You could say I had a very productive morning on this rainy indescript Tuesday, having bought my first property and collected three gifts from a close friend. No ordinary gifts but three very expensive paintings: one a Dali, one Matisse, and a Warhol, all originals. Unfortunately all fictitious, two-dimensional and presented by an equally two dimensional Mafia king. Maybe it wasn’t a very productive morning simply another diversion on that great killer of time: Facebook.
We all do it.
We will all admit to visiting our own little profile, checking messages, clicking on a feed that is almost, but not quite, related to someone we know. Before long you’ve scrolled through an album of photos just to see what that ‘someone’ looks like, ‘accepted’ a tarot reading that will automatically update every week, and played on a variety of weird games. It is unsurprising then that there are currently 25 million of us playing Mafia Wars through Facebook. Not to mention that unlike a PS3 game or Xbox title, this is totally free. The very concept of the Mafia has been shaped into a game that specifically plays to the benefits of such a large social networking site. The creators have crafted a product that links connections with friends and family directly to a game; a game all about image projection.
Free to play and easy to join.
The Mafia is one of the most famous of all organised crime organisations. Whereas most of us know nothing about the real workings of Mafia culture, there lies an atmosphere surrounding the name created by fictional films, books and games. A dark romance, if you like, fuelled by this lack of knowledge. We are left to fill in the gaps using our own imaginations and thus the Mafia lends itself to remaining secret and yet possessing a very public world of fiction. ‘Public’ and ‘private’ correspond and compliment each other for the Mafia image. It is the same for anyone using Facebook (the clue is in the name): an allocated page to create your own ‘image’ without the world knowing the complex inner workings of your ‘self’. It captures your face, the surface and self-made image ready to present to the outside world. The game effectively encourages image promotion. You can ‘publish’ your criminal activities for all the world to see. This begs an important question; why is it that this game is socially acceptable to us whereas a similar themed game, such as GTA, must answer to the general public for influencing the youth of today towards violent crime?
The acceptable face of crime?
The answer lies not in any monitoring on Facebook’s part. True, to have access to your own profile there are age restrictions, but so too are retail games labelled with similar age restrictions. Surely Facebook, as a far more accessible tool, poses more of an influence and threat? Yet at the crux of this question lies a fundamental difference between the two games. Similar as they are in theme and aim, the role of the player lies poles apart. Throughout Mafia Wars you barely need to be involved, it is self propelling. At no point is any action taken. The dirty, dark, tension-filled atmosphere of an underworld society is transported into a glowing table of achievements and presents. When asked to perform a task, the player proceeds to view a gun being loaded with bullets, strongly resembling a ‘think’ tool for the program. It is as if you must wait for the computer to decide if you have completed the task correctly and fully. A human hand never enters to place the bullets into the gun. The entire game rests on the past and future tense as dictated by the game itself. Therefore no responsibility lies in the present, or upon the player. The in-action and lack of visible human involvement of the game distances its players in a way that makes them feel secure in its confines. This is true of the wider confine of Facebook, a tool used for sharing events and thoughts past, and those coming up. Not only that but a wider breadth of players can be involved, the player must rely on Facebook friends and correspondences and accept invitations in order to grow and gain strength, much like the workings of Facebook itself. When designing a game such as Mafia Wars it too has to adhere to the wider Facebook ‘genre’ and the new fiction of Mafia Wars can only be based within its marketed context.
Hold on, I'm thinking...
Facebook is easily accessible, leisurely and as noted earlier, it is possible to spend many hours procrastinating on just this one site, while it is also used fleetingly to reply to mails or check updates and Mafia Wars has to cater for both cases. And importantly it is a very easy game to play. There is no adrenaline rush as you complete a job which might have taken hours of your time in Grand Theft Auto, none of the old fashioned swearing and hurling the controller across the room in aggravation. Mafia Wars keeps you totally at its mercy, holding you with the addictive sense of achievement from doing nothing. That rainy Tuesday I also ‘mastered’ some new skills, warehouse robbery for example, all by just clicking a button. Never did I even see the inside of the warehouse, or the outside for that matter. Where is the danger? Mafia Wars is simple, and seemingly harmless.
The stark contrast of ‘action and inaction’ and ‘public vs. private’ that makes up the Mafia Wars game within Facebook (as it is important to keep it in the social network context) also holds a certain resonance with our political views today. It is almost as if we are secretly cheering and subsequently joining, a network based on criminality through our own disappointment in our government system. In a time of financial uncertainty, there is a small thrill in making millions of fictional dollars working for a fictional underworld culture. And through this there lies always in the background the knowledge that we are at war. The war abroad has become in a way a ‘Mafia’ image, it is spun to us through the press and no-one is certain of the truths under the fiction. Perhaps we feel that little bit more in control when playing our own small, two dimensional wars, after all, it is easy to feel safe within the confines of Facebook, surrounded by family and friends.