Word: mafia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Berlusconi would testify in a suit against a journalist who referred to rumors that the Prime Minister is impotent. Last week, Berlusconi vowed to launch additional suits against newspapers that printed unsubstantiated reports that a close adviser of his was involved in a 1993 bombing campaign by the Sicilian Mafia. (Read "An Offended Berlusconi Goes on the Offensive...
FarmVille is part of Zynga, the fastest-growing, most buzzed-about social-game company of the moment. In October, Zynga operated six of the 10 most popular Facebook games: FarmVille, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, YoVille, zyngapoker and Roller Coaster Kingdom. Founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, Zynga had 45 staffers by June 2008 and now employs 600, counting contractors. Its most recently launched game, FishVille, hooked 9 million users in a week. Zynga is privately held, but a rival less than half its size was recently bought by Electronic Arts, the GM of games, for $400 million...
...play Mafia Wars alone. Your friends on Facebook (or whatever network you're playing on) who also play Mafia Wars make up your family. They help you with your business and fight with you and send you gifts. The bigger the family, the better for business. And you have a lot of business: you develop real estate, act as a hired gun and attack other players. The more money you get, the more stuff you can buy, like weapons and vehicles. The more stuff you have, the more jobs you can do and the more money you get. Round...
...keys to Mafia Wars' appeal is that it's easy. Unlike in a "real" video game, you can't really lose. The constant stream of rewards is addictive; you become like a rat who can't stop pushing the lever to get the little pellets. Your resources constantly regenerate, and the game is always giving you random items that you don't even know how you earned. People in your mafia send you gifts too. The game will try to make you give them in return, and tell them about things you're doing and - this is important - recruit more...
...truth is, you don't really play Mafia Wars; it plays you. It rewards you lavishly for doing next to nothing and for propagating its viral spores further and further into your social network, thereby perpetuating its existence. In fact, Mafia Wars isn't so much a game as a parasite: it lives in the petri dish of the social-networking sphere and feeds off your attention. Try to quit, and it begs and bribes you to fall off the wagon again. It's just a game, but it's like the real mafia in that one respect: just when...