Zynga Unveils Mafia Wars 2

Social gaming giant Zynga on Tuesday confirmed its next big title -- Mafia Wars 2 -- the follow-up to one of the company's first breakout hits. The sequel, which Zynga said is "coming soon," is part of a brand that stands apart from the happy-go-lucky settings of other Zynga games like FarmVille and CityVille. In Mafia Wars, social network users play together to advance a criminal empire. The company called Mafia Wars 2 [YouTube] "Zynga's most bad-ass game to date." Zynga also said that the sequel will include "a vast 3D world" -- something that the first Mafia Wars, launched in 2008, lacked. Zynga said that it will be revealing more details about Mafia Wars 2 later this month. Across the course of its life, Mafia Wars has appeared on numerous social networking sites including Facebook, and at one time, MySpace, before Zynga pulled the game from that network earlier this year. The game is also available on iPhone. AppData lists that Mafia Wars still attracts over 875,000 daily active users, down from 1.1 million just one month ago.