Beta, what beta?  Let’s talk about PAX West 2011,1 which is now only slightly more than one week away.  Yikes!

Once again, SpyParty has a booth, but as evidenced by my previous two PAXes, apparently I have to do it differently each time.  So, here’s the deal this time around…

SpyParty has its own booth this year, #3002.  It’s an awesome booth, and I’m really excited I was able to nab it during the crazy-sold-out-PAX-booth-registration-period.  I know it is awesome because it was the booth next door to ours last year, and it’s just perfectly positioned and sized for a single indie game.  I admit to ogling it on occasion during PAX last year, and fantasizing about it during those long, cold winter months.

Here’s a detail of the floorplan of 3002 and the surrounding booths.  You can see The Behemoth, Twisted Pixel, and Uber Entertainment are SpyParty’s next door neighbors.2

PAX West 2011 Floorplan Detail

Uber is in the booth Monaco and I were in last year, so my playtest table was set up just about where the number “3004” is on that image.  You might recall Dust-Off was in 3002 last year, and if not, here’s a picture I took the first day of PAX West 2010 looking in that direction.

No, I will not have a tent. Sadly.

Booth #3002 is so awesome because it’s a 10′ x 10′ island, which means it only has a wall behind it, and no immediate neighbors.  This means people can gather around three sides, and I can fit more stuff in the booth without it feeling too cramped.3  It’s also right next to the entrance.

Enough about the location, what about the contents of the booth?

The goal for this year’s booth is to give people a better taste of SpyParty’s depth and subtlety.  I’ve been incredibly fortunate to always have a long line whenever I set up at a convention, but the downside to having a line is I have to kick people off the game after they’ve played one game each of Spy and Sniper.  Your first game of SpyParty bears almost no resemblance to your 10th game of SpyParty, so I set about trying to figure out how to give people a taste of the real gameplay.  Some dedicated fans would get back in line multiple times, but when the line is an hour or more long, this is really asking a lot of people when there’s so much other cool stuff to see at PAX.  I think I’ve come up with a solution.

I’m going to set up three 1v1 SpyParty stations in #3002, so a total of 6 computers and monitors.  These three stations will be allocated as follows:

1. The first station will be exactly like previous playtests at GDC and PAX East, where you can sit down, play a quick tutorial, and then play once as both Spy and Sniper on the Beginner Ballroom map.  That’s if there’s a line.  If there’s no line, feel free to play as long as you want, but if there is a line, you get one game as each role and then you have to get up so the next two people can play.
2. The second station is for people who have played at least once before.  When you sit down at this station, you don’t have to play the tutorial if you don’t want to, and you and your partner can jump straight into playing.  You can play any map you want, and any missions.4  On this station, you can play two matches, so two Spy and two Sniper games each.  Now we’re starting to get past the initial “Why am I walking into a wall?” and into the “I’d better cool it in this conversation for 12 seconds before bugging the Ambassador”.  Still, once you’ve played a couple matches, you get the boot and you have to get back in line if you need another fix.
3. The third station is where I’m conducting a bit of an experiment on the PAX attendees…this station has no time limit for players.  This means that if you show up right at the show floor opening, and are first in line, you can play all day and no one is allowed to bother you.  If you get in line for this station, you might not get to play at all; the line might not move.  Sorry, but that’s how it goes when you’re trying to make a deep game and let people experience it.  There are some rules:  only one of the two players can’t stay, both have to get up or stay.  I’ll probably let small groups alternate amongst themselves, so three or four people can rotate in and out, but I’ll have to see how that goes.  My goal with this station is not to get lots of people through it, it’s to get a few people to experience the advanced game.

It’s going to look something like this:

Cramped? Nah, let's use the word 'cozy'.

I have no idea if the third station is going to work, or cause fist fights.  Like last year, I’m going to have an HDTV up on a stand, and I’m thinking I’m going to mirror one of the third station monitors, because those are going to be the most interesting games in terms of advanced play.  Will there be peer pressure to get up and give others a turn?  Will there be ad hoc player organized tournaments?  Will somebody play long enough to start beating Ian and Paul?  I can’t wait to find out.

Secret Guest Games

The other wacky thing I’m doing this year is I’m going to have two guest indie games that will take over the booth for the first hour of the day on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  I’ll announce those games in another post very soon.

See you at booth #3002 in 7 days!

1. Yes, I know they call it PAX Prime, but that’s silly, it should be PAX West to complement PAX East, and so that’s what I’ll call it. [↩]
2. The official maps are here and here. [↩]
3. …he declares, optimistically. [↩]
4. You might want to play the tutorial for the new missions if you haven’t played them yet. [↩]

I sent out the 707 emails just now. If you subscribed on this site before 2011/05/10 and you didn’t get a mail from noreply@spyparty.com asking you to re-confirm your Early-Access Beta registration, check your spam folder. Since sending the mails a few minutes ago, 31 people (including me) have re-confirmed.

Yes, that's John Travolta. Again.

 Oh, here’s the email if you’re curious:

Sorry I’ve been so quiet here and there, I’ve been heads-down working on the Early-Access Beta.  I’m obviously way behind on my original estimates of “mid-June”,1 and I apologize for that, but I’m getting closer, really I am!  I’m super honored so many people have signed up to support SpyParty’s development and to help playtest the game, and I can’t wait to get you folks invited in and playing.  I think it’s going to be a great time, assuming I ever actually get it working…

I’ve finally solidified my plan for the Early-Access Beta pricing, so I want to describe that here and hopefully answer any questions you might have in the comments.

There are going to be two pricing options:

1. $15 USD — Like I’ve said elsewhere, $15 has become the de facto price point for AAA Indie Games, and it’s almost certainly what I’ll price the final game at on the various platforms, assuming XBLA, PSN, and Steam are still operating when I ship in 100 years. 2  I’m really happy there’s a “standard” price point for high quality indie games now, because it not only means I don’t have to think about it, but players also know what kind of experience they can expect for their money.  $15 doesn’t mean “budget game”, it means “awesome indie game” now, and that’s great for innovation and creativity.

   Your $15 gets you access to the beta SpyParty and all the updates during the beta, access to the private beta website, which includes forums for announcements, finding games, and discussing strategies, and eventually a bug/feature tracking system.3  You’ll also get the game for free when it releases on PC.  I can’t say for certain right now, but I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to give you a key for activating it on Steam or your digital distribution platform of choice.  If/when I end up doing a MacOS port, you can have that version too as part of the deal, in case you’d rather play there.  I probably won’t be able to give you a console version, but if I can figure out a way to do that, I will.

2. Pay what you want above $50 USD — A significant number of people have asked if they can contribute more than $15 to help me make SpyParty, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, and I think I’ve figured out a neat way to let those who are interested do this.  When you get your invite mail, there will be the $15 option above, or an option to pay $50 or as much over $50 as you want. 4

   As you may have read, I am quite wary of extrinsic motivators and rewards, so I want people who contribute at this level to do it because they want to help me make a new and different kind of game.  They are not going to get any badges or stars next to their name in the game or in the forums, or any exclusive gadgets in the game, or a special plaid jacket, or a fancy hat, or anything like that.  If you’re playing the game, you will have no idea if your opponent paid $15 or $500 for SpyParty; it has been and always will be a pure player-skill game.

   I am incredibly grateful to everyone who joins the Early-Access Beta, at whatever price you decide to pay. I’m also incredibly grateful to the fans who follow the game and aren’t going to join the beta, but will buy SpyParty when it comes out, or even just help spread the word and contribute ideas because they think the game sounds interesting.

   However, as a special way of saying thank you for generously helping to fund the game, I am planning on putting everybody who contributes $50 or more in the game credits. There aren’t going to be any credits in the game until it ships, so again, this is not going to create a two-class system during beta testing. This is just a way of giving thanks and recognition to the people who put a little (or a lot) extra in when the game needed it most.

I got the idea for this credits thing from Dan Verssen at Dan Verssen Games.  Dan makes board games, and since board games have an up-front cost for printing, he takes preorders to both judge the popularity of a game and to fund its initial print run.  To thank the preorderers, he prints their names on the box, which I think is a wonderful way of including fans of the games in the development process.  Here’s the back of  his game U-Boat Leader as an example:

The heartfelt message from Dan at the bottom is how I feel about everyone who has shown interest in SpyParty as well.  It’s a pretty incredible feeling.

Okay, back to work.  Post any questions you have or clarifications you need in the comments.

1. …as you wonderful folks are quick to point out at every opportunity! ♥ [↩]
2. That’s a joke, internet! [↩]
3. Intially I’m just going to use a subforum for bugs and features, but I’ll set up something like bugzilla or one of the other open-source ones once things are rolling. [↩]
4. To be honest, I think I limit the input box to 5 figures.  I will gladly make exceptions to this if you email me! [↩]

No, really, this Boeing 707 belongs to John Travolta.

No, not that 707.  That one belongs to John Travolta.

The 707 I’m talking about are the seven hundred and seven people who signed up for the SpyParty Early-Access Beta without knowing that’s what they were signing up for.  You see, back on Valentine’s Day, I quietly put up a sign-in form on the sidebar of this blog, “below the fold”, just to test it out.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the list of names at that point, but I figured it’d be good to start gathering them.  A few folks noticed immediately, but I wasn’t ready to announce anything, so I just left it up there, slowly gathering email addresses for some unspecified “future playtest”.

In all, 707 people signed up between February 14th and April 15th, when I took the form down to get the backend code ready for accepting Early-Access Beta signups.  A few of those are my test accounts, but most were just people who came to the site and entered their email address.

The good news (for them) is they are first in line for the Early-Access Beta.  If you tried to sign up after the announcement but were told you were already subscribed, then you must have signed up during the spring and are one of the 707.

The bad news (for them) is since I didn’t have any of the beta stuff figured out back then, I’m going to ask them to reconfirm their sign-up to keep their place in line.  As I’ve said before, I want to make sure a high percentage of people I invite will actually pay and register for the beta so I don’t have to churn through tons of invites to get a given number of registrations.  I’d like to be able to send 20 emails and know I’m going to get about 18 registrations, or something close to that.  I don’t want to have to send 500 emails to get 20 signups, because then I might randomly get 150 signups, and that would screw up my work on slowly scaling the backend.  I don’t want to invite 500 and then have 480 people see an “oops, sorry, already full” message, because that’s annoying too.

So,  I want to make sure people who have signed up are going to register.  Since the 707 had no idea what they were signing up for, or that it would actually cost money, I’m going to send them all an email with a link to reconfirm their subscriptions.  The email will explain the situation, link to the details of how the beta will work,1 and ask them to click a link to reconfirm.  There’s no time limit on this, and I’ll always invite in order of earliest sign up date,2 so if you are in the Antarctic and don’t get the mail immediately, you’ll still be able to reserve your place in line, you just won’t get invited until you confirm.

I’ll have more details about the registration process in a few days.  Sadly, I still have a bunch of work to do, but I’m getting closer.  Thanks for being patient!

Oh, and since I was asked on twitter, there are currently 8006 people signed up and confirmed, or 7299 if you don’t count the 707.  647 people have not confirmed the initial opt-in email, which is about 8%, which I’m told is very good for this sort of thing.3   I might send out a single “hey, did you forget to confirm” reminder to those people, but I’m not going to worry too much about them.  The long tail sign-up rate appears to be about 20 per day.

1. I really need to go through the comments on the sign up page and put together the Beta FAQ! [↩]
2. …maybe with a few random choices for each invite batch from anywhere in the line just to keep people on their toes! [↩]
3. So, I guess that means the tens of thousands of emails I sent while load-testing didn’t get me marked as a spammer, which is nice. [↩]

Here is my talk from last night’s SF IGDA meeting, all marked up and flashified.  Apparently MyPlick finally died, so you can download the raw ppt and mp3. I talked about my goals for the network infrastructure for the SpyParty Early-Access Beta, both at a high level in terms of polish, security, scalability, and flexibility, and then also a bit at the low level, in terms of specific technologies and approaches I’m using for solving some of the problems.

Here’s a quick text summary:

• On the polish front, I want to either support or be able to support things like Single-Sign-On, Auto-discovery of Lobby Servers, NAT Punchthrough, Relay Fallback,  Personalized Beta Homepages, Ajax Forms, Private Forums, Bug Reporting & Feature Requests, etc.
• For security, the first rule is “No DIY Security!”, so I’m using MIT’s Kerberos with an OpenLDAP backend, and then hooking it up to the University of Michigan’s CoSign Single-Sign-On platform for the website. Then I talk a bit about AuthN & AuthZ, AuthN Client↔Server & Client↔Client, using https, TLS, revokable certs, timed downloads, etc. I also talk about how none of this means the game will be “unhackable” or “unwarezable” by any stretch.  There’s not going to be any DRM, and it’s a PC game, so there’s basically nothing I could do about it even if I wanted to.  But, Kerberos will allow me to always associate and authenticate a real account with a play session, and an honest client will be able to authenticate other clients and servers and know they are “official” and in good standing.  Of course, being the PC, nothing is going to stop people from hacking the client and even making their own servers, except that’s a bunch of effort for not much gain except “see, I did it”, and hopefully people will be more into playing the game as I update it, and supporting the development of new and interesting indie games.  We shall see!
• I’m trying to make it scalable, so if a lot of people want to play, I can let them!  Scalable means Very Few Centralized Services, the very few Centralized Services are Replicatable, and need Few Writes, the rest Runs in the Cloud, and is Load Balanced.  I talk about the importance of Load Testing Everything, and Assuming Nothing before testing.  And, I talk about how I did the email signup to support an Incremental Roll-out.
• Finally, I talk a bit about flexibility, and how there are going to be lots of ways the code sucks, at least at the beginning, so knowing where it will suck and knowing how I’m going to fix it when the time comes is important.

I also try to pre-emptively answer the most common questions at the end, namely, Why do all this yourself?, Why not use Steam/XBLA/PSN/etc?, and Why not start with the “MVP” and iterate?

Hope you enjoy it.  It’s pretty short, about 20 minutes with 8 minutes of Q&A at the end.  Feel free to ask more questions in the comments!