As many of you already know, Spymaster has started a wildfire of chatter on Twitter. I recently read a blog post by a Spymaster developer, Eston Bond. The post generally states that the “spam” that is coming from Spymaster is not Spymaster’s problem. To be honest, I would have to agree. MG Siegler on TechCrunch also wrote about the new phenom sweeping Twitter. He also states that this is not a problem with Spymaster, but a problem with Twitter itself. Another post I would like to reference is Ronald Heft’s Why #Spymaster is Twitter’s Problem. He also agrees with both Eston Bond and MG Siegler that is is a flaw in Twitter.

Before I continue with my post, I would like to point out that I have tried this new sensation. I am only level 2, but I have played it for a bit and talked to people who played it more extensively.

There are some aspects of what was said that I agree with, however there are several major flaws that need to be considered. Eston Bond stated “I am trying to maximise the user experience of those playing Spymaster.” This was his justification for why the Spymaster’s notification system is in place. With this type of logic, the way the notification system maximizes user experience is by getting more players. This makes sense and it is understandable.

For those of you who don’t know, this is what a notification may look like. There are several variations of that, such as an assassination attempt.

There is a flaw in Spymaster (and these arguments) that I would like to address.

It Promotes Useless Messaging

I understand the game developer and company is trying to promote the game and to be honest it is a brilliant idea. The problem I have is that it actually makes your character in the game stronger to constantly send these #spymaster messages out to your Twitter feed. This really puts some people in a bind. It forces the players to either buy into the game hard enough to just tell their friends to endure the constant useless messaging, or to stop following them.

The most popular rebuttal for this is that Twitter needs a filtering system. I actually agree with everyone who is saying that; Twitter does need a way to filter messages. I will not agree that this is purely a Twitter issue however. The developers knew this would happen and they wanted it to which hurts the community. It would be much simpler to allow users to turn off these messages while not effecting their character. The argument that “they (Spymaster users) can alienate themselves if they feel it is worth the reward (by sending out all notifications)” is a terrible way to look at this new game. It ruins the whole spirit of this “community building” game. The people who want to play are going to play. There is no need to make the game so dependent on everyone else being so actively involved. All it does is cause tension between different friends on Twitter.

In short, the system was built on a selfish design. Being someone who is involved in the tech industry I can respect the company’s decision to build the system this way, and I do not fault them for it. I just don’t like everyone defending it as if it is solely on Twitter to remedy the issue. They made the game to promote sending these useless messages to promote their product. It is that simple.