Zynga launches Mafia Wars 2 on Google+

Social gaming giant Zynga today announced it is bringing its latest online social game, Mafia Wars 2, to Google’s online social network, Google+.

Mafia Wars 2 is a deeper and more graphically appealing version of Mafia Wars, which was one of Zynga’s earliest and most popular games on Facebook, which came out in April 2008. The new game features better graphics, more animations and cartoon-like gun battles. It’s more similar to Zynga’s social games with complex role-playing game elements, such as CityVille and FarmVille.

Zynga brought its most popular online game, CityVille, to Google+ around three weeks ago. CityVille has more than 76 million monthly active users on Facebook, while its nearest competitor The Sims Social has more than 66 million monthly active users.

Zynga has built its business on social games on Facebook, and it currently has more than 250 million monthly active users, according to AppData. The company has been so successful that it recently filed to go public in order to raise up to $1 billion, and it made $90 million in income last year. But the company has been reliant on Facebook and its Facebook Credits virtual currency transaction system. Google+ gives Zynga a way to generate revenue independent of Facebook.

Google’s social network attracted a reported 20 million visitors shortly after it launched in June. While it doesn’t compare to Facebook’s staggering 750 million users or Twitter’s sizable 200 million users, those networks have been around much longer.