I spent a week playing Mafia Wars, unfortunate, I know.  I had also planned on trying a few other games, like Mobsters 2 and Pirates: Rule the Caribbean, but they are basically the same game. Each one has a system where energy is accrued over time, and then spent on ‘jobs’, which make money, which gets spent on property, items and stuff in general.

Character creation is made up of naming a character and choosing a stat to emphasize, out of money, energy and health. Money, in Mafia Wars, is not too much of a problem. Every job done provides some amount of money, in which the later jobs exchange a reasonable amount of energy for a boat load of money. Also, there is the ‘Hit List’, where people pay to get another player killed. Some people, likely super pissed, pay stupid amounts of money for this service. All I had to do is win a few hit list fights which paid over ten billion dollars and then I had more money than I knew what to do with. Not too hard of a feat to accomplish either, even when just starting out. The base rate to hire someone to kill someone else is only eight thousand dollars, so the big paying jobs usually have people clamoring for them. Health is not too big of a deal because a few thousand dollars will bring anyone back to full health.

Energy is the big concern. Energy lets you do jobs, and jobs give you money and experience. Jobs are the fastest way to progress through the game, which makes energy the most important stat, and it recharges one point every five minutes, or one every three minutes if you choose the character type to emphasize it. Every level gives five points to spend between all the stats, and I found myself sinking all of five points into energy at every single level. Stacking energy allowed me to level faster, and more importantly, play the game less. Starting out with a low amount of energy in the early stages of the game is a hassle, because energy is wasted once the maximum energy limit is reached. If the cap is thirty, then I would only have an hour and a half before I would start wasting points. It is a very odd concept, as many games probably want people to play them more, but this one gave me the goal of reaching a point where I could start playing less, and I was glad when I hit the point where I could visit the game once a day for a half an hour, rather than five minutes through out.

The progression of the game leads players to other countries, but the jobs never change. All of them involve clicking a little button, sometimes repeatedly. Each job is different in name and concept, but all of them are the same fundamentally: “Click here to perform x action to receive experience and money… alright, good job”. There is no chance to fail a job, and it is the ultimate fantasy mob world where a variety of different illegal operations are performed with no chance at failure. With no chance at failing, the element of realism is completely vacant. Also, if it only cost eight thousand dollars to get someone killed in real life, then I could have easily afforded it when I worked part time at minimum wage. A whole lot more people would be dead if it were that cheap, and as easy as opening up the ‘Wanted’ ads in the newspaper to find someone willing to exchange a corpse for cash.

There are a few fights with NPC’s that provide some possibility of risk, and fighting other players has an element of danger to it as well, unless you, like me, only fight people with fewer friends than you. Adding friends adds another set of hands to fight other mobs with, but it is strictly a numbers game. The person with the most friends is probably going to be the victor, though equipment and a few other factors play into the equation.

Most importantly, Mafia Wars spammed my Facebook wall with up to date information about how well I was doing in the game, and provided me with no option to stop or delete the notifications it left. There were also times where I continuously received error messages and had to restart my browser. Oddly hilarious, as my machine can easily render thousands of polygons at frame rates faster than the eye can even comprehend, yet a little flash game brought everything to a screeching halt on occasion. Ending my involvement with Mafia Wars was a happy occasion, like finally being free of the nagging thought regarding whether or not I remembered to lock the door, or turn the stove off.