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.

Sega goes social with Facebook games coming this month

Sega Play! Baseball
The publisher behind Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega, is getting into the US social games business. While the company has worked on Japanese social games before like a Yakuza game, this marks the first time Sega will be going toe-to-toe with Zynga and Bitter Enemies Friends. Not to mention Sega was already on the lookout for American talent. Its line of Facebook and Hi5 games, Sega Play!, will begin by the end of Feb. with a localization of Sega Play! Baseball, Total Telecom reports.

In fact, the game is available now on Facebook, but it hasn't exactly been localized completely. Much of the game is still in Japanese, so we'll refrain from judgment ... for now. When it finally is ready for American audiences it will be one of the first baseball Facebook games released by a major publisher. In March, the company will launch Sega Play! Football on Hi5.

Of course, the games will be free to play, but will charge for premium items and boosts. In other words, standard Facebook game fare. But let's hope the gameplay is anything but standard. Sega already has plans for global expansion, according to Total Telecom, so watch out, Zynga.