Mafia: Information, Announcements, and Discussion

JoanK said:

Well, you shouldn't miss me. I am only actively useless even after all these games.

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but you are nonetheless ACTIVE


I'm hoping to host a game some time in October, but that depends on how university goes for me.

I have three games in the works but no time to host. I am also thinking about hosting Immortals 3 at another site...

I can host something to bridge the gap if there is noone else willing to host something.

You have my In!

spaceman98 said:

but you are nonetheless ACTIVE


I'm hoping to host a game some time in October, but that depends on how university goes for me.

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Ok, yeah no. Me hosting anything isn't happening any time in the foreseeable future. I can still play, but not much else.

I was thinking of hosting a clue game for some old time fun.

I'd play one of those.

Hello folks.

Although I won't be playing mafia games or hosting them anymore, you guys have been a special part of my life for several years now.

If you want to keep in touch, my inbox is always open, but the best way to interact with me now is on my youtube channel. I'm going to be doing a series of Let's Play episodes, starting with a game I'm already quite familiar with, Medieval 2: Total War. It's an older game but one that I remember quite fondly from my pre-mafia days. I won't just be doing M2:TW videos but this is where I've decided to start.

These specific videos may not be of interest to you if you've never played Medieval 2, or if you aren't much of a PC gamer, or if you don't like strategy games. But hey, it's worth a shot to check it out, maybe you'll find something you didn't know you could love, and also, the games I'll be playing too.

If you like my videos and have a favorite game that you'd love to see someone play, by all means send in suggestions. But keep in mind, these take a while to make and I'm only going to be posting one series at a time. If you leave a comment on my videos, I'll comment back. If you subscribe to me, I'll subscribe back. Leave a like if you liked the videos.

I recommend starting with Episode 3, because it is the start of a let's play campaign for Portugal.

Because episode 1 and 2 are basically test runs to make sure I have something worth saying in a video, and making sure my recording and editing software works okay. (Spoiler alert: Yeah, not so much... still a work in progress there...) and are also a bit dry and technical. Although Episode 2 does feature actual battles for pretty much the whole video, so that one might be worthwhile.

And here's a link to the channel.

I really enjoyed the time I spent with you all, and I hope it doesn't end just because I'm hanging up the fedora.

Keep in touch, let me know what you all are up to, especially if you ever leave CFC.

Started watching. I'd love to see a Shogun 2 series, btw.

Cheers Pizza!

Rest in pepperoni, you crazy Mafioso.

I guess mafia/NOTW on CFC and the Org has unofficially run its course. Well, it was a good ride. Nice playing with you all. Maybe in the future one or both of the sites will somehow revive, but I suppose it's impressive enough that we lasted this long. Maybe I'll start a thread where we can share and relive our favorite moments and memories from playing mafia and Night of the Werewolves.

I liked the part where I was Bowser.

Also I kind of get the feeling we'll see at least one game pop up next month and several more over the summer.

It's sort of a trend that's been ongoing for two years now. Here's, by my count in the stats thread, the number of finished games (including the many I haven't counted) we've had every year since 2009, the first year I have a full year of post-database purge games:

2009: 19 games
2010: 28 games
2011: 26 games
2012: 44 games (this was the year where we fell in love with mini games- there's 19 games with 10 players or fewer, and 1 with 11 that basically was also a mini game- there's 3 that size in 2010, 2 that size in 2011, and none in 2009)

Then we have:

2013: 15 games (4 with 10 or fewer players)
2014, so far: 8 games (of which I only actually have 1 in the database, because I'm lazy)

We had a pretty solid peak from 2010-2012, with a semi-artificial peak in 2012 in number of games played from the huge number of minigames that were played that year. Since late 2012- early 2013, though, the mafia interest here has just totally collapsed. The same happened on the .org, and on TWC, although TWC's collapse happened earlier.

Someone mentioned at one point that one possible reason is lack of new member influx- 2010 had a huge number of newbies from the release of Civ V, and you'll probably notice that there was much less interest here in the couple of years before that. That was also around the time where CFC and the .org's mafia playerbases started seeing massive amounts of crossover (as did the formerly much more separate Mafia and NOTW groups), which obviously fueled interests at both sites. We also switched from largely clue-based games to the role-based types we now predominantly play.

I'd expect we might get some more newbies from Beyond Earth's release, but that doesn't seem like it's produced the same newbie influx that Civ IV and Civ V did. So, here's hoping Civ VI comes out in a year or two, is totally awesome, and revives the hell out of this site?

The path to follow is clear. Lets have a ton of Minis until there are enough active players for someone to develop a normal or even large game.

@ chox

I wouldn't say interest really "collapsed" until this year. It's been declining, sure, but there were still a decent number of active large games in 2013, including arguably the most active game ever (None Shall Pass). So far there's been one large game in 2014 (Mass Effect), and it only had 26 players and less than 500 posts.

We definitely need new members. Everyone keeps getting saddled with more and more real life crap.

Zack said:

I guess mafia/NOTW on CFC and the Org has unofficially run its course. Well, it was a good ride. Nice playing with you all. Maybe in the future one or both of the sites will somehow revive, but I suppose it's impressive enough that we lasted this long. Maybe I'll start a thread where we can share and relive our favorite moments and memories from playing mafia and Night of the Werewolves.

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I would offer some thoughts on this.

People do move on, some permanently. Either from mafia itself, or the sites we play on, or they take breaks.

When this happens enough, entire sections collapse.

New players aren't always enough to revive things- they have to see why it was fun in the first place, and if a game is a bunch of new players not knowing what to do, and some old fogies who don't have time to play, where is the magic?

And then you go elsewhere to try to rekindle the magic, find other, vibrant sections, where people play moar.

Alas, it is not the same. Because you liked playing with certain people. Not that new people are bad- every game I play with a bunch of brand-new people, I find a new awesome unique person who I am thrilled to play with. But still, we have lots of good memories of playing with those certain people and you remember doing that one thing or being a part of that one team, and had this one great experience here and there, and it's not something you can always repeat.

Certain people won't be with us forever. I've kind of watched wave after wave of players come and go, from the original hardcore mafia guys at my native site to this one. Heck, when I joined on my site, it had been a thing for several years without me. And some players had lost interest after many, many games before I even came around. When I joined here, people were already in an era of reminiscing of the players who played in the first NOTWs and how they longed for the return of those greats.

But that's just it... truth be told, people move on and some never return.

We'll always be nostalgic and reminisce about the good ole days.

That is the past, and it is that past that binds us together in some ways. But the fact remains it is now today, not yesterday.

If there is to be a mafia or NOTW of today, it has to always be made up of the players of today. And, for those of us who like to reminisce about the good ole days, today will probably never be quite as sweet as those good ole days. Or at least, not the same.

So what comes now?

That's up to you guys. We can drift apart and that's that. But I thought you guys were kinda awesome and it seems like an unfitting end to all we shared together.

Just know that the future is change. People will continue to come and go, and it sucks, because we will indeed never fully recreate what we shared when we played that one game with those specific awesome players. That experience happened and now it's just a memory and a thread on a forum somewhere.

My recommendation, is along the lines of understanding and embracing the change.

If the magic of mafia is gone, come to terms with it. But was it really about the game itself, or was it the people, the personalities?

The people are still here. Here and there, anyway.

My thought on the continuum of our gaming community is to understand it is a community in a constant process of change. And it can either change until it turns into something that no longer resembles a community, or, it can change into a community of a different sort- just a community of friends.

And if we should ever get that wild hair across our butts that says hey, maybe we should all get together and play a game and invite the old fogies to come back, maybe that can be a thing. Like an anniversary game.

But we gotta realize not everyone may attend, and that the community won't just suddenly start playing mafia and NOTW again. People do change and move on, yes?

What may be more important is that we learn to adapt to the change. And accept it. And retain much of what we felt was special about our community in a different form.

It doesn't have to be mafia games ad infinitum for us to be a chill group of folks to hang out with. Hey, when I joined the org it was because I wanted to play Medieval 2 Total War, not mafia games.

Then, it changed- I lost interest in M2TW and gained an interest in mafia games, with many people with an interest in both overlapping. So I kept the old friends and made new ones.

Now, schedule doesn't permit the old mafia schedule, and we've lost so many folks I loved playing with. For now, I can't. So, I'm finding other interests.

Yet, like you, I think there's something awesome about us and I want to reminisce.

But I'd like to do more than just reminisce. You're not just a bunch of good memories to me, you guys are my friends, and you guys are each other's friends.

So, if you and your friend used to go fishin' all the time, and now for some reason, they don't want to go fishin' anymore, what do you do?

The answer to that question determines how you view your friendship, I suppose.



I have a sneaking suspicion we haven't seen the last of each other. Maybe some of us have played our last NOTW/Mafia game, because it happens. But some of us may just need a break. Sometimes you also get burnt out. Some of us just need a change.

So, friends, I say we see the future and make it a bright one. As I mentioned elsewhere, this is the internets, drifting away after things change is not a foregone conclusion.

But wanting perpetual homeostasis, as much as we all want the good times to stay exactly as good as they always were, is to misunderstand life, I suppose.

You really do have to appreciate the good times. Each experience happens exactly once, in exactly that way.

I'll be around, and you guys will be around. The question is where, and doing what.

We'll figure it out.

God, that was sweet. A heart-warming post.