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iSpy with my little eye... A fun new way to explore your city |
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Thumbs Up Or Thumbs Down |
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| "How did you take this picture!?" JaMoFo wrote in today very confused about this iSpy game of the clock tower at AT&T Park. He stumbled on it while verifying Mulvaney's solution (go figure). While I won't give away my secret (yes it's real and I challenge you to take the same one) it did bring up a good question about verifying. In the description of the game I wrote "Gotta get the clock up close". Mulvaney's solution is clearly taken from far away, so do you give it a thumbs up or thumbs down? We are purposely vague about the rules for verifying. That's because it's up to you and the rest of the iSpy community to decide. We take your votes, average them out, and when it reaches a certain threshold, award the points (or not) depending on the consensus of the community. Be sure to read the game's description when verifying and don't be afraid to give someone a thumbs down if you think they solved the game incorrectly. In the end, truth always prevails.  |
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iSpy Game "The Master" On The Amazing Race Finale |
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| iSpy Game "The Master" Shows Up In Season 16 Finale Of The Amazing Race At SplitP we are big fans of the TV show "The Amazing Race". They basically invented Real World Gaming. This week in the Season 16 Finale, remaining teams flew to San Francisco where one of their final tasks before crossing the finish line was to solve a popular iSpy game! After climbing Coit Tower teams were instructed to find a Yoda Fountain. Turns out, The Amazing Race wasn't the first one to discover that fountain, Mulvaney created that mission months ago and called it "The Master". A few weeks back, casi and I explored The Presidio and solved that game as well! Too bad it wasn't the same day The Amazing Race teams were there.
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Control Your iSpy Games |
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Today we launched a couple new features to give you better control over your iSpy games. Now you can:
Deleting iSpy GamesIf you're not happy with one of your games for any reason, delete it. Deleted games are gone forever so be careful! Also note, this will remove any XP you earned for creating the game.Deactivating iSpy GamesBut what if you don't want to delete a game completely? Maybe you want to continue sharing the game's webpage but don't want players to play the game. In this case, simply deactivate it. Only active games will show up in the community list for other iSpy players to see. You can toggle games between active/inactive as often as you like. There are many interesting ways of using this feature and we are excited to see how you use it.For example, this weekend at MacWorld 2010 a San Francisco artist re-created sculptures of Greek Gods rocking out to iPods. The sculptures were only there for the weekend, but made awesome iSpy games. So we created iSpy games of these sculptures and then deactivated them after the event was over. I can still share the website link to these games with my friends, but I don't have to worry about it showing up in the community play list now that the conference is over. Login to the iSpy website to see the new buttons on your games. We hope to integrate them into the mobile apps soon. |
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A Solution For Solutions |
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When solving an iSpy game, the picture you take does not need to be EXACTLY the same as the picture the creator took. It simply needs to contain the object you are looking for. Your photo may be taken from a different angle, distance, perspective or even throw yourself in the photo (in fact we encourage this)! For example, the following is a valid solution to the game "Cazal or Cazam?":  It is fun to see other player's solutions to a game, so last week we started displaying players' solutions alongside their review. Zacke73 mentioned in the forum that the solutions can be a "spoiler" and he's right. Usually the object you are looking for is a small part of a much larger area. Since you use clues in the picture to find the object, seeing other player's solutions could give away the object's location! The difficulty of each iSpy game should remain the same regardless of how many people have played it. Instead of removing players' solutions from the website we re-worked it and added a new feature. You will now only see solutions on the website when you are logged in and:
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iSpy The Best Profile Pictures |
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We made the decision a while back that players should snap their profile picture within the app instead of uploading one from their phone or computer. Some people don't like this, but we think it makes the profile pictures feel much more real and entertaining. Knowing that each player shared this similar experience of snapping their pic within the app, we asked: Who's playing iSpy? What kind of trends are we seeing in profile pics? Who's got the best iSpy profile picture? Make sure to vote and recommend other iSpy profile pictures in the comments This month we'll highlight profile pics that fall into the following three categories:
Tip! Click the pictures to see them larger
So we're thinking each month we'll highlight our favorite profile pics on this blog for the community to see and vote for their favorites. Let us know in the comments who wins for each category. Not on the list but think you should be? Post a link to your profile in the comments to be considered for next month. Don't know how to change your profile pic? |
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The Evolution Of Verification & Today's Big Changes |
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In the oldschool version of "I spy with my little eye..." (you know, the one kids play) one player spies an object and then verifies the opposing player's guesses. When we decided to recreate "iSpy" for the mobile social generation we asked ourselves, "Why not allow the entire community to participate in verifying?". We figured crowdsourcing the verification process would allow solutions to get verified faster and more accurately. Boy were we right!
Before there was verifyingWhen we first built and tested the verification system, we would test it out by submitting fake solutions to fake games and then make tweaks. Verifying wasn't all that fun, but we needed it for the game to work. We thought, "Why would people do this?". As an added incentive we decided to award BP's for verifying.Verifying in the betaThe beta was the first time we realized that verifying was more than just necessary, it was fun! Verifying with real content felt kind of like "spying" on other players. This helped players understand the game better because they could see how others were using the system. There were always games to verify, and most player's visited the verify screen regularly.Verifying yesterdayWe realized the problem when iSpy reached it's first 1,000 players. Turns out, player's enjoyed verifying so much that they were rapidly clearing the verify queue. It was a race to earn BP's for verifying, and most of the time there were none left. That's because once a solution reaches a certain threshold, XP's get awarded to the solver (or not) and we would pull their solution from the verify queue. We were getting exactly what we needed (everything was getting verified efficiently), but the community was left wanting more.Verifying todaySo as of today we have launched some major changes to the verify system and upgraded the website with some fun new features.
Verifying in the futureThe excitement around verifying has us thinking about it in a whole new way. We have some really cool verify features in the pipeline and we can only imagine what the evolution of the verify system will lead to. One thing is for certain, we are still tracking everyone's verifies, and I'm sure that data will eventualy come in handy for something (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). So let us know what you think of the changes and keep those verifies coming. |
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How we turn "Fuzzy" location data into good iSpy games |
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Its been an exciting month watching the number of games and players grow. While I'm normally against making changes to the live system, it's very clear for the data-bat(tm) Greg is beating over the head with, that some games are pretending to be in places their not. Turns out the culprit is the iPhone's GPS accuracy, or lack there of. The quality of the location data is important to the game playability. The last thing we want is for players running around trying to solve games that do not exist. So far the only person this has happened to is Mulvaney (but thats ok, he has enough points already =] ).
Bad accuracy is not bad data, but it can beNow, I'm not one for posting big blog updates, but this one seems to be more in my camp then Greg's. During our beta we had a lot of good examples of good and bad games, but not a lot of games having bad or inaccurate data. For example, we have games that are "bad" like game 9370 that to my best guess was created on a moving train. (Yes, this game is inactive, something we hope to enable for all players soon.) While we have had a few "bad accuracy" games 8850, 8814 (Go thedroog!!!) that seem just a little off, cause I doubt they are building the Walmarts on the freeway now, are they? So, we have been racking our brains trying to figure this out. (Well, I have been just waving Greg off saying "bad data in, bad data out...") With all the new games everyone has been creating we have started to see some interesting patterns.Controlling how fuzziness effects difficultyWhile we are all created equal, it seems our (i)phones, or more like our reception, is not. I'm not totally sure of all of the issues, but it seem some people take a bit longer to get their position then others. To give you an idea, the average player's gps accuracy is off by about 17~47 meters after only running the app a short while. Since the goal is to find the object in question, this is fine. Well better then fine, it was too good, back at the start we had to develop a means to "fuzzy" the location of the object, make it harder to find, this is where we get difficulty from. We decided to make "fuzzy" rings that the object would be hidden in. So these ranks of difficulty 1 - 5 became the backbone of the game system. "1" being a game less them 0.03 miles in radius, "2" 0.06 miles, "3" 0.105 miles, "4" 0.20 miles, and "5" 0.311 miles. Before you ask "How did you choose those numbers?", I will just cut you off and say [business-term]. If you don't buy that reason, talk to Greg. Back to my point, it seems that several players have started to get a bit farther off then 47 meters. O' say 5000+ meters!!! but these are clearly connection issues... right, RIGHT... Wrong, maybe?Bad accuracy should not effect playabilityIt seems that between real GPS, cell tower triangulation, and IKnowWhereYourIPAddressIs(tm) madness some things get "confused". We have seen good games get created, that were very far away from their reported positions. Most of them are under 500 meters away, but many range between 47 meters and 500 meters. So as of Tuesday(5th), we are going to help fuzzy the fuzzyness. If a game is to "fuzzy" for the difficulty you selected, we will bump it up till it works. Unless your like game 9370, games created where accuracy is over 500 meters will get bumped right out of the system. So if you pull out your phone and try to make a quick game (before your GPS has enough time to accurately pinpoint you) you're a lot more likely to make a good game. For those of you that are "HEY, I WANTED THAT GAME TO BE A DIFFICULTY 1 !!!!one", just wait a bit, the longer the app is running the better your position data is....Anyway, grnb77 you just happened to make your game right as I was sneaking in code to test for games with REALLY bad accuracy. So you have the first official game to be ejected by the system for being "bad", thanks, gratz, and great timing!!! The picture looks to be something in Japanese, if anyone wants to translate this post or that text in that picture please add it to the comments. Thanks to grnb77 for his game and also to anyone that wishes to translate. -Ian "Your Friendly Data Overlord" M. |
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iSpy Gets International Improvements |
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| As I mentioned in our previous post, we have always viewed iSpy as a global game (it is Real World Gaming after all...). We launched iSpy in the US to get the ball rolling while we worked on dialing in the system for international play, turns out the US iTunes App Store is available globally (oooops). Imagine the panic and excitement when we saw iSpy games popping up in 20+ countries on the first day!
Since launch, we have been working around the clock to improve the quality of international play. Today's exciting changes bring iSpy much closer to our goal of providing a seamless global experience. Creating/Playing Games InternationallyWhile the interface might still be in English, iSpy games can now be created in any language. Localized versions are in the works, but don't let the English interface stop you from creating games in any language you'd like. We have already seen some great games popping up in other countries:
International RankingOur goal is to rank every iSpy player locally, regionally and nationally. For example, I am ranked in San Francisco (local), California (regional) and the US (national). When we first launched, this was only available to players in the US, but now everyone gets ranked. Unfortunately the level of granularity varies by location so some players may get all three, while others may only be ranked by country. Visit the Rank Page to see the community's rankings on a local, regional and national level. |
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iSpy Goes Global! A Little Ahead Of Schedule. |
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One crazy unexpected delight after launching is that half of all iSpy players are from outside the US! We always viewed iSpy as a global game and we are SO excited to see that becoming a reality. Unfortunately, our system isn't quittteeee ready for international players yet =)
International players might notice a couple issues while we get things straightened out:
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iSpy Launched In The US iTunes App Store |
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| After over a year of development iSpy has officially launched in the US iTunes App Store! We are absolutely BLOWN AWAY by how many people magically stumbled on the app and have started playing iSpy games in only the first two days! There are already 200+ players in 26 states/territories in the US and abroad who have created 300+ iSpy games. A special thanks to everyone who helped us get to this exciting milestones. We couldn't have done it without you. |
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