Zynga, the company that is known for its Facebook games, is testing out a way to bring its titles to the mobile phone. However, instead of going for the high-end smartphone users only, they are trying to reach the mass market with SMS.
This is not to say they’re ignoring the lucrative iPhone market — quite the contrary, the company offers few titles in the AppStore — the idea here is to reach a much wider audience of people with simple phones that can send and receive text messages.
For a start, they’re piloting the project with Mafia Wars, allowing users to fight opponents, perform jobs, visit the hospital, and top off their accounts via SMS. In order to play, users send special text command to MAFIA (62342). For instance – “A” stands for “assist a mafia member on a job,” “FF” for “fight your last opponent again,” and “PE” for “purchase energy refills.”
At the moment, Zynga is testing Mafia Wars with select users and will officially launch the service for a wider audience at later date. In order to sign-up to participate in the trial, visit apps.facebook.com/inthemafia and look for instructions under the “help” section.
[Via: MoCoNews]