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.

BOTH Officers and Underworld Contacts can be notoriously hard to hire and retain in these days of a competitive and dangerous job market. Employers can be very hard on these valuable skilled workers. With Pirate Captains and Spy Networks alike trying to cut costs, retention has become one of the great concerns of every supervisor. Partially, this is a product of the difficult commonplace hiring process, which requires a covert operation or a search through space debris just to get to the interview stage. But it is also a result of the practices many use to retain these important subordinates.

A common, if ineffective, restraint device

Instead of forcing your workers to stay through the use of drugs, restraints, duct tape, glue, and other forcible methods, it is more advisable to follow several tips to keep them happy.

1. Engage people in the work process.
Good employees want to feel like they are making a difference. You can create an environment where your employees can be part of the process, not just a cog in the process wheel. Discuss your goals with your fleet or faction and its different departments and get your employees involved in designing the systems and the improvement process. Create a feedback or suggestion system that actually considers ideas for creative spying or ambushes. You don’t have to implement every idea that an employee has, but if you give ideas careful consideration and involve the employee in the feedback and discussion loop, they’ll be thrilled.

2. Get the right people in the job and get out of their way.

You’ve spent a bunch of points hiring just the right manager for the new war you just declared. You even pay a signing bonus and moving expenses to get the new guy to town and settled in. You have complete faith in their ability to properly manage the new situation. So get out of their way and let them do their job. Don’t look over their shoulder and second guess every decision. Don’t micromanage or torture a good employee into submission. If you didn’t think they could do the job, why did you hire them in the first place? Constant dismissal while you look for the person you wanted instead is disspiritng!

3. Communicate your plan.

Nothing is worse for an employee than to be completely in the dark about your goals and objectives and evil plans for getting somewhere. They don’t have to know every detail, but do inform them about your latest strategic planning and how it will affect the direction of the whole enterprise. Employees know when you’re working on plans and they just want to know what’s going on.

Don't make this happen

If you engage your new employees you can avoid having to wall them into their workspaces and keeping them oppressed with threats and violence. Heck, you may even get a card for boss’s day!

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.

Spy Battle has reached 25,000 players with Raven Arrow joining us as player #25000!

To celebrate, all active players who logged in over the past week have received         2 and 1/2 Special Agent days! We’re glad to see the game continue to grow and hope you will all enjoy this milestone along with us. We look forward to hitting 50,000 players and beyond! Thank you, Spy Battle players, for making this all possible!

Huge Leap Forward in Artificial Memory Science!

Cognitive Research Group, Building 8 – July 6

“MEMORY is a tricky thing,” says artificial intelligence entity Admin256, the chief administrator of SnakeHead Cognitive Research Group (SCRG), “but we think we’ve got the cure.”

The Admin256 unit and its team has been working carefully for some time now on an innovative new neural interface product that the SCRG calls the Ascension Device. “The hope of Ascension is that it can help you smooth away all those unpleasant memories that regenabots cannot heal.” Humans, demihumans, cyborgs and other organic sapients in our modern times often complain about the psychological ravages of the experiences that they have had. Ascension, the unit claims, is the cure for the various maladies and psychoses these experiences cause.

“Once you undergo our mild and virtually painless treatment, you will find yourself happier and without all that pesky experience that has been bringing you down.” As a bonus, the Device even implants new memories in the place of the old ones to give the recipient the illusion of having a far better life.

The almost pain-free Ascension Treatment

Despite the newness of this technology, many have signed up in advance to be among the first humans tested in this experiment. With no chance of permanent physical damage to their bodies, subjects have said, like one interviewee found at the SnakeHead facility, “What have I got to lose?” The future looks bright for these brave souls, who, indeed, have nothing to lose but their minds. SnakeHead expects to be able to market the Ascension process within the year.

Article courtesy of:

50,000 Celebration: Star Pirates has crossed the 50,000 player mark! Everyone online in the last 5 days who is level 5 or higher has been given 5 Notorious days and 5 points. HURRAY FOR 50K!!

Many, many thanks to the community who has supported us for two great years – without your generosity Star Pirates could not exist.

P.S. [MIN] Admin256 2010-06-24 13:39
~5050 drained an entire 1805 Walkin Whisky. (That was my personal one and only)

Well, here we are in the winner’s circle.

It’s been a long road getting here! We started with some “simple” nominations, and a list of our players’ favourite comics. Even that was a trickier proposition than you’d expect! Eventually, it built into a serious competition, fought between some of the “big dogs” of the comic world, some smaller ones, and some which were considered unheard of. It says a lot to us about the diversity of our community that something like that is possible, and that’s a big part of why we feel that the Star Pirates players are special.

Still, we were surprised to see that one of the smaller comics made it through, past some of the tougher competition, and into the final round. I don’t know about the rest of you, but we were on the edge of our seats throughout, marveling at how close the votes were, and very surprised that a smaller comic was holding it’s own against such giants.

Enough sentimental talk, time for the big announcement! It is with great pleasure that Project Wonderful and StarPirates.net wish to congratulate the winners of our 2010 Sci-fi and gaming comic awards.

Starslip, : http://www.starslip.com
Winner of the random ballot draw for $1000 cash.

And

Legostar Galactica, : http://www.legostargalactica.net
Winner of the final prize of $1000 in advertising from Project Wonderful and of the Web Comic Award, by popular vote.

Congratulations! Project Wonderful and StarPirates.net will be contacting the winners to help them claim their prizes.

We’d like to thank all the comics, without many of whom we might not even be here today. Your work is tremendous and inspiring, please keep it up! Thank you to the devoted players who helped out with this project! Your aid was invaluable and motivational. And thank you to everyone who took the time to vote. It means a lot to us to see players getting involved in an event like this, and it certainly means a lot to the comics who got your votes!

Hey Comic Fans,

We’re into our 6th day of voting now in the final round of the SP webcomic awards, and it’s turning out to be a real nail-biter for Legostar Galactica and Girl Genius fans as voting comes around the far turn. The two comics have been neck-and-neck virtually throughout this voting round, and are currently separated, incredibly, by a margin of 1 vote. Schlock Mercenary is trailing by some 60 votes, but with four days of voting still to go, it remains anyone’s contest.

It’s impossible to say at this point who will win the $1000 grand prize, but it’s looking more and more like this is going to be a photo finish, and an exciting end to the final round!

The current standings: (11th of June)
Legostar Galactica: 223 votes
Girl Genius: 222 votes
Schlock Mercenary: 167 votes

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