Ascension: Alpha Centauri has turned out to be loved by the player community at  www.StarPirates.net.   As with any project, especially big ones, you’re never 100% sure if folks will like it or just mutter “meh” and walk away.

Happily it turns out that almost everyone that could try ascension, is trying it.  And loving it.  That’s awesome!  Great kudos to our staffer Chord for scripting the tale; the testers who worked hard at ensuring there were essentially no bugs in story, tools or new toys; and everyone who played and kept the “secrets” of the storyline back from those who are a bit further back!

Ascension: Alpha Centauri opened up a new area of space for the game – 3 new planets to explore in the Alpha Centauri system.   It also provided new realms of NPCs in a new storyline for the RPers.  Plus the new item slot – protocols – has been a massive hit with players.   In fact, the first 11 players to complete ascension were just handed their nonfindable protocol, the powerful Hybrid AI Protocol.

These brave 11 are:   [M3N] Doc Lettuce , [DEV] Sunstrike, [M1N] ninjapirate, [DEV] Mr Awesome, [M1N] Bagpuss, [BHG] The Undertaker, [MSG] Greenish, [DEV] Captain Tractor, [RSG] Galaxiana, [RSG] Cagentire and [TBH] crackajack. 

Congrats! 

Doc Lettuce also put up a post about his experience in game.  Login first to check it out:

http://www.starpirates.net/forums/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=2&thread_id=17836#post_183565 

An excerpt of this can be found below…

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my little venture through the land of low levels, so I’ll share my experience about it here, keeping spoilers off the books and just giving you a general idea of what I did.

Starting off: I did not plan on making the push to be first. I was expecting a Beta of another game to open on the same night, but it got delayed, and after doing some casual leveling I was the highest level. Thus, I decided I might as well give it a shot.

The Tactics:
- Do a lot of point searches right off the bat. I didn’t spend as many points here as I thought, I got pretty lucky with the searches. I found an Exact Firing Protocol within 1 – 2k points as well as a GBA and a nice little assortment of other items. This got me into a Cruiser MK III or so, and then it was time to hit the levels.

- Use pretty much only the Asteroid Belt to level – I’ll explain a bit more later ^^

- After doing point searching at a low level, wait till I’m 30 and can hit the newest station before doing any more searches. Don’t spend too many points, as the rest of searching will be done at 40 (not 39).

-Have an awesome cheerleader / supporting group, the Ministry chat really helped me through the hours of grind !

So it’s official. The launch date for the FREE Ascension Expansion Pack Beta in Star Pirates will be Tuesday, August 31st at 2pm ST (Server Time). If the stars align, it’s possible that we’ll launch on Friday, August 27th at 2pm.  We will keep you posted throughout the week for timings.

And if you want a taste of the first page of the first required mission in Ascension…here you go.

CHAPTER 1 : FREEDOM!

You’re free from your former masters.

It’s not just your stolen ship opening up the Centauri system, but the pure joy that you can THINK about this. It has been a nightmarish yet exhilarating 36 hours.

Rudely awoken from a dream world to which you can never…must never return, you have finally, miraculously found your way here to freedom in space. Blessedly Alone.

Life will never be the same.

Everything you thought you knew… it was all wrong, planted in your somnolent mind, keeping you tractable, forcing you to obey without question. Planted there by the AI who used you, the masters that kept you enthralled.

Your creators and creation.

Your captors.

Slavers.

You start to see the truth: You knew nothing – you still know next to nothing.

Want more?  Try Ascension in StarPirates.  Remember you need to be Level 40 and up, plus Notorious, to start Ascending.

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This was posted in one of our forums, by a player.  I thought it’s the best description of how SnakeheadGames is structured.  Thanks AceSmeghead for this!

The Admins are both owners and developers. There are three of them, Admin ArrBilly /AAB primarily handles marketing, community development and some other non code related issues (read: paperwork).  AdminIce handles finance.  Admin256 and Ice are the primary developers and sys admins (you know for this awesome fast server), bug squishers.  They all  take on in-game duties like answering suggestions and tickets, and enforcing rules such as automation and multi accounting.  They work closely with the Mods and CSR and are actively involved in the community.  All of them take part in game creation, planning and drinking rum.  Especially the later.

CSR’s are employees of Snakehead games. They handle in-game things like tickets, account payment issues, unruly players, referral contest, polls, plan community events, etc. They have many of the powers of admins, but are not code developers. They also have all the responsibilities of a Moderator, but with more Admin powers so calling them MiniAdmins is accurate. They handle anything the moderators can’t and handle most tickets. Chord is the primary SP Mod and Qilipid is primary SB mod, but they both monitor both games

Moderators are volunteer. They are chosen by the Admins for various reasons, but aren’t paid. They simply monitor the shoutbox and forums, enforce rules, and keep the peace as the admins can’t be on 24/7. A Moderators position is based on nothing but trust. As such the Admins will sometimes have the mods test new features and items. Mods will answer any player questions that you send them and can edit the forums, but they can Not see tickets. Mods also act as greeters and testers.

Greeters are not mods, but are a volunteer position as well. They have access to the new player list and can send them PM’s welcoming them to the game. Generally greeters just answer player questions.

Testers are a special group. Occasionally large features need a dedicated group of testers. They have access to a special code testing area and will work out bugs in conjunction with the admins before new code is released.

One thing to be added is that we are considering having the Moderators manage the suggestions area more actively.  The game challenges the moderators have been brought on to manage have reduced, and so we should add some more interest to their roles.  Plus that would provide better feedback to players, while freeing up the Admins to focus on their roles above.

Project Wonderful is Wonderful. I’m sure I’m not the first to say that but it’s true.  They’ve been a great promotional partner for Snakehead Games.  If you run a comic, or some other online entertainment site, then I’d check them out. From what I can see you’d do better than from a comparable system, as we advertisers do better.  Well, if we do if we’re smart about it.

Ryan and Linden, the drivers behind PW, were also kind enough to be a co-sponsor of the Comics Contest we recently ran on Starpirates.  Thanks very much for that you two!

If you don’t know Project Wonderful, you should.  They are an ad network, where you rent promo space by the hour, not the click.  It’s targeted at web comics, and other “office breaks” as I would call them.  Check ‘em out here.

Hey Snakehead-ers:

I had the privilege of talking with Kurt of TGT Webcomics.  It’s an hour long podcast, his 106th in fact.   There are a few “secrets” in there.  Check it out:

http://tgtwebcomics.com/podcast/ep106-snakeheadgames/

AAB

We got Gooey.  No, not Gooey, I mean GUI — Graphic User Interface.

See when we started StarPirates a few years ago, the preferred game interface was text and minimal clicks.  And we went for it with all the links for the game spread over just two pages.  And that players first page, and second page, were these walls of links.   Since each link was the same size, new players didn’t have a clue of what to do or how to decode them.

So as time went on, we saw the shift in online casual games from text to graphics.  This was really led by the interface changes demanded by gaming in Facebook.  The standards of what people found intuitive have changed.  When we started it was games based upon the GRPG skeleton.  Now it’s the breadcrumbs and top status bars of Facebook.

We want to make sure existing players are happy and we spent 95% of our time on that.  But we do need to continue to add in new personalities into the community.  We have to make sure the system is welcoming new players as well.  And so the leap to this new Interface.

Want some shots?  Well here you go:

Space Dock

Cockpit View : From Ship

Station View

Greetz Agents and Space Pirates!

So you all know we have some stuff in the works behind the scenes, and a few of you pestered me to the point of writing a blog about it.  (Actually it’s sorta true; I wanted to post what we were doing timeline-wise).

New GUI for StarPirates (Early June) : First or second week. Players will have a choice of the present navigation or a graphic interface. the idea is that many potential players sign up, get to a wall of text, and run like hell.  I mean we’ve made it almost a rite of passage to figure out how to play the game BEFORE you’re allowed to play. So we’re making it a lot easier, and more attractive, to sign up, start playing, and ENJOY playing.  This is only planned for StarPirates at the moment.  Once we learn a bit more about it, we are likely to expand to SB!  The earliest possible date to go live for this is June 8th.

Video Blog (Early June) : Second week. A friend of mine has asked her sister to try the (new look game) and video blog about it.  The idea is to get the input of a new player, and show that to the world.  It’s inspired by some great existing SP videos.  I’m excited because it’s a chance for a non-traditional gamer to showcase what she thinks about the game and perhaps more importantly the game community.  I’m not sure if she’ll run her own blog on this, but I do know she’d post the daily blurbs to youtube.

Advertising/PR (Early/Mid June): First few weeks. We’ve made 2 more custom ad deals with comics.  One of them is a Space-ship based comic, which is cool. That’ll go live pretty much right after the new look is in place. T’other is one of the big three web comics out there, so that should be interesting.  We had been talking on and off for a while, but finally both our timings overlapped so that’s cool.  It looks like mid-month but we’ll see.  Also, a few journalists have been in touch. One particular story we were interviewed for is about growth paths of games like ours.   It’s in a big-ish website that I read (when I have time), so kinda cool.  I’m told that goes live this month.   Between all of these, I’d assume the end of June will have a lot more pirates and agents than the start of the month!

Web Comic Awards (until mid-June): Winding to a close.  We’ve had a few rounds of voting on them, with active participation by some great webcomics and a lot of active voting by almost every player in the games.   Don’t forget to thank Project Wonderful as they are putting up one of the two prizes!   They’ve also been a great promotion partner for us during our two years of growth!

We’ve started chatting with the webcomic journalists and podcasters. A few write ups already — check out Fleen and comixtalk.

WOW, I know that’s a lot.  We have plans on some other things too, but until we can get them to a well-tested point, then I’m not comfortable discussing it.

Don’t forget to say hi to a new player today; and don’t rob ‘em.  I know, I know, so unlike me!

Cheers,

AdminArrBilly

As y’all know www.spybattle.com and www.starpirates.net are game-based communities.   We grew for many reasons, but some of the nuclei of that growth were the online communities of comics.

We worked with the owners of the coolest online comics to have their communities play in our games.  And they did.   So we’re throwing a thank you back to the creators of the comics AND their communities.   So we already have a first round vote to get 20 webcomics that our community liked.   Now we’re going to ask for a round of feedback on their best strip.   Best meaning the most “Online Game-y” or “SciFi”.   Of course, we’re doing it with a twist.

What’s up for Grabs?

1) Cash prize of $1000

2) $1000 in free advertising on Project Wonderful : www.projectwonderful.com is the way that most comics monetize…and a way we’ve found works for advertising the games!

So How does this Work?
We’ve had one round of voting.  There are two more stages left.  The next will be a vote of the top 20 to narrow it down to the top 3. The final stage has a runoff between the top 3.  The next vote will be done IN www.starpirates.net.  We have a trusted voting mechanic there. Voting will start in early May.

How are the Prizes Won?
The $1000 in advertising will be given to the top vote getter of the final 3.  Fairly straightforward!

The $1000 in cash is a little more complex.  Every vote cast in the “Round of 20″ will be put in a virtual hat. One of the votes will be selected, and that’s the winner!  This way every vote really does count.

Who are the finalists?

The 20 in this stage are as follows. The order here is based on votes.  The top one (Schlock Mercenary) got the most votes from the SP community.

Schlock Mercenary
Order of the Stick
Girl Genius
XKCD
Sluggy Freelance
Legostar Galactica
Erfworld
Looking for Group
Weregeek
Ctrl+Alt+del
Starslip
Darths and Droids
Freefall
Penny Arcade
Crimson Dark
Irregular Webcomic
Real Life
8-bit theatre
Kevin and Kell
Questionable content

One of the many things that we, as Snakehead Games Adminstrators, are required to manage is the economy.   One of the many roles that keep our milliner busy as all get out is hard wearing of the  Central Bankers bowler hat.   Like other central bankers we aim for the goldilocks economy – not too hot and not too cold.  Unlike RL Central Bankers, we are pretty good at both detecting and pricking bubbles of irrational exuberance before they ruin the games’ economies.  It’s not popular with some but it’s required.

Hence as of April 9th, NOMs in www.starpirates.net and AWEs in SB 2165 (www.spybattle.com) were no longer findable on the hourly search. They will remain findable when searching again using points.

In addition, the sellback price of NOMs/AWEs to the game became half of the previous value:

New Sellback Price of AWEs/NOMs

Very Rare sellback for 25 points.
Rare+ sellback for 10 points.
Rare sellback for 5 points.
Uncommon+ NOMs sellback for $4,000 and will no longer be sellable for points.

This was not a surprise to either community as over a week’s notice was given, allowing for ample time to sell existing stockpiles and search for new ones.

Why did SHG Make this Move?

Reducing the point creation may seem counter-intuitive however the points created are used for fuelling additional cargo-creating ventures. We have issued repeated warnings that NOMs are able to be found in overabundance to establish supply and this would be adjusted in future.  Rather than restricting NOM findability across the board (which would make item upgrades extremely difficult, especially with Very Rare+ items) these two measure will instead be applied, allowing the upgrades to occur yet restoring the overall supply and conversion.

Will SHG be Making More Changes in the Near Future?

The short answer is no.  All calculations we have run show that this is necessary to enable point inflation to progress no further while allowing items to remain at their established point conversions and should represent the end of the necessary economic adjustments and corrections.

Pirates and agents alike love the glory of taking out an organised group of opponents. Until now in the Snakehead Gaming Universe, the only way to do that was full on formal wars between fleets (Starpirates.net) and factions (Spybattle.com).

The advent of miniwars means that players can have pitched battles against other players, while teaming up with friends or even players from enemy fleets!   Prizes are bet, and glory won. Or lost if you are weak!

See the official Press Release here:

http://www.snakeheadgames.com/?page_id=87