Even with the buzz surrounding the latest crop of traditional video games like StarCraft II, Madden NFL '11 and the upcoming Halo Reach, social gaming continues to see huge amounts of traffic.
And Zynga, the company behind the immensely popular Mafia Wars and Farmville games on Facebook, hopes to continue that momentum. Zynga recently created a new level for their Mafia Wars game and wanted to make sure a lot people were playing it. And for Zynga, "a lot" meant 10 million, which they were able hit pretty easily.
So how did they hit that not-so-lofty goal?
Well, the minds behind Mafia Wars decided the most sensible way to get people to play a game about online crime was to blow up a real-life armored truck. That's right, the latest Mafia Wars promotion was that if 10 million users played the new Las Vegas level, Zynga would blow up an actual armored truck in the city the game level was based on.
Some people may be question the point of this promotion, other than a reason for gratuitous explosions. And while I'm always a fan of explosions, I don't think that this spike in success for Mafia Wars will stop critics and pundits from questioning if/when the bubble will burst for Zynga and other social gaming companies.
However, I think it's safe to say that the social gaming bubble won't be popping anytime soon.
