

HN review: thoughts on Blue Frog Gaming's new Twitter game? - mattmaroon
http://www.playstarfleet.com

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axod
do _NOT_ automatically tweet this "Join my crew in Starfleet Commander!
<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'?

~~~
mattmaroon
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.

~~~
patio11
_we're not as familiar with Twitter as a lot of people here probably are_

Well, here's the 5 second description of Twitter from a guy who sells bingo
cards to elementary schoolteachers to probably the only person here who knows
less about it than him: when somebody tweets, it interrupts the day of their
friends and coworkers. Their friends and coworkers signed up to be
interrupted, because they trusted that friend to not waste their time. If that
friend wastes their time, they'd revoke the permission and trust that friend
less.

You'll pointedly notice the distinct lack of "I think I'm going to ring a few
hundred phones on a different continent three times in ten minutes as a
consequence of playing a 4X game."

~~~
mattmaroon
How many people get SMSed every tweet? Or do you just mean DMs. I know I
quickly turned off all SMSes other than DMs, but have no idea if that is
typical Twitter behavior.

~~~
axod
You seem to be totally missing the point here.

Don't spam. Simple. Don't do it.

~~~
mattmaroon
That's not simple at all. One man's spam is another man's ham. In games where
these things are asked for specifically before playing, many people leave them
on.

In our game you can turn them off on the options page. We don't make that
clear enough, and there's one Tweet that cannot be prevented. We're fixing
that.

------
ivankirigin
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
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.

------
JustAGeek
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
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.

------
sachinag
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> . That's lame.

~~~
mattmaroon
Not even sure how that's possible but we'll fix it.

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jlees
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.

------
r11t
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.

------
mattmaroon
Ok, be brutal.

~~~
patio11
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.

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

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ivankirigin
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.

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

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

