4 ms·

HN review: thoughts on Blue Frog Gaming's new Twitter game?

16 points by mattmaroon 17y ago

mattmaroon 17y ago
Ok, be brutal.
- patio11 17y ago
  Here we go: I've got no indication of there being anything I'll enjoy beyond that signup button, and no indication that you won't spam my friends as soon as I click it. Given that the signup button is the only thing visible, well, this is going to be a pretty quick review.
- jrmurad 17y ago
  Note: I'm not a Twitter power-user so I may be ignorant of something. When I clicked the link and it asked me for authorization to access my account, I hesitated. I went back to the link you provided to see if there was any information regarding what this means and why I should do it. In particular, I would like, prior to authorizing: descriptions of (1) the game itself (2) what impact it has on my Twitter account.
- crad 17y ago
  It appears to be nothing but a pyramid scheme and spammy game. As others said, there's nothing that says what the game is. I did not link my account because you didn't tell me what you were going to do with it.
- garply 17y ago
  Spamming is not OK.
- rodyancy 17y ago
  There are several iPhone apps linked to twitter that notify users that they are about to tweet such and such. If you do this, make it easy to decline and continue to play. You will lose some of the viral aspect, but you will satisfy the HN crowd. To gain back virality let players gain points or money or whatever on a per tweet basis. I'm sure you already do this. Which brings me to my next point..I don't know if you do this, because I signed up and tried to play and I had no idea what to do. Granted, I'm probably not your target audience, because I've never played these types of games (Mob Wars, Youville, etc.) Basically, you've got to boil it down either on the splash page, or the initial load (maybe with a modal popup), if you want inexperienced users, who don't have hours to investigate, to play.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  I suppose I should have said "be brutal, but helpful." A bunch of people telling me the same thing, then downvoting me for simple explanations due to nonagreement is pretty useless. Guess I learned my lesson.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jlees 17y ago
I don't like the fact I have to allow Twitter access before I even know what the game is. My first guess is "Spymaster in space", but nothing on the page actually tells me if that's right or not... Clicking through to about and the blog tells me more, but it's a bit of a jump.
axod 17y ago
do NOT automatically tweet this "Join my crew in Starfleet Commander! http://bit.ly/3SKmIA http://bit.ly/3SKmIA #starfleet" without asking me. ffs. That's a lame move. If you need to rely on auto-spamming, something is amiss. Why would you think people would be ok with it tweeting using your account without asking you first? I hesitated before allowing access, and actually changed to using a different test twitter account before I did - good job too. Is twitter actually integral to the game? Or just a cheap spammy way to 'go viral'?
- JustAGeek 17y ago
  Oh, so it is one of those games, I'm glad I didn't click the button...
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Yeah, we have a way to turn them off, but are working on possibly modifying the startup flow to be more like Spymaster's current one where it asks you before you signup. Sorry if we came off as too spammy. We'll fix it somehow, just trying to find the best way. Twitter is useful, it's not entirely integral yet. It will be though as we change things to for instance DM you when you're getting attacked, uses tweets for the internal messaging system, etc. It's a port of a Facebook app that's doing well, the reason we posted this here but did not for the FB app is that we're not as familiar with Twitter as a lot of people here probably are, and some things change in translation.
  - axod 17y ago
    >> "possibly modifying the startup flow to be more like Spymaster's current one where it asks you before you signup." eg 'Is it ok if I send a spam tweet out to try and get some more traffic?' Good luck with that. Did you even try the signup process out yourselves before you posted here? :/ AFAIK auto-spam like this is impossible on facebook, where every post to your wall etc must be allowed or denied. Much better.
    - mattmaroon 17y ago
      Well its common to Twitter games, and when I asked Twitter for guidelines that was not one of the things they said to avoid. (Automatically DMing was, for instance.) Sign up for 140mafia for instance and it does the same thing we do.
sachinag 17y ago
Hunh. I just clicked the link to do login with Twitter, but I didn't actually join the game and it Tweeted out on my behalf - http://twitter.com/sachinag/status/4811174469 http://twitter.com/sachinag/status/4811174469 . That's lame.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Not even sure how that's possible but we'll fix it.
r11t 17y ago
A video that shows the features of the game and how it is played or at least a couple of screenshots might make me consider playing the game.
JustAGeek 17y ago
Maybe there should be something explaining how exactly it works. I'm not going to click on that green button which apparently already logs me in via Twitter and might already tweet to my followers with something a la "I've just joined Starfleet" and I don't think my followers will like that. Frankly, I usually dislike games like because they tend to be borderline spam yet I wanted to check it out for curiosity - but well...
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Yeah, we do need more explanation on the splash page probably. We just copied the design of the other big Twitter games to get something launched, but should further improve it.
ivankirigin 17y ago
From an email to Matt. Would be interesting to hear if others agree. Try to get beyond the obviously-you-should-stop-spamming issue. ---- you gotta let me queue up build tasks (or it might be that i spent all my money on my first click) also is the "time" under "build" the "build time"? also, you should "ajax in" the sub tabs like research, shipyard, etc. the page will load a lot faster. You could make it feel like a desktop app depending on the transitions. I'll play it a bit more and send any more thoughts. Ohh, and you totally should try to get @levarburton on this. I would test having an "invite levar" button. that says: ".@levarburton please join my crew in starfleet command! [link]" Because you have their auth, you can make it push-button. No extra confirmation step needed. Maybe a sidebar with levar's pic, and an entry field with that default text. Also, it isn't clear whether inviting friends sends a DM. I think it does because there is a limit there. Have you included all the people that follow me? I'd just have a "select all" and a auto-complete entry field. Maybe scrape the last 10 @replies i've sent and include those people. Hell, scrape the last 10 DMs, because you know I'm willing to send them DMs.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  There's no build queue in the game for game design reasons. The idea is that the game is all about attacking and taking stuff from people. You're not that far yet, but it comes into play after a couple days. If people could pay for a bunch of buildings at once, there would be a lot fewer spare resources around to attack. We may, however, do a build queue that just doesn't pay for future buildings until the time to build them comes. For now we just left that out for UI simplicity. As for the Twitter ideas, thanks. We should make it more clear that its a DM. Also prepopulating with your last replies rather than just alphabetical is f'ing brilliant. That idea alone is worth having posted here.
ivankirigin 17y ago
I don't like the nav configuration, with ~7 top items, and ~7 sub items on home. You need to reorder that for it to make sense.
joshu 17y ago
Starf Leet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyqAglaojY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyqAglaojY (second clip)
seiji 17y ago
Is this officially licensed or just a ripoff of the Star Trek brand?
Tichy 17y ago
What is the relation to Twitter, except for the spamming? It looks like ever other browser game on the market.

16 points by mattmaroon 17y ago

mattmaroon 17y ago

Ok, be brutal.

patio11 17y ago
Here we go: I've got no indication of there being anything I'll enjoy beyond that signup button, and no indication that you won't spam my friends as soon as I click it. Given that the signup button is the only thing visible, well, this is going to be a pretty quick review.
jrmurad 17y ago
Note: I'm not a Twitter power-user so I may be ignorant of something. When I clicked the link and it asked me for authorization to access my account, I hesitated. I went back to the link you provided to see if there was any information regarding what this means and why I should do it. In particular, I would like, prior to authorizing: descriptions of (1) the game itself (2) what impact it has on my Twitter account.
crad 17y ago
It appears to be nothing but a pyramid scheme and spammy game. As others said, there's nothing that says what the game is. I did not link my account because you didn't tell me what you were going to do with it.
garply 17y ago
Spamming is not OK.
rodyancy 17y ago
There are several iPhone apps linked to twitter that notify users that they are about to tweet such and such. If you do this, make it easy to decline and continue to play. You will lose some of the viral aspect, but you will satisfy the HN crowd. To gain back virality let players gain points or money or whatever on a per tweet basis. I'm sure you already do this. Which brings me to my next point..I don't know if you do this, because I signed up and tried to play and I had no idea what to do. Granted, I'm probably not your target audience, because I've never played these types of games (Mob Wars, Youville, etc.) Basically, you've got to boil it down either on the splash page, or the initial load (maybe with a modal popup), if you want inexperienced users, who don't have hours to investigate, to play.
mattmaroon 17y ago
I suppose I should have said "be brutal, but helpful." A bunch of people telling me the same thing, then downvoting me for simple explanations due to nonagreement is pretty useless. Guess I learned my lesson.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jlees 17y ago

I don't like the fact I have to allow Twitter access before I even know what the game is. My first guess is "Spymaster in space", but nothing on the page actually tells me if that's right or not... Clicking through to about and the blog tells me more, but it's a bit of a jump.

axod 17y ago

do NOT automatically tweet this "Join my crew in Starfleet Commander! http://bit.ly/3SKmIA http://bit.ly/3SKmIA #starfleet" without asking me. ffs. That's a lame move. If you need to rely on auto-spamming, something is amiss. Why would you think people would be ok with it tweeting using your account without asking you first? I hesitated before allowing access, and actually changed to using a different test twitter account before I did - good job too. Is twitter actually integral to the game? Or just a cheap spammy way to 'go viral'?

JustAGeek 17y ago
Oh, so it is one of those games, I'm glad I didn't click the button...
mattmaroon 17y ago
Yeah, we have a way to turn them off, but are working on possibly modifying the startup flow to be more like Spymaster's current one where it asks you before you signup. Sorry if we came off as too spammy. We'll fix it somehow, just trying to find the best way. Twitter is useful, it's not entirely integral yet. It will be though as we change things to for instance DM you when you're getting attacked, uses tweets for the internal messaging system, etc. It's a port of a Facebook app that's doing well, the reason we posted this here but did not for the FB app is that we're not as familiar with Twitter as a lot of people here probably are, and some things change in translation.
- axod 17y ago
  >> "possibly modifying the startup flow to be more like Spymaster's current one where it asks you before you signup." eg 'Is it ok if I send a spam tweet out to try and get some more traffic?' Good luck with that. Did you even try the signup process out yourselves before you posted here? :/ AFAIK auto-spam like this is impossible on facebook, where every post to your wall etc must be allowed or denied. Much better.
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    Well its common to Twitter games, and when I asked Twitter for guidelines that was not one of the things they said to avoid. (Automatically DMing was, for instance.) Sign up for 140mafia for instance and it does the same thing we do.

sachinag 17y ago

Hunh. I just clicked the link to do login with Twitter, but I didn't actually join the game and it Tweeted out on my behalf - http://twitter.com/sachinag/status/4811174469 http://twitter.com/sachinag/status/4811174469 . That's lame.

mattmaroon 17y ago
Not even sure how that's possible but we'll fix it.

r11t 17y ago

A video that shows the features of the game and how it is played or at least a couple of screenshots might make me consider playing the game.

JustAGeek 17y ago

Maybe there should be something explaining how exactly it works. I'm not going to click on that green button which apparently already logs me in via Twitter and might already tweet to my followers with something a la "I've just joined Starfleet" and I don't think my followers will like that. Frankly, I usually dislike games like because they tend to be borderline spam yet I wanted to check it out for curiosity - but well...

mattmaroon 17y ago
Yeah, we do need more explanation on the splash page probably. We just copied the design of the other big Twitter games to get something launched, but should further improve it.

ivankirigin 17y ago

From an email to Matt. Would be interesting to hear if others agree. Try to get beyond the obviously-you-should-stop-spamming issue. ---- you gotta let me queue up build tasks (or it might be that i spent all my money on my first click) also is the "time" under "build" the "build time"? also, you should "ajax in" the sub tabs like research, shipyard, etc. the page will load a lot faster. You could make it feel like a desktop app depending on the transitions. I'll play it a bit more and send any more thoughts. Ohh, and you totally should try to get @levarburton on this. I would test having an "invite levar" button. that says: ".@levarburton please join my crew in starfleet command! [link]" Because you have their auth, you can make it push-button. No extra confirmation step needed. Maybe a sidebar with levar's pic, and an entry field with that default text. Also, it isn't clear whether inviting friends sends a DM. I think it does because there is a limit there. Have you included all the people that follow me? I'd just have a "select all" and a auto-complete entry field. Maybe scrape the last 10 @replies i've sent and include those people. Hell, scrape the last 10 DMs, because you know I'm willing to send them DMs.

mattmaroon 17y ago
There's no build queue in the game for game design reasons. The idea is that the game is all about attacking and taking stuff from people. You're not that far yet, but it comes into play after a couple days. If people could pay for a bunch of buildings at once, there would be a lot fewer spare resources around to attack. We may, however, do a build queue that just doesn't pay for future buildings until the time to build them comes. For now we just left that out for UI simplicity. As for the Twitter ideas, thanks. We should make it more clear that its a DM. Also prepopulating with your last replies rather than just alphabetical is f'ing brilliant. That idea alone is worth having posted here.

ivankirigin 17y ago

I don't like the nav configuration, with ~7 top items, and ~7 sub items on home. You need to reorder that for it to make sense.

joshu 17y ago

Starf Leet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyqAglaojY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyqAglaojY (second clip)

seiji 17y ago

Is this officially licensed or just a ripoff of the Star Trek brand?

Tichy 17y ago

What is the relation to Twitter, except for the spamming? It looks like ever other browser game on the market.