The basic story is that some guy went nuts and started eating people, and for some reason he has control over the psychic clone troopers, seriously, these guys really are supposed to be clones.  Rather than send a whole army to fight these guys, they send you and a handful of expendables in to sort out the whole mess.  You fight in abandoned buildings, office buildings, and underground secret labs chasing around these guys while they hunt down everyone who had anything to do with some secret project.

            Most of the enemies you fight are you typical faceless, armored head to toe badies that sound a lot like the Helgast from Killzone.  Most of these guys are pretty stupid, but they have really good eyesight and will spot you in the dark from a mile away even with your flashlight turned off.  Later on a few of them will have thick armor, some mechs show up, and there are even really annoying invisible ninjas that run up and smack you around until you put enough led into their heads to make them lie down. 

            Like any halfway decent FPS F.E.A.R. has a good variety of weapons to choose from, and you can even duel wield some of the smaller ones, but you can only carry three guns at a time, and in this game you can run out of ammo rather quickly even on the easier difficulty settings.  My advice to save on ammo is to us the bullet time mechanic in the game and run up close to the enemies with your shotgun.  1-3 shots will kill most of them, and enough of them carry this weapon for you to keep it loaded for most of the game.  The fact that it can blow an enemy in half is also a nice bonus.

            You also get grenades, but these things caused me a lot of trouble.  For starters, I can never get them where I want them.  They either roll right past the enemy, or they bounce behind a piece of cover and do no damage to the targets.  Another problem is that they explode instantly when they hit someone.  That might sound like a good thing, but if I’m near the bad guy and it goes off before I can take cover, I take damage as well.  The other problem is that there are supposed to be several kinds of grenades and even land mines, but I can’t figure out how to cycle through them.  I checked the games controls, but they only state how to throw the grenades, but since I have so much trouble using them, perhaps this was a good thing.

             Most of the other weapons are machine guns, the aforementioned shotgun, and a few high tech weapons, which are a lot of fun, but like most FPS games you don’t get a lot of ammo for the powerful ones during the campaign.  You’ll mostly be using whatever the enemy drops, and most of them use the more basic machine guns.  One odd thing to note is collecting the ammo.  Sometimes when you walk over a weapon that you already have you automatically get the ammo for it, but sometimes you have to hold down X to do it.  I have no idea why this is.  The same is true of medpacs and armor.  Sometimes you just get them, and sometimes you have to hold down the button.  It seems like a small complaint but it gets annoying after awhile. You should automatically pick up ammo for any weapons you are carrying in a game.

            Another odd thing about the ammo is when you pick some up, it tells you a different number than what is added to you inventory.  It will show 112 up in the right corner, but I’ll only actually get 13 bullets, which confuses me to no end.  Perhaps this is another example of SDTV not working well with the 360.

            As if these little problems weren’t annoying enough, the game’s hit detection is very odd.  When you get shot there’s no vibration, no sound effect of your guy saying “ouch” the most you get is a flash of red on the screen that is barely noticeable, and sometimes you don’t even get that.  Half the time the only way I know I’m being hurt is my health starts to go down.

            Yes, this game has a health meter, or rather counter.  You can carry up to ten health packs at a time, and even find little boosts that increase you max health and bullet time gauge, though here it’s called adrenaline.  Fortunately the adrenaline gauge slowly refills whenever you’re not using it, much like your flashlight, and this is a game where you need your flashlight.

            Much like Doom, some areas of this game are pitch black, and you will miss many hidden areas and items without some illumination.  This ties into the games horror element, which feels out of place most of the time.  The game does have some very good jump scares, turning around to see a creepy little girl right behind you in a similar style to the Ring, but most of it boils down to some invisible force throwing things off the shelves like a poltergeist.  Occasionally the main bad guy will talk to you in your head while showing you phantom visions of himself doing things, but since none of this hurts you until the very end of the game, it looses much of its tension.

            I think the main problem with any scary game, or movie for that matter, is that in order for it to cause fear, you have to like, or at least care about the main character.  It only works slightly in this game because of the first person perspective, but your character never says a word.  You never see him react to anything around him.  You don’t really care what happens to him.  The closest thing you get to that is a woman you meet more than halfway through the game that you have to escort, but she isn’t around long enough for you to really get to know her. 

            It’s also kind of hard to be afraid of anything when you’re carrying around a weapon that fires three missiles at once.  I think that’s a serious problem with most horror games: they are just shooters that have monsters in them.  Even towards the end of the game when all hell brakes loose, I know that all I have to do is shoot at it until it goes away.  The thing that confuses me the most in this game is a twist that makes no sense at all.    I won’t spoil it, but anyone who pays attention to the game will figure it out long before it’s supposed to be revealed, and you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this revelation is totally inconsistent with everything that has happened to you in the entire game.

            If that wasn’t bad enough, there is no boss fight in the game, no real enemy to speak of, and one of the closest thing with get to a villain you actually interact with is annoying and as threatening as a frog.  And the worst part is you don’t even get to kill him.  Believe me I tried; I wasted every bullet I had trying to shoot this guy in the face, but if you’re not supposed to kill them, you bullets pass right through.  And I really have to question the business practices of a company that spends billions of dollars developing some “super” soldiers that one guy can slaughter single handedly. 

            In short, F.E.A.R. is just another generic shooter with a few jump scares thrown in.  It’s nothing great, but it is enjoyable running around shooting bad guys while a tormented ghost girl tries to mess with your head.  It’s worth renting and should keep you entertained for a weekend, but don’t expect anything epic. Enjoy.

Destroy all Humans: Path of The Furon for the X-box 360 is the fourth installment in the Destroy all Humans series, and it continues the trend of corny humor mixed with mindless violence.  You play as Cryptosporidium, a horny, homicidal alien who was sent to earth to harvest human brainstems in order to save his race.  Each game takes place in a different decade.  The first game was in the 50s, the second was in the 60s, and Path of the Furon takes place in the 70s.

            Despite being president of the United States in the second game, Crypto has been relegated to a casino owner in Vegas.  He’s been steadily gathering human DNA over the years, but now some mobsters are moving in on him.  Being the trigger-happy lunatic that he is, Crypto slaughters nearly everyone in the town and burns it to the ground, including his own casino.

            This is probably the main reason this game is inferior to its predecessors: the story.  The previous titles gave clear motivation to both Crypto and his enemies, but here the game just throws you into Vegas and says that someone is muscling in on your turf, so you blow up the entire city.  Then you find out they were being helped, so you go and blow up another city, following a trail of breadcrumbs looking for whoever it was that bothered you when all you had to do was kill the mobsters and go back home.

            Most of the old weapons come back in this game along with a few new ones.  I personally enjoy the Venus human trap.  You also get a new saucer equipped with new ways to cause chaos and destruction including a tornado gun.  The abduction beam acts more like a vacuum in this game, automatically sucking up any humans it catches even if you’re holding a vehicle at the time.  Some of the old weapons even get an upgrade; especially the anal probe which can now sodomize multiple targets at once, and my personal favorite, the dislocator disc, also returns. 

Crypto also gets a new super power, the temporal fist.  This allows you to freeze time and use your telekinetic push on multiple targets at once.  He learns this technique from another Furon who takes on the role as your martial arts master, much to the chagrin of your disembodied boss, Pox, who is still a hologram ten years after the second game.  Another body from the second game that is absent is Natalya.  I know that if I had a cloned Russian sex slave, she would never leave my side, yet she isn’t even mentioned here.  I’ve read that this was explained in the previous title, but I haven’t played Big Willy Unleashed. 

This time Crypto’s love interest is a reporter, but she is more of a minor character and she doesn’t seem to mind letting a gray alien into her pants if it gets her the story, so there’s no sexual tension like there was before.  Another minor character is Jack, a man who looks, and sounds just like jack Nicholson, and serves as Crypto’s favorite pair of human jeans.  This was undoubtedly the game making fun of itself in response to Crypto sounding like the famous actor.  You also run into several characters that are clearly references to movies or groups including scientologists, the bad Asian guy from Blood Sport, and the Godfather gangsters who smoke cigars larger than a turkey drumstick.

As with the previous game, Crypto can enter people’s heads through their nose and run around in their body, or rather jog. For some reason the running option is no longer available, but you can restore your host’s health by reading people’s minds, and their thoughts are as raunchy as ever.  Pox and Crypto continue their hateful superior, subordinate relationship and constantly try to get on each other’s nerves, even breaking the fourth wall to do it, though some of the jokes and references they use are pretty obscure. 

            Speaking of Hit and miss humor, the game play itself can come off as a sick joke at times.  Anyone familiar with previous tittles should have no trouble getting the hang of things.  Crypto fly with his jet pack, shoots people, levitates cars and turns them into ammo, but many of the story missions are sadistically difficult to figure out.  In order to activate a landing zone, the Furon god tells you to jump on his idol’s head.  The problem with that is that you can’t press the jump button near him.  I had to back far away, jump and fly over him, and land on his head, but even that didn’t solve the puzzle.  You have to walk around on top of the very small space before he gives you your reward.

            There are a few missions like that in the game where you are given almost no hint whatsoever as to what you are supposed to do.  This problem is compounded by the fact that I can’t find any strategy guides for this game.  It’s rather annoying when some of the other puzzles are so easy that Pox mocks you and tells you the solution, but on others the only help you get is “use the temporal fist,” which doesn’t seem to help much.

            You do get to travel around to some new places, Paris, Vegas, and even a Furon city.  You can blow up buildings, abuse the local populace, and even get to fight new alien enemies and bosses, but despite being on the 360, the graphics don’t seem like that much of an improvement over the previous titles which makes me feel that the game didn’t reach it’s full potential in this area. 

            Destroy all Humans: Path of the Furon my be inferior to its predecessors, but if you liked them, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well because it’s more of the same.  Abusing humans with supernatural powers and advanced weaponry while listening to Pox and Crypto antagonize each other.  The game is also log enough to make it worth buying with collectables and a story mode that will take you longer than a weekend to complete, but you might want to buy it used as it does have some flaws, and even a few bugs.  Enjoy!

Here is the Game Play Footage.

Also feel free to post comments if there may have been anything I missed.

Black site :area 51 for the X-Box 360 is a first person shooter with a very contrived story which has you fighting aliens and mutant soldiers in Nevada as you make your way into Area 51 through backyards, trailer parks, desert, and driving sections while being accompanies by two AI partners.

I believe that for any FPS to be good, it must have at least one of the following. An interesting and immersive story, smooth control, a wide range of interesting weapons you can use to blow things up, likeable characters, imaginative locations, exciting multi player. Sadly Black site has none of these. The controls are sluggish, the story’s ridiculous, there are only two alien guns, you want to kill half of the characters yourself, half the game takes place in suburbia, and you’ll never find anyone who wants to play this game with you.

The game starts you off in the middle east trying to destroy a chemical weapons plant. You play as the faceless mute whose name is so unmemorable I can’t even recall it. Even in cut scenes you don’t say anything, and the only time it switches out of first person is when you die to see yourself lie down like a mannequin. In order to compensate for this, the game gives you two porters. Mr. sarcastic and Mr. loudmouth. Loudmouth does nothing but make lewd jokes and brag while Sarcastic makes smart ass remarks and witty retorts.

The three of you make your way to the missile base by running around and blowing up check points. The weapon you’ll be using for most of the game is already in your hands, a machine gun. You also get a pistol but you’ll never use that, and you’ll find a sniper rifle on the way to your objective but you’ll rarely use that. Grenades can be picked up but they are rare and you seldom throw them where you want them, so just get used to your machine gun.

Eventually you’ll get an army humvee and go into a rail shooting section which has you manning the turret while your two friends bicker like a married couple over whether they should turn left or right. This is the part of the game that destroys your disbelief, and its sad that it happens in the game’s first chapter. As you drive around through oil refineries and through drainage ditches while being shot at by everything in sight, your partners talk as if they were off-roading in Texas rather than racing for their lives. Despite an entire refinery blowing up around you, and I hope you enjoyed that part because there are several such vehicle sections in the game, some of which have you as the driver. The most annoying part of these sections later in the game is that you’ll have to abandon one vehicle, go through an area, and find a new vehicle just waiting for you on the other side for no reason.

The three of you make it through without a scratch. Loudmouth even insists on pulling over so he can take a leak, and the game encourages you to learn about the zoom function at this point by getting a closer look at him while he’s doing it! Now at this point I feel I should point out that in most of my reviews I try to avoid spoilers in the story, but in this case it is impossible to talk about this game without spoiling it, but it can hardly be considered spoiled since you see every plot twist a mile away. For that reason I have no problem referring to the only woman you meet in the game as Mrs. Evil scientist, because you figure out pretty fast that she’s morally bankrupt as all hell. She gives you guys some shots without really telling you what it is, and goes with you into battle using only a handgun.

She is the main source of my disbelief in this game because she is so morally bankrupt that any sane person would shoot her in the head, but your character just keeps following her orders without reason through the game, even when she lies to you, gets your friends killed, and shows no remorse whatsoever for her actions. She even admits to conducting inhuman experiments on innocent people before burying them alive, and yet your character trusts her. The most laughable part is that she is the one who occasional points out just how immoral she is. I know that doesn’t make sense, so let me give you an example of one of these lines. “we tortured them, experimented on them, cut into them and then burred them under concrete and abandoned them. What did we think was going to happen?” this is something that your character should be saying to her, not something she should be saying right after asking one of her victims, “why are you doing this?”

Her lies aren’t even convincing. When you first run into a mutant, one of your buddies asks what’s wrong with the guy and she says, “he has encephalitis….a lot of encephalitis.” and when you run into a giant underground snake monster she says it’s a mutation. And her amount of stupidity is staggering. She leads two soldiers into a base telling them you’re there for bombs when she is really looking for a floating crystal, and she doesn’t pay any attention to your friend who walks over and touches the damn thing.

She’s not the only unbelievable character either. Later in the game when you have a commanding officer, his reactions to you are completely over the top. The idiot tells you not to kill any of the enemies that are swarming the base, and is livid when you do in order to defend yourself. I actually reset my game the first time I went through this mission because I honestly thought I wasn’t supposed to kill them, but it’s impossible. Your melee attack does more damage than your guns, so much so that you can actually shatter cement barriers with the butt of your gun. And even the reason you are called to Nevada makes no sense. Evil scientist says its because you saw the thing in Iraq, but why should that matter? You didn’t do anything special. There is no reason to call you into this situation.

The only answer you ever really get is, “that’s classified.” in fact this game isn’t really a game, it’s writer ripping on the government. Just like books such as Congo, Starship troopers, and Sphere, Black site started out with the premise that the government and military are evil and immoral, and then tried to slap on a plot around that. The result is a completely unbelievable mess.

Even if you completely ignore the story, the game is still only mediocre. The only two alien weapons you get to use is a strange shot gun that can bounce its bullets, and a bazooka. I really feel disappointed by this because you’re storming area 51, and I expected more creativity in the technology. The game has a Gears of War health system but does it very badly. In Black site, you will look fine as you take hits, and then suddenly your screen will have a red tint as you are near death which means you only have two states: perfectly fine, and about to die.

The controls are a little odd as well. You can press the left analog to crouch while you hold it down, but you can press the D-pad down and stay in a crouch until you press it again. The one control and function I actually like in the game is that you can command your AI partners by targeting the area you want them to go to or item you want them to interact with and press a button. This does make the game even easier because you can tell your partners to go into a room without you to do the fighting.

Another problem with the game are the enemies. It’s bad enough that they are inexcusably stupid, they run past you and start shooting at your friends while keeping their back to you, but most of them can be recognized from other games. Giant underground snakes from Prototype, small skittering monsters that blow themselves up from Gear of War 2, infected humans from Halo, and the special pops guys from Area 51 on the PS2 all make an appearance. Even the aliens form War of the Worlds show up in a more nightmarish form. Now to be fair, Black site came out before most of these games which leads me to believe that those game developers cannibalized this one for content because they figured no one played it, and you shouldn’t.

The game play is mediocre, the story is utterly ridiculous, and the game is short. I beat it in one sitting and didn’t want to play it again. You can collect dossiers which contain background information on the characters and events, but I honestly couldn’t force myself to care enough to find them all. I don’t recommend this game for anyone unless you just want something to laugh at with your friends.

How do i know this you say? Well, I can’t tell you. But remeber that the information you need will always sreside in the “Unofficial farmville guide” – The First, Most update, and BEST guide on the internet. http://gameolosophy.com/games/farmville-the-unofficial-strategy-guide/

On the topic of updates, Check it out for the latest information on achievements, collections, and more strategy. If you have any suggestions for the guide, please comment at the bottom of this article, as the other one is too cramped to find anything.

Much appriciated.
Make sure you Favourite the unnoficial guide, and check back regulary for updates as well as the best tips. Remeber to use it for your calculating needs when working out profits and Exp.

Any and Most questions will be answered by me, or others when The Unnoficial Guide (link) Is commented on. To get your questions answered Post!

In addition, A lucky winner will be awarded with money to buy a certain amount of farmville Dollars. Make sure you check the Unnoficial Guide for more information soon!

http://gameolosophy.com/games/farmville-the-unofficial-strategy-guide/

James

Graphics

With its lush 3D world and colorful characters that slightly depart from their original look, this game looks visually superior to previous Spyro games. The cutscenes are even more amazing as they provide more detail with the character illustrations and background environments. The camera angles get a bit wobbly at times, but it isn’t too bad since the right analog stick can be used to give the view more control.

Gameplay

You’ll get to use new abilities and power-ups as you travel through strange places such as the Horn Dive and Brimstone bombs. There are a number of new enemies introduced in the game, which changes your strategy in each battle a little bit, but with the help of The Professor’s inventions such as the Dragonball and Aqualung,you’ll be breezing through the area in no time.

Sound

This game has upbeat music and cutesy sound effects like other Spyro games, and the voice acting is excellent, giving cutscenes a high-quality cinematic feel.

Replay

A few minigames add to the game’s length, but overall, you can finish the whole game in a weekend. Sadly, no multi-player mode is added to make this a bit more interesting to play when your friends are around.

Overall

There’s more to do and explore this time around. This is definitely the best and cutes Spyro game yet!

You have the option of training the new guy at the beginning of the game which ironically serves as your training mode. Anyone who played the first game will catch on quick as most of the controls are the same. They will also recognize the new guy as being the brother to one of the faceless grunts who died in the first game. Foreshadowing? As always the game revolves around taking cover and shooting enemies with various guns. Like any good sequel, Gears of War 2 adds a few new guns, new moves, new levels, advances the story, and even lets you ride a few of the enemy vehicles/creatures.

One new feature that will assure everyone that the game’s brutally macho mentality is still firmly intact is the ability to curb stomp wounded enemies while they crawl around on the ground. If you let leave them alone for too long they will usually die anyway, but if another enemy makes it to them, they can revive them just as you can revive your teammates. This feature amuses me because all you do is give them a pat on the shoulder, and your friend who is trailing enough blood to paint a floor with gets back on his feet none the worse for wear.

If you get injured, you can try to drag yourself over to your AI partners, but they don’t always seem aware of your predicament and may take awhile to help you. If every member of your team is put into this state, you’re all dead, and the game has no health packs or life bars. The gear skull returns as the measure of how much damage you’ve taken. The more you get hurt, the fuller the symbol becomes, and once you’ve found a safe place to rest, your damage will slowly disappear.

The game also adds a few new weapons, my favorite of which is the minigun which can’t be reloaded. You can’t run with this weapon, or jump over walls with it, but no other handheld weapon mows down enemies as quickly as this one. All of the weapons from the first game appear again, but the most useful one is the Lancer assault rifle you start with. Its melee attack is an instant kill, using the chainsaw on your gun. You can carry one other rifle-sized weapon, and I recommend the sniper riffle. It’s pretty handy in long range fights as long as you’re a good shot. The torque bow, locust machine gun, and shot gun are all back and work the same as before as well as your pistol and chain grenades. Perhaps the most unique new weapon is the shield. This weapon is dropped by one of they new enemies, and is rather odd to use in contrast to the other weapons. It can be used as portable cover which is handy, but really it’s usually easier to stick with the conventional strategies of the game.

Gears of War 2 has more vehicle levels than the first game, and each one is different. You drive tanks on dunebugy wheels, ride the Locusts’ flying Reavers and even hijack a Brumak at one point. You also ride on giant carriers and have to defend them from attackers, crawl through the inside of a giant worm, and infiltrate the Locust cities. Each level is dramatically different and very interesting in its own way, fleshing out the world in which the game takes place.

All the main characters from the first game return, and a few new ones are introduced. Nearly all of them are ridiculously hardcore bad asses who single-handedly take on entire armies while the rest of you’re helmet-wearing allies get mowed down left and right around you. I could accept this kind of storytelling with God of War because you were a demigod, and in Halo because you are a specially trained and enhanced soldier, but in Gears of War, you’re just a soldier who somehow manages to fight through ridiculous odds, penetrate into the enemy capitol city, and enter the queen’s throne room without a problem. Hell, there is literally a scene in which one of the giant vehicles is destroyed, but one of the main guys walks out of the wreckage without a scratch on him.

The characters themselves are so overly macho American that it’s almost embarrassing, especially Cole, and the fact that a large plot device in the game is a metaphor for oil is hard to ignore as well. Despite that, Delta squad is a lot of fun to listen to as they bond with each other in the stereotypical insecure heterosexual male fashion of giving each other shit and bitching about their situation at every opportunity. There is one point when Cole gets on the intercom in the Locust city and talks shit to their whole army and queen which made me laugh out loud. I do find it a little disappointing that none of the characters are able to emote anything other than bravado or anger for more than a few seconds, even when they are experiencing things that should leave long lasting emotional scars.

Gears of War 2 has an even more depressing and disturbing story line than its predecessor. Humans being tortured, inhuman laboratories that resemble internment camps, slavery and genocide all show up to make this a truly dark story which the characters don’t react to in any way other than basically saying, “well shit.” Despite this inconsistency, the story is very engaging and leaves you wanting more by the end, and the same can be said of the game play.

Any fan of action should give this game a look. It’s the personification of the chest-thumping male psyche with insanely brutal weapons, explosions and heroes that go to hell and back without being fazed by any of it. It’s a fun ride and definitely worth a look for anyone who likes to shoot things.

Image via Wikipedia

DarkBASIC is used to create games. When people see ‘multiplayer capabilities’ listed within the software features they immediately have dreams of creating the next WoW killer by the end of next week. The first question to pop out of your mouth is most likely going to be ‘Can you make an MMO with DarkBASIC?’

The short answer is – yes, yes you can. The long answer is – No, you can’t. DarkBASIC is not the same as RPG Creator or any other kind of point click interface. It has the capability to make some pretty nifty games but you do have to take the time and get to understand the language.

When you start with DarkBASIC it is possible to make an MMO as your first game, but unless you have a lot of prior programming experience it might not be the best way to start. Try crawling before jumping behind the wheel of that monster truck.

Image via Wikipedia

DarkBASIC can be complicated and an MMO requires a lot of work and effort. If you take the time to learn and understand the program, start with simple games such as board games and simple 2D shooters. You can advance from there to 3D games and eventually make that WoW killing MMO.

One piece of advice if you want to create any kind of game, and I cannot stress this enough, is originality. So many games designers are ignored with good reason. Regurgitating the same rubbish over and over again is not going to attract anyone. Before you start hammering away at DarkBASIC trying to make that MMO, sit for a moment with and take a breath.

Small game programmers cannot compete with the bigger names. Blizzard has scores of people working on World of Warcraft and unfortunately it’s hard to compete with that from your bedroom PC. With DarkBASIC you can make an MMO but in order for it to be in any way successful you will need to give it something different, something to catch the player’s attention.

We have enough run around and kill different monster games to last us until the next Half Life instalment. Before you ask yourself ‘Can I make an MMO with DarkBASIC?’ ask yourself ‘Do I have a good idea for an MMO to make with DarkBASIC?’ If you have something unique and original then by all means go for it, just keep a level head and stay persistent.

Making money from online games is not a new concept. It’s been around since the first online gamers were too lazy to play for themselves. Mafia wars is about as competitive as you can get for a casual game on a social network. The player versus player part makes ‘Hello Kitty Online’ look like ‘Hello Lazer Firing Mega Death Kitty Online’ but it exists, and for social networking that counts as an achievement.

This works in your favour if you want to make money from Mafia Wars. The more competitive the game, the more likely people are to throw money at you in exchange for beating their friends with the latest piece of in game kit.

There are three main ways of making money from Mafia Wars.

1.       The Mafia Wars Website

Creating a Mafia Wars cheat website/guide website/fan page/forum/wiki etc…  Will have an instant pull for the Mafia Wars player base (and trust me, there is a lot of them). If you can find a unique idea for a Mafia Wars website, throw a little advertising on it and display it to the Mafia Wars groups on Facebook. Just ensure you register a few additional PayPal accounts to hold the surplus of money coming your way.

2.       Selling a Mafia Wars guide

You can sell an eBook containing the secrets of Mafia Wars strategies, tips, cheats or whatever. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about and it doesn’t already exist. Then (as before) flog it on Facebook groups.

There is of course a problem with these two methods (otherwise I’d spend my time doing them rather than telling you about them – let’s be honest). It’s a saturated market. It’s so overdone you’re unlikely to stumble across something people want that they don’t already have. This is not to say it’s impossible, if you find it make use of it.  But for the rest of you, luckily I have a third method of making money from Mafia Wars.

3.       Selling Mafia Wars Items and Accounts

Yes believe it or not, people will pay real money for those Mafia Wars pixelated items and accounts. This is the easiest way of making money from Mafia Wars, and there’s a growing demand waiting for you to supply.

With a torrent of freely available Mafia Wars guides out there, I’m going to refrain from typing up another. Do a quick Google search and learn to obtain the items and accounts for yourself. But I will tell you how to sell them.

Sites such as eBay, Gumtree and Craigslist tend to remove adverts of game item sales so instead aim for website which specialise in middle manning trades between buyers and sellers for game items and accounts. You could try RealPoor.com or MarkeeDragon.com but for Mafia Wars your best friend should be playerauctions.com

Once you have a dozen Facebook accounts brimming with Mafia Wars items, and your (free) registered playerauctions.com account you’re ready to go. Try to use a name related to Mafia Wars and be careful wording your sales pitch. For your first few sales, people will be wary of being scammed so do you best to come of reliable and trustworthy.

Use other sale orders to gauge the value of your items and accounts. Undercutting your competitors price will draw more buyers to you but may start a price war. If all the sellers keep lowering their prices to beat each other, you all lose out. Try contacting the other sellers if you see this happening.

When your first buy order arrives, make the transfer as quickly as possible and leave positive feedback where applicable. Read the playerauction.com guides first and follow their policies to make sure you get paid for any goods you sell.

Making money from Mafia Wars is entirely possible. The only problem is the game itself is horrendously repetitive and dull. Once you start getting sales, have a look at automating the game play. You can buy one or create one with a macro tool such as AutoHotKey. Just be careful what you download.

I used making money from Mafia Wars as an example because of its high traffic. In reality almost any multiplayer game can work the same way. Just ensure there is a market for your sales which isn’t already saturated and you are making enough money to cover the time invested.