Zynga wants Mafia Wars designers, coders; creates contest for you

Zynga seems to be taking the "Real World" approach to crowd sourcing its potential hire base for new designers and programmers. The company is looking for new talent to join its Mafia Wars team, and it has created a contest for both designers and programmers to partake in and prove their worth. Design contestants are tasked with creating a Mafia Wars-themed puzzle game and filming the experience creatively. A free-spirited effort, for sure, but programmers must take a multiple choice test to gauge their engineering skills. (Software engineers, now you know where to look.)

However, Zynga is requiring no experience, no resumes--just a display of your creative or technical talents. (At least at first.) This goes to show what Zynga values above all else: skill. That's a comforting approach coming from a multi-billion dollar company, but it's also indicative of what Zynga might be working on. The company is looking for designers to create a board game, and the next Mafia Wars has been said to employ a lot of features seen in Crime City (namely the isometric perspective and world). These two pieces of information fit together rather nicely, no? Surely, this is speculation, but that will be confirmed or denied in due time.

Are you entering Zynga's game design hiring contest? What do you think of the company's approach to finding it's new talent? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.