Zynga now speaks 'Mafia Wars' in Spanish, French, Italian and German

    Italian     French     Spanish
Sie habe vereist, Narr! That's "You just got iced, fool!" in German (roughly) and finally, Mafia Wars players from around the world can trash talk one another in their native tongue. Isn't the Internet beautiful? Zynga has introduced language support for Spanish, French, Italian and German to Mafia Wars. Taking a cue from the explosive CityVille, opening up the game to more languages could increase the game's player base considerably.

Well, Western languages at least. While I'm no developer, I'd imagine it's far easier to localize a game for Western language audiences than it is for Eastern language players. It all comes down to cultural differences and tolerances. While Europe is far different from the US culturally, its tolerance for violence, language and other cultural nuances are more similar to the US than, say, China. In fact, Zynga has specifically localized both FarmVille and Zynga Poker for Chinese audiences in the past year. With yet another game featuring multilingual support, it wouldn't be a terrible guess to predict this will become a growing trend in Zynga's future game development.

Language Support
To access the new languages in Mafia Wars, just click on the drop-down box in the upper right corner of the game screen and select "Languages." Then, a pop-up window will appear with the available languages. Select one and the game will refresh with the language you selected. Just so you know that Zynga is serious about being the social gaming company of the world, Mafia Wars fan pages have launched in the four newly supported languages as well. With a change like this, I wouldn't be surprised of "Mafia Nation" launched with multilingual support.