Little actual gameplay, needs robust missions

As you said, kaigani, Spymaster is in beta. We are in no way done with the project and have no intentions of leaving it as is. I suggest you keep your eyes peeled. Thank you for your ideas and suggestions.

I see your point, here are my thoughts inline with yours:

>>I'm very disappointed by the lack of missions. In my mind, you haven't launched a game, you've launched the framework for a game with no real substance behind it>>

I agree it's a shame that they did not focus more on variety and incremental increases according to level and inter agency rivalries. As a startups side project one can only hope they have more stuff in the works.

>>..Granted it is in beta, but I would suspect a massive dropoff as soon as people grow tired of the mechanic of acquiring funds and assassinating players...>>

Your a good case study - you only dropped off when you leveled out and couldn't really progress. That was some commitment you made, so arguably they just need to evolve the offering no?

>>The core mechanic is focussed on inviting other players, your friends on Twitter, to join. Not only is there little reward for doing so, but this encourages spamming.>>
The reward is higher attack/defence metrics, so I'd say the reward is pretty high actually. I also don't think it's spamming, a) because it's DM's and b) because they are the only way to work with the grain of twitter.

>>You did give complete flexibility in notifications, but I'd suggest you send only a single public notification (eg. "I've joined Spymaster") and then handle the rest via DMs so they don't pollute the timeline.>>

@edent made a really good point that with the new Twitter @ system where a tweet is immediately directed at someone only those also following that tweeter see it, so if all status tweets began with @playspymaster the problem would dissapear (take note spy master people!)

>>Anyhow, the site is slick and well designed. I hope you are able to introduce missions that will allow people to play and be entertained in 15-30 min blocks, without just feeling that they are grinding for points. >>

Not sure I agree entirely with that as I really enjoy the 5 minute chunks I play, still, It would be good to have that level of immersion.

I agree with your mostly agreeing with me, Alfie :)

I still think that they can turn SpyMaster into a really interesting and fun game, but they need to stop the spam and quickly evolve the gameplay so that it can accommodate different types of players – from the 5 minute chunk player like you, to people who want to play in longer sessions.

Even though it's 'in beta' (what isn't) – it has spread rapidly throughout Twitter – which means it's not really beta at all, in the true sense of the word.

So my worry is that they will damage their reputation early on and have people dropping off and unwilling to return.

Just like all the people who stopped watching Lost after series 1, no matter how many times I've told them how good it has become in the later episodes.