growing. The reason for the extreme popularity of Mafia Wars online, despite a lot of other games with better graphics available on gaming consoles, could be the fact that it allows you to indulge in game play with family and friends in an almost realistic way.
Mafia Wars online can essentially be seen as a sort of board game that we used to play in our living rooms, with friends and family as partners - the only difference being that here the board is the internet and we are all connected with our modems. Games like this allow us to experience a life which is not feasible in the real world.
One may argue that games like Mafia Wars promote violence but the truth is that games are a figment of our imagination like movies, and they allow us to live a pseudo life, a life of fantasy without harming anybody. The objective of the game is to be the ultimate Mafioso in the crime world. But getting to the top does not come easy.
To reach the top, you have to fight other mafia families, build a mafia family of your own, accumulate wealth and protect your 'pseudo' mafia family from attackers. There are various levels in the game and there are certain criteria which need to be fulfilled in order to move on to the next level in Mafia Wars online. All this can take a lot of time.
In fact, one of the prerequisites to become a top mafia is to have a mafia family of at least 500 people. Now, most of us do not even have 500 people in our friend list and considering the fact that everybody does not accept the invitation, getting to 500 can take a lifetime.
A nice strategy to build your family in mafia wars online is to seek users on some other Mafia Wars website and invite them to your family. You could even invite strangers from Facebook but not before hiding all your personal information. After all, protecting your real identity is more important than mastering a mafia game, right?
Once you start growing your family, you will need to protect it and for that, you need money to buy weapons. To increase your wealth in Mafia Wars online, you could either buy low cost properties with decent returns to start with or resort to jobs and payouts.
But even after having a large family and wealth, there are a lot of other things you would need to reach the top of the mafia ladder. And like everything else in this Mafia game, nothing comes easy.
