The Godfather Gets Social

Kabam announced the exclusive commercial launch of The Godfather: Five Families on Google+. The Godfather: Five Families is the fastest growing beta game in Kabam’s history. The browser based, free-to-play online multiplayer game is set in the Prohibition era preceding the Oscar winning films, with players joining crime families and battling for money, power, and respect. The Godfather: Five Families marks the first time a major movie franchise has expanded its storylines to the social gaming world.

Like all Kabam hardcore social games, The Godfather: Five Families combines elements of MMO-style play with the connectivity and interaction of social networks. Kabam exclusively licensed The Godfather franchise for social gaming from Paramount Digital Entertainment and partnered with Paramount, creators of The Godfather films, in developing the storyline and game. The massively multiplayer social game features the famous Five Families of The Godfather world set in an open-ended storyline that allows players to create their own destinies.

“The Godfather: Five Families has enjoyed the best ever beta period for a Kabam game,” said Chris Carvalho, Chief Operating Officer of Kabam. “To support the exclusive launch on The Godfather: Five Families on Google+, Google will provide promotional support to maximize the game’s visibility to Google+ users. This is our fourth title to launch on Google+ and they have repeatedly exceeded our expectations.”

The Godfather: Five Families offers a strategy and RPG MMO game-style designed to engage those who seek a deeper, more engaging game experience. Its competitive interaction, territory building, resource management and synchronous game play mechanic create an immersive game world that players can enjoy for hours. The game also features a unique, multi-level community faction system that reinforces individual play as well as group collaboration and support.

Players enter the game as low-level gangsters and join one of the Five Families (Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Stracci and Cuneo), each of which confer unique benefits such as extra income from nightclubs and other illicit entertainment. Player progress and success accrues to themselves as well as their family. In turn, the stronger each family gets, the more bonuses each player in that family receive. Players will be able to use Circles to share help, information, and experiences with their Family and Crew, making Google+ games the perfect home for this style of deeper social game.

Players can also put together a smaller alliance, or Crew, of street tested wise guys to rise through the ranks and build their own criminal empire. Players gain in power and rank by intimidating and collecting from their neighbors while gathering and building better weapons, skills, and equipment. To succeed, they must battle and crush their rivals, take over territory and, above all, protect the Family. The stakes are high, as the player who earns the highest Respect in their Family becomes The Don of that crime family; both respected and feared by all other players.

“The Family faction group has proven particularly strong in The Godfather: Five Families, giving players a larger social entity to belong to alongside their Crew of allied players,” said Larry Koh, GM of The Godfather: Five Families. “This innovative Family System, along with our new multi-tiered ranking system and other game design features, result in what we believe is the most active PvP activity in our portfolio with a higher degree of synchronous message between team players and rivals. It’s fascinating to see the different Families battle for supremacy, and also interesting to see how other players treat The Don of their Family, even waiting for orders from him before taking action, just as they would a real mafia Don. These are just a few of the competitive and social dynamics that make The Godfather stand out as a unique new hardcore social game, one that keeps players engaged for a long period of time.”