Over the past few days, perhaps you’ve seen a few tweets pop up in your stream from people you follow that end with the “spymaster” hashtag. If not, it’s likely you will soon. Spymaster is a new social game based around Twitter in which you do spy-like things such as buy things on the black market, assassinations and put money in Swiss bank accounts.
For doing all of these various tasks, you get in-game fake money, and/or points to level-up to become a better spymaster. But if you try to do too much, too often, it will wear on your body and you will lose energy points. Plus, if you fail in assassination or other tasks, you can get injured and lose money. But the genius of this game is its tie-in to Twitter. You sign-up for the game with your Twitter name using OAuth, and your fellow spies are other Twitter users. So when you attempt to assassinate one of them, it will tweet that out to all of your followers including both of your names — and to the followers of the person you tried to assassinate, if they turn the setting on.
These Twitter notifications are the real key to the game. There are a bunch of activities within Spymaster that you can set up to automatically tweet out when you do them. These include securing a new safe house, buying something on the black market, and even failing in an attempt to assassinate someone, among other things. The more of these you elect to tweet out, the more money you will earn for doing stuff. But it’s a delicate balance, because if you tweet out too much of your activities, you run the very real risk of annoying your other Twitter followers.
Co-founder Eston Bond is clearly aware of this, saying that with just a very small group of users, some are already finding the tweet updates “a bit noisy.” But it’s easy to toggle them on and off on the game’s site. And after playing around with a few different settings, I find that “Assassinating a user,”
“Securing a new Safe House,” and “Spymaster level increase,” are some pretty good ones to send out as they don’t bombard your users since you don’t do each of those all that often (well maybe assassination, but that’s just a fun tweet). If you turned on every task you did or every black market purchase you make though, your tweet stream can get ugly — fast.
But it’s really quite ingenious. Because the game relies on these tweets, each of which is hashtagged and sent with a URL for the game, word about the game is spreading like crazy with just a select few beta users. The game is being opened up more tomorrow for public testing tomorrow, Bond tells me. And when it is opened up, it should spread even more quickly because a large component is “Converting Spies,” which is taking your Twitter followers (regular “spies”) and sending them direct messages to join your spy network, converting them to “spymasters.” The bigger your spy network, the better your spymaster will be in the game at things like assassinations.
Definitely part of the draw of Spymaster is the whole spy thing — it’s hilarious. Spies who do sign up to become spymasters opt-in to one of the various spy agencies — either the CIA, the British SIS or the Russian FSB. Which group you sign up for helps determine your spy network as well. And depending on which network you’re in, you can wire money to spymasters in other networks, but you will have different (fake) currencies. But the money is all converted with the real-time exchange rates, Bond tells me. Brilliant.
Spymaster is a side project of iList, a classified listing site for your friends. Aside from Bond, it was created by Chris Abad (iList’s CEO), and Albert Choi and Ben Myles. I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of spymaster hashtags tomorrow on Twitter — hopefully users figure out how to limit their noise. But if they don’t, feel free to assassinate them.
That aspect is another brilliant part of the game — just when I think I’m done playing, I get a message that someone tried to kill me, so naturally I hop back on and try to kill them. It’s beautiful, really. Or, as my fellow spymaster Drew Olanoff puts it, “Just when I try to leave. They pull me back in.” That’s the theme of just about every spy movie ever made.
I’ve already lost hours. I love the wait screen whilst attempting an assassination.
I wounded @erickschonfeld, which made sense, but your wounding me was uncalled for and will not be forgotten.
Dude, I was just um “testing” things out.
I lost energy. But will try and gain more by killing my “noisy” follower… wish me good luck!
Super cool game!!! Who is the master brain behind this? Whoever is it, they have done a remarkable job!!!
Has iList and the guys there done any other popular game like this before?
This was our first venture in the gaming space. We had a lot of fun doing it though.
I used to work as a Product Designer at Facebook, so I’ve seen a lot of social game successes (and failures) before. Like Chris said, this is our first venture into this. I don’t think any of us have built a social game before.
Congrats on this one.
The game is really fun, but in order to have the MAXIMUM amount of fun you should have all of your followers play too. You’ll become super powerful and kick butt.
Make sure you be nice to @eston or he’ll pwn your spies (or give you lots of money)
Oh, c’mon. You’re just blogging about it because you’ve already spent so much time playing that you needed the excuse. If I hadn’t knocked off for the night at RWW, I’d probably have done the same.
We need to have some kind of inter-blog agreement not to constantly try to assassinate one another…
This is the first time I’ve had superfun playing a game since Mario Kart 64, dude.
Damnit, you call a truce just as I was about to assassinate you.
I love that this guy’s last name is Bond.
Bond. Eston Bond. And oddly enough, I met him once while seeing Quantum of Solace.
MG,
When one tries to assassinate another, what happens? In other words, is there like an “assassinate button” that, upon click, goes off and does some magic then returns to say you were or were not made dead?
Oh, and btw, as soon as I get access I’m comin 4 u
TJ
Yes, that’s pretty much exactly how it works. I’ll upload a pic of the assassination waiting screen and will send you an invite.
Hi MG,
How about sending me an invite as well?
Uh oh. I remember when these games came to Facebook. Right around the time they became much less useful for collaboration and adding value to business.
That doesn’t mean I’m not in – this is like the Matrix-meets-Gotcha.
Zynga is a company that make many of these games – and with this one, may have been out-zunged?!? OK that might npt even be a proper word, but I think all you know what I mean… that made sense in my head.
If you’re on any of the social networks and play “Mafia Wars” – because on one of them I’m addicted – if you private tweet me a message me I’ll tell you where, because I need a bigger family.
Yeh, reminds a bit of mafia wars…had a time when I was getting like a hundred requests everyother day to join a mafia.
Cool stuff.
i’m just happy that we’ve returned to our regularly scheduled programming (Yeah, I said it).
– on Twitter
I just love the co-founders CrunchBase photos. Nice work @dwr.
Has anyone checked out the company behind this game, iList, Inc.? Looks like a direct marketing company. Hmmmm. Do I smell someone cooking SPAM?
Maybe these guys aren’t the same as http://www.ilistinc.com. If not, they may want to rethink their company name. : ) Looks like an awesome game though.
I tried to assassinate MG, and I FAILED
I thought Twitter already assassinated my time.
Its Barcelona.
Yes the main page of spymaster is the ground of the srteets of Barcelona!
Funy!
The flor of a lot of the streets of barcelona were disigned by modernist arquitects and artist.
Regards from Barcelona
Martí
Correct! You’ve found a designer’s easter egg. I was inspired by a lot of the work of Antoni Gaudí in the few weeks prior to building Spymaster. Barcelona is also offered as a Spymaster safe house location in higher levels.
Im surprised it took xwars this long to get to twitter. Twitter will die a painful death at the hands of social games (like every other platform).
second thing i attempted to do – go after Louis, “not enough energy” – seems right! nice work @estron
Thanks.
You may also want to thank @chrisabad, @benmyles and @albertchoi because without those guys you wouldn’t have a game— just some JavaScript, the invite page, a lot of mockups, a game specification doc, a storyline, some game formulas and a visual identity. 
well done chap.
This looks great!
Chris and Eston and Co, great job.
It will be a little like playing Majestic, I really wish they would make a game like that again. The Calls and messages were creepy.
http://en.wikip.../wiki/Majestic_(video_game)
I look forward to playing and helping promote the game.
Regards and Thanks!
Mark Taylor
Twitter = @mtaylor
The Power of TechCrunch Compels you!!
I want an invite too!
Wait wtf you played Majestic?
SONOFABITCHIWANTEDTOPLAYTHATTOO
omg, i loved majestic. LOVED.
I have a couple friends who LIVED on Travian for a couple months. They’ll freak out when I tell them about this one.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep up with all your tweet channels while acquiring funds on the tweet black market, plan to assassinate your fellow tweeters (can’t be a bad idea for some, surely) and all round lose time and in the process, turning twitter into a social network game.
This message will self destruct in………..
5
4
3
2
1
BOOM!!!!!
Very addictive game, I don’t see the intelligence activity in my network from the dashboard. Is that displayed in later levels?
I want an invite too!
Sent you an invitation..
Hey MG & TC crew,
At itch.com my partner and I develop several different MMO’s. We recently released one that is ‘death and torture’ themed, which isn’t “family-friendly” enough for our main site. The dark theme makes it difficult to advertise via traditional means that we’ve relied on for our other games, so we’re very soon releasing a twitter edition to get the word out that leverages twitter in a similar way to spymaster … if you’re interested you and/or your readers can sign up to be notified of the twitter release at
http://www.deme...com/twitter.cfm
PS – I hope leaving the link here is ok. If not feel free to remove some or all of my comment … just figured it’s relevant to this article.
Hm the Demented RPG looks intewresting too. I put my email addy in there taymar@yahoo.com.
Oh wow. This looks amazing.
Anyone have a spare invite I could have? Ta!
I demand to be in so I can do my best Kenny Powers impression.
Invite por favor for a loyal Tech/Gear reader
@rgoodwin btw, duh.
Really?
Can someone explain to me how this will add any value to twitter? Moreover, explain to me how this ‘company’ plans to monetize this worthless game. Things like this make twitter even less appealing than it did 2 weeks ago.
Clayton Bigsby I can explain how this will add value in 1 word or 2
- Kids- -Bored-
I sent the links lol
I dunno, an idle mind can become the devils playground
it’ll help keep keep people busy with it
It won’t “add value”. They may have plans to monetize, but that’s their business. Maybe if you thought less about money and enjoyed yourself a bit more, you’d be less of a miserable old scroat!
it will add value to the user, the players will want their twiiter more, instead of becoming bored and wondering off, it’s just something to do with it
where i sent the links, they might not even play
but I know what interests them lol
What is the difference between this and existing assassination theme games like http://www.wantedthegame.com ?
Spymaster uses twitter to spam out activities, thats it? It’s smart marketing but how does it ad to the gameplay?
Because people who normally don’t play games are seeing their friends on Twitter playing, and are joining in. I’m seeing friends I know who I’ve never seen interested in games playing.
oh awesome, spying and sneaking around stuff
can an outsider can block an assassination lol
it’s a twitter mission
A truly wonderful idea for a game. Creative and relevant to the Twitter ecology.
On the other hand, the comment thread on this post should be preserved in amber for study by future Webrassic Park scientists on the unique and strange microcosm the Silicon Valley is (speaking as an outsider). The cross company, cross topical, and cross purpose links amongst the players/commenters indicates an underlying interconnecting social structure in business and friends that is fascinating and unique to the Web era, especially to an outsider like myself.
It’s either fodder for a wild book on Silicon Valley commerce and social dynamics, or iList’s next game.
Great job guys. It is an amazing game
Call me when twitter gets assassinated. Kthxbai
LOL
http://www.secr....com/index.html
busy busy busty
Very interesting
Excellent work guys..I even forgive you for the time the entire iList team ganged up on me and stole all of my Rubels…
@AlexBard Just remember that I wasn’t in that gang of thugs. I still love you man
Anyone have any spare invites?
twitter… twitter
hey you know what? twitter
oh I know… twitter
tweet twitter
Could @henrywilson please have an invite
Its games like these that made me stop using Facebook. PLEASE don’t let them infect Twitter.
“Assassinate”? “Rewards” for killing people? Engineering mind, body and society towards the joys of killing people and worse yet, finding it entertaining?
Such people should be treated like public smokers: public smokers should be forced to receive a tracheotomy, have a nonremoveable mechanized tourniquet that always gets tighter, never loosens, and receive vivisection to explore how they could be so cruel, both to themselves and bloated with such unconscionable conceit as to blow such crap onto other beings, especially other humans.
Something similar should be done with and to people who both delight in hurting others and most assuredly to the developers to such beastiality.
Sounds Goooood!
How do I sever the Twitter/Spymaster account linkage? hm.
So if I can’t “block this app” like I can on Facebook, I guess I’m going to just have to unfollow all the people who spam Twitter with this garbage.
I’ll be honest, what hook me on his and not other social games was both the beautiful design++ AND the ability to shut ANY public notifications!!
I was ranting about some users being really noisy and blaming the game (I’ve seen my share of social games that REQUIRE noise aka spam in order to work — not the case with this one). But that was just what got me INTO it… What kept me in was, like I said, the beautiful interface!
Congrats folks
can’t wait to see it
Sounds like iMob for the iPhone, which is no fun at all. Any comparison?
WIll be the death of twitter. I can’t stand all the stupid notices I get I have begun unfollowing people who play the game.
So it is basically Mafia Wars played via Twitter. It sounds incredibly annoying.
If it’s a Mafia Wars type of game via twitter then I’m definitely interested. I’m going to sign up now. Innovation is sort of cool.
Here is how to automate spymaster stask, so you can do work, sleep or whatever you fancy while the moneys and experience keep flowing in.
http://ladg.wor...mate-spymaster/
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