here
. It used to be that people tried to play Mafia offsite, and then were redirected here because that's where their moderator learned it. Now there are mega-forums with established Mafia populations who don't need
to hold this site and its wiki up as examples of how to play. If we knew how many people were actively playing Mafia here versus other large sites and large Mafia populations, and learning what they're doing differently or what pool of potential players they're drawing from, etc. One interesting side note is that it's not very easy to get a Mafia population started - many attempts on non-dedicated boards fizzle after a few games, or don't get larger than a handful of people.Following from that, I'm curious to know how and how much the post-forum generation plays Mafia. It's not really a tumblr/Twitter kind of game, though it does work in chat rooms (what? chat rooms?! that is
so
AOL) and it does work face-to-face (see: board games thriving). If our site population is squeezed between old people who no longer have the time to play and/or can't deal with the accelerating meta (e.g. me) and young people who wouldn't join the forum to start with, then etc.I don't think that trying to accommodate different playstyles with unique games per queue will work. Doing so assumes a critical mass of people per playstyle who would play games specifically because it caters to them, rather than just playing a one-off as a novelty. Between the ISO feature, Private Topics, and our ability to have 100 games running at once, we're pretty far ahead of almost every other site in re: being able to host Mafia games; so I don't think it's that we're incapable of hosting the world's Mafia population.
MBF's flash was outdated years ago; no one seems to see it but me. <_< I know that we no longer have the only Mafia wiki out there, and that it's not necessarily the dominant Mafia wiki in some circles. It's my understanding that our Mafia wiki hasn't been updated all that much since the last time I burned days of my life on it in 2010, but it's not like a whole lot has changed anyway except our own site's policy (which outsiders wouldn't care much about). This just ties back to my first point - that mafiascum no longer provides exclusive access to Mafia. Even if our wiki were made of Internet gold bricks, A) the only people who are interested in our wiki are people who are already playing Mafia, and B) those people have more options than just
us
if they want a non-amateur Mafia experience. Competition, etc.I do like the second half of your advertising post, though that
also
ties into market research. The best way to find out where Mafia's future is is to go find some young people who don't play, get it going face-to-face, and then see how they'd continue playing it later with their friends. Since it doesn't fit the dominant media of today, chances are the answer will be "face-to-face", and forums may not even be thought of. If that's the case, well, best enjoy this place now.Side note: I
like
specialty forums. You can do so much more with them because you have so many dedicated fans in one place, and there's an audience for creative things in that specialty. So this whole thing makes me 
