History
Dimma Davidoff (Russian: Дми́трий Давы́дов, Dmitriy Davydov) is generally acknowledged as the game's creator. He dates the first game to spring 1986 at the Psychology Department of Moscow State University, spreading to classrooms, dorms, and summer camps of Moscow University. Wired attributes the creation to Davidoff but dates the first game to 1987, with 1986 being the year in which Davidoff was starting the work which would produce Mafia. He developed the game to combine psychology research with his duties teaching high school students. The game became popular in other Soviet colleges and schools and in the 1990s it began to be played in Europe and then the United States. By the mid nineties a version of the game became a Latvian television series (with a parliamentary setting, and played by Latvian celebrities).
Andrew Plotkin gave the rules a werewolf theme in 1997, arguing that the mafia aren't that big a cultural reference, and that the werewolf concept fit the idea of a hidden enemy who looked normal during the daytime. Although the game can be played with a deck of poker cards or slips of paper, Looney Labs successfully marketed a commercial version of the game as Are You a Werewolf?, which was later followed by Asmodee Editions under the title Werewolves of Millers Hollow, Mayfair Games as Lupus in Tabula and Bezier Games as Ted Alspach's Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition. A Cthulhu Mythos variant (Do You Worship Cthulhu) was published in 2006.
Mafia and a variant called Thing have been played at science fiction writers' workshops since 1998, and have become an integral part of the annual Clarion and Viable Paradise workshops. The Werewolf variant of Mafia became widespread at major tech events, including the Game Developers Conference, ETech, Foo Camps, and South By Southwest.
In 1998 the Kaliningrad Higher school of the Internal Affairs Ministry published the methodical textbook Nonverbal communications. Developing role-playing games 'Mafia' and 'Murderer' for a course on Visual psychodiagnostics, to teach various methods of reading body language and nonverbal signals.
A variation of Mafia was used to promote the film Cry_Wolf (2005), having one wolf and a number of sheep, with the computer acting as shepherd. Writer Adam Gopnik described playing weekly Mafia games in New York City in Through the Children's Gate.
In March 2006 Ernest Fedorov was running a Mafia Club in Kiev, using his own patented variation of the rules. The club organizes games, rates players, and awards prizes (including a Sicily trip for their tournament-series champion).
In June 2006, a Rockingham school inquiry was launched after parents complained of the traumatic effects classroom Mafia was having on their fifth-grade children.
Mafia was called one of the 50 most historically and culturally significant games published since 1800 by about.com.
Read more about this topic: Mafia (party Game)
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