War, Humanity Cannot Get Enough

Thursday 17th December

It's true what they say, you never leave the mafia alive.

See, a long time ago I got involved with a group of friends, started doing some muggings, maybe rob a store or two, setting up a racket and fighting off the triads every now and then. Now I find I'm in too deep and I can't get out of it.

Help me.

The worst part is that it's mind bendingly tedious, completely irrelevant and I've done it all before.

Facebook and it's applications are the devil's creations.

I'm stuck on MafiaWars and every time it looks like there's an end in sight, they open up more stuff to do, more stupid achievements to get and more bloody sites to be a major badass in.

The concept is simple, you have a limited amount of energy and you do some jobs. When you do jobs you get money to buy weapons, armour and vehicles to do more jobs. You get more money buy taking control of businesses and by getting other friends to play and be part of your mob. You also can fight other mobs using all the weapons and mob members that you have against all of theirs. You can win little badges and go up the levels depending on what you do and how often you do it and every five minutes you get a tiny bit of energy back so you can do more.

That's it.

Really, that's it.

You're essentially playing 'who's got the bigger numbers on the spreadsheet' Wars, but with extra pyramid selling.

Seriously.

Everything breaks down into numbers and you're clicking buttons to get to level 20. or 200. or level 5 billion, it doesn't matter, there is no end in sight, there's no skill involved, you're just one of pavlovs dogs ringing a bell in the hope that cake appears.

And it's not like I'm alone in this futility. There's thousands of people playing this every day. I have 47 people in my mafia alone, and it's a sure bet that most of them play every day, some are even involved in one of the hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of games exactly like it on the internet, and most of them are on facebook.

I even have one friend who didn't join in with my game because he's playing an identical game called MobWars. I've received invitations to join in DragonWars, VampireWars, VikingWars, WerewolfWars, FashionWars, StarWars, DopeWars, GangWars, SpaceWars, ParkingWars, CricketWars, DogWars, RobotWars, Ninja, Bleach, Spy, you name it, there they are.

Do an application search sometime on FaceBook for 'Wars' and you'll find upwards of seven hundred of these things, and that's just the ones with Wars in the title.

I have to tell you something, there's no skill here, it's just clicking buttons to make numbers go up!

Help me, I need to stop!

Of course, I have managed to cut down on playing it now.

I've found something new.

Treasure madness!

See, I'm now a hunter on strange tropical islands digging for treasure. You have to dig for gold to buy maps to dig for more treasure and build up collections.

Yes, it is exactly the same as the others, but at least this one involves little minigames every time you find actual treasure. It's got a bit of tetris, a bit of puzzle bobble, a bit of columns, a bit of memory matching and so on, and for now that's enough to keep me going.

One thing I didn't mention earlier was that each and every single one of which gives you the opportunity to trade real money to make your numbers go up. That's why there's so many, because you can make money out of it.

Actually, if anyone knows how to write these things, I've got a great idea.

How about Boob Wars?

You start with a flat-chested pigmy prostitute and you can go out and do johns for cash which you can spend on boob jobs and lingerie and body modification until you're a 90' gargantuan behemoth with five billion breasts and a kick ass brothel with all of your friends working there.

Obviously I don't want to go into too much detail but if any programmers want to pitch in with this, I can write up some designs and we'll make millions!

Who's in?