Inside Social Games

A few months ago, Addmired, a new start-up, brought its Facebook Mob Wars equivalent to the iPhone with iMob Online. In the months that followed, iPhone users downloaded the free, primarily text-based mafia Role Playing Game (RPG) in massive numbers. At its peak, it reached number four on the games charts.  However, like other Facebook social game developers, Addmired was not satisfied with just one type of RPG.

With the success of iMob and iVampires, Addmired began cloning the concept. The latest off-the-line?  Girl Wars.

Girl Wars can be summed up in three words: “Mobsters In Dresses.” As silly as that sounds, this game is iMob with bright and stimulating color schemes. Players earn cash, raise their “fashion,” shop for new items at the mall, and even get into “cat fights.” There is one main difference between Girl Wars and Addmired’s previous games: Users can unlock items much more quickly.

With a visual style that feels straight out of Claire’s Accessories, it’s unlikely more mature audiences will enjoy the game. While this means Addmired hit its target demographic for the game, a large portion of Girl Wars feels very cliché. More significantly, as pointed out by some commentators, “some women [might] find the game’s focus on clothing, malls, and ‘cat fights’ to be sexist.”

Of course there are similar concepts on Facebook and MySpace. User ratings of Girl Wars on the iPhone have ranged to the extremes. Most reviewers either found it terrible or really good (with a preference given slightly more to the latter).