TrueJournals

Tag: twitter

The Downfall of Spymaster

by on Jul.19, 2009, under thoughts

Spymaster has gone downhill since it has launched.  Recently, especially, some changes have been made that should not have been made.  There was nothing wrong with the way spymaster worked, and the way the game was played, but it was modified anyway.

The first change that was made was the one that really annoyed me.  Spymaster added another currency, “points”.  You can either purchase points, or get them by completing “free” offers (just give some company all your personal information), and points can be used to purchase “special items”.  These items give some players a huge advantage in the game.  This comes in the form of getting more spymasters, getting better odds of winning an assassination, or having your energy instantly rejuvinated.  The problem, once again, is that you can buy these points.  The one with the most real money wins.  This puts someone who has been playing spymaster and building up a social network on the same field as someone who has $100 to spare.  This is not what the game was designed for.  It was designed to help social network move forward, help meet new people, and have fun while doing it.

Recently, another change was made.  Instead of being exclusive with twitter, you can now log in to spymaster through facebook.  While this isn’t as bad as being able to buy your success, it seems like a bad move.  Being twitter exclusive gave spymaster an interesting edge.  What was so special about twitter?  I can’t quite say, but twitter seems more the place for short spymaster updates.

Perhaps, though, spymaster was destined to make this move.  Adding spymaster to twitter made it more like facebook.  Facebook recently introduced applications that can add updates to your feed and serve to annoy your friends because they now have to see the results of the quiz you took of “What Harry Potter character are you?!?”.  Twitter was free of this muckery.  If you were following a person, you were following an actual person, and the updates were soley their thoughts, whatever they were up to.  Now, spymaster is forcing twitter to follow in facebook’s footsteps.  Spymaster updates are just plain annoying.  I have enjoyed the game, and still think spymaster sending updates to twitter is counter-productive.  It annoys the people who are following you, and can cause close friends to stop following just due to the annoying updates from spymaster.

Maybe that’s why they added facebook.  They saw that they were killing twitter, and thought “Hmmm… facebook users are accustomed to this!”  So, spymaster is just contributing to the downfall of facebook, which has become less about social networking, and more about annoying your friends.

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Refactoring (again!)

by on Apr.10, 2009, under website

Yes, I realize that I need to stop doing things like this.  Hopefully, this will be the last time that I have to talk about redoing this website, but I want to get it right.  I was having too much trouble with joomla (it’s much too complex for my needs), so I’ve gone back to WordPress.  I’m working on getting the website looking how I want it, and then I’ll work on getting the content updated.  When all is said and done, my plan is for this website to be my central “hub” — where all project updates and thoughts, regardless of content, are posted here.  In accordance with this, my twitter updates will show on the right side, and every post I make should update my twitter status.

I’ve been terrible with blogging in the past, but this time I’ll work on it 😛

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