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"If you've been living under a rock for the past week (ie. ignoring Twitter completely) then you might have missed the craze that is Spymaster, a new Twitter-based interactive game that resembles popular games like Mob Wars.\nChances are that you've either become incredibly annoyed by #spymaster tweets, totally addicted to the intricate game play, or confused and overwhelmed by the game. Regardless of your ability or familiarity with the game, we thought it would be advantageous to break down the elements that make up this trending Twitter game with inside details on how it came to be, game play strategies, and semi-secret tricks and hints that only advance players have managed to uncover.\nIf you're an up-and-coming Spymaster, you might wonder what makes yours truly qualified to write a guide to Spymaster.  After all, I'm nowhere near the top ranks of Spymasters who have reached the pinnacle at level 30 (for the time being). What you'll read here, however, is the result of a combination of my own stealth spy activities, communication with other knowledgeable Spymasters, and a top secret exchange with the Directorate.\nA Spy is Born\nWith a name like Eston Bond, it's hard not to believe that iList's Design Director hasn't uttered the phrase, the name is Bond, Eston Bond. But speculation and surnames aside, we thought that we'd chat up Bond to discover how the heck a classifieds site \u2014 iList \u2014 decided to get into the business of Twitter games.\nBond told us, \"We've been building a lot of systems on Twitter for about a year now, starting with iList and then iList Micro. We found that we had some pretty useful ways to leverage Twitter, so in a brainstorming meeting some weeks ago I said we should leverage the technology to build a spy game. I was watching a bunch of James Bond movies at the time and thought it'd be a lot of fun. Everyone else thought this was also a good idea, so I just kind of holed up and wrote up a full spec. The whole storyline, the branding identity, the way we were going to communicate (all of this Directorate speak), all of our items and basic game mechanics.\"\nWe want to note that Spymaster is in closed beta at the moment, although our sources inform us that beta may not last much longer.\nLearn These Terms\nYou can certainly try your hand at being a Spymaster with little to no knowledge of the game, but understanding some of these terms will be helpful to your pursuits as a spy.\nDirectorate: The omniscient and omnipotent rulers of game play. They hold the answers to all your questions, and provide some helpful information through their communication utilities: Twitter (@playspymaster) and Get Satisfaction. Chris heads up the CIA, Eston oversees the MI6, and if you're in the FSB you'll report to Ben and Albert.\nSpies: Spies are your Twitter followers that have yet to become Spymasters. They're important to your overall Spy Ring, but nowhere near as powerful as Spymasters. Work to convert these to Spymasters and you'll have a huge advantage regardless of the level you're at.\nSpymasters: These are your Twitter followers that are also playing the game. The more Spymasters you have, the more powerful your Spy Ring becomes and the easier it will be for you to complete tasks and wound or assassinate opponents. If you have a smaller Twitter network, you'll want to diligently work to convert spies to Spymasters.\nSpy Ring: This is the sum of your connections on Spymaster and it's based entirely off your Twitter network and your followers. Your Spy Ring has more power if you have active Spymasters helping your secret intelligence mission.\nAttack Sum: This is calculated based on the number of weapons you possess. Each weapon you buy has a number associated with it. This number will be multiplied by the quantity you buy, and the Spymasters equipped with these weapons. The total is your Attack Sum (eg. my sum is 7,740 which reflects all the weapons I own and how many Spymasters and Spies in my Spy Ring can be using them). The higher the sum, the more likely you are to be able to hold your own when you attack an enemy.\nDefense Sum: Similar to the Attack Sum, your Defense Sum is an accumulation of the defensive items you own and the Spymasters in your Spy Ring holding them. The key here is to outfit all your Spymasters with defensive equipment. You'll notice that your sum will increase if you do this successfully, which means you'll be poised to withstand assassination plots.\nEnergy: To complete tasks and attack other Spymasters, you'll need to make sure you have the required energy levels. Of course, all these activities also consume energy, and since it comes in limited supply be careful not to overextend yourself, or you could find yourself pretty inept. Patience will yield a replenishment of more energy; the regeneration time for energy is 5 minutes.\nHealth: You need your health to stay alive. Whenever you get wounded in an assassination attempt, you'll lose health. The more powerful your enemy, the more health you'll lose. Watch this number closely, because it's directly associated with your survival. If you're assassinated, the regeneration time is 15 minutes.\nChoosing an Agency\n\nWhen you first get invited by a Spymaster to join the game, you have to choose between joining the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), or the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Each agency essentially includes the same gameplay, but there are a few subtle differences.\nThe big differences come by way of currency and bonus earnings of either money, energy, or health. As a member of the CIA, you'll accrue 10% more money, which can afford you more weapons and defense, or help you build up a nice chunk of change to put in your Swiss Bank account. You might also opt for the CIA to make up for the money you won't accrue if you have notifications turned off (see below).\nIf you're looking to level up quickly, then you'll want to opt for the MI6 because you'll earn 10% more energy. Energy is required for completing tasks, and becoming proficient at tasks will help you advance to the next level. The more energy you have, the faster you can level up.\nOn the flip side, the FSB offers 10% more health which will come in handy if you're the attacking type. Since you need health to avoid getting assassinated in battles, accruing health at a higher rate is key for staying alive.\nInside spies at the Directorate tell us that the MI6 currently dominates the other two agencies in Spymasters. We have reason to believe it's because we all secretly want to be James Bond.\nAlthough not a huge factor just yet, currency will become an important part of game play as it matures. Right now you'll notice that Russians deal in rubles, Americans in dollars, and the Brits in pounds. Currencies are linked to their real-world exchange rates. In the future, the game will have a flux economy of its own, so you'll\u00A0need to watch real-world markets to find the best times to do wire transfers to Spymasters in other agencies.\nTwitter Notifications\n\nNotifications are probably the most controversial part of this Twitter-based game, especially for Twitterers that aren't Spymasters. The game offers eight different ways to auto-update Twitter with your not so top secret activity. You can send a notification every time you assassinate another user, wire money, secure a safe house, level up, perform a task, fail to assassinate a user, deposit money, or buy new items on the Black Market.\nBased on our game playing experience, we think enabling too many of these notifications will not only fill your stream with incessant updates, but get you unfollowed pretty quickly. So why bother, right? Well there's a huge financial incentive for notifications because each checked option will net you an additional 1% money increase, and money is pretty key to building up your arsenal of attack and defense weapons, which are necessary for tasks and assassinations.\nWe recommend adjusting these notification settings when you first join and on an ongoing basis. Assassinations are pretty difficult, so keeping this checked won't damage your Twitter credibility too much. In the same vein, leveling up is also pretty tricky (after level one), so it might not hurt to keep that checked. Pay special attention to the task, failing to assassinate, and Black Market options though. If you play aggressively, these will be the most tweet intensive.\nBasic Game Play\nOnce you've selected your agency and adjusted your settings, it's time to start immersing yourself in the spy life and begin completing tasks. Though the game itself is incredibly intricate, the actions you can take are pretty simple.\nTo start you can do one of a few things: shop on the Black Market, complete a task, attempt to assassinate other spies, or convert spies to spymasters. As you advance, you'll also be able to buy Safe Houses and deposit money in a Swiss bank account.\n\nThe Black Market is a place to use your cash flow to buy goods to protect yourself or attack enemies. The weapons and defense items available will become more powerful as you level up, they also come at a pretty penny. As a level one user, however, you'll want to equip yourself to withstand an assassination attempt. Do stock up, and don't be cheap.\n\nCompleting tasks are the primary way for you to earn some more dough and advance to higher levels. You'll start off with two very basic tasks that you can complete with a low risk of failure. The more you complete a task the more experience and proficiency you'll gain. You'll earn revenue for every successfully completed mission. Should you fail, you're still likely to gain experience, but you'll notice that you'll get dinged on your health vitals (you need health to stay alive).\nAs you level up, more complicated tasks will start to become available. These tasks will require more energy, more weapons, and involve a higher level of risk. You'll notice though that your successful attempts at riskier business are substantially better for your bank account. They're also going to help you reach the next level a lot faster than the easier tasks.\n\nIf you're ready to attempt to assassinate another Spymaster, you can certainly attack anyone of your choosing, regardless of their level. Keep in mind, though, that levels aren't all that important in assassination plots (ie. as a level 6 Spymaster I've wounded players as high as level 25). The user's Spy Ring, Attack Sum, and Defense Sum are more likely to influence the outcome of an assassination attempt. You should also know that as a solo Spymaster with a small Twitter network, your assassination attempts are likely to fail. Choose wisely but remember that higher risk equates to higher gain.\nIf you wound or kill a Spymaster you're likely to acquire a combination of experience, assets, Attack Sum, and Defense Sum. Attacking weak Spymasters is a futile effort because your gain will be minimal. Should you attack a worthy opponent with a medium to high risk, you'll be rewarded handsomely when you succeed in wounding or killing them. Want to increase your chances of assassinating a Spymaster? Concoct ways to rally the troops against an enemy.\n\nConverting spies to spymasters is another important element of the game. The more spymasters you have in your spy ring, the more powerful you'll be. Twitterers with large Twitter networks have a huge advantage here. By default, every one of your followers that's a part of Spymaster is considered a Spymaster in your Spy Ring. The more followers you have on Twitter, the more likely you are to have active Spymasters in your network. You can use the application to recruit followers to become Spymasters in your ring.\nSpymaster Levels\nCurrently there are 30 levels in the game, though this number promises to increase as the game continues to evolve. For each level you complete, you'll be rewarded with more unlocked tasks to complete (that pay more) and more sophisticated weaponry options.\nAs described above, completing tasks is the key to advancing to a higher level. Each level, however, becomes trickier to complete, so you'll notice that tasks get riskier and require more energy, weapons, and Spymasters. Yes, you'll have more tasks and weaponry available, but you'll be forced to have more patience as you actively try to continue to advance to the next level.\nWeapons and Defense\nThe Black Market is an important component to the game. This marketplace is where you can purchase weapons and defense in bulk. You need these items to not only build up your strength, but the strength of your whole spy ring. It is the strength of this ring that will determine whether or not you win or lose assassination plots. Keep in mind that when you go into battle, you bring your Spy Ring with you.\nYou start with a base attack score and that's basically comprised of your Spymasters going into battle with their fists fighting. When you add a weapon to a Spymaster, you add the power of that weapon, multiplied against the value of who's holding the weapon (more power is given to Spymasters over spies), and this increases your Attack Sum by what the game calls multipliers. The same logic holds true for your Defense Sum.\nRight now the highest weapon available is the M107 Sniper Rifle, so if you've managed to achieve that, you can rest assured knowing you've reached the top of the food chain \u2014 for now. The Directorate has confirmed to us that this is just temporary. More weapons and defense will be added to the game soon enough.\nThe Swiss Bank\n\nThe Swiss Bank is just like a real bank, so you'll use it to deposit and withdraw money (wire transfers have been disabled, but they will come back). As with other games of this variety, the reason to deposit funds is for safe keeping. The more money you have in your possession, the more likely you are to lose chunks of it in attacks. Keep it safe in your bank account while you attack your opponents.\nSimple right? But there are a few catches. First you need to have 560K (or the equivalent in rubles or pounds) in liquid assets before you can open a Swiss Bank account. This is no easy feat for newer members, so it might be best not to take an attack strategy until you can protect some of your funds. Secondly, in exchange for guarding your funds, you'll be charged a 10% transaction fee for every deposit. This might make you think before you withdraw funds for weapons and defense purchases, and then redeposit for financial protection.\nSafe Houses\n\nSafe Houses are a way to generate fixed revenue. Safe Houses can be purchased at varying prices and come with an associated risk level and revenue earning opportunity. A risky Safe House will yield more revenue...if you're lucky.\nThere's a catch here too. Safe Houses accrue revenue based on regeneration periods. So for each regeneration period, which is a fixed time period usually about an hour long, there is the possibility that your Safe House will not pay you the revenue you're expecting. The higher the risk, the less likely you'll get paid, but the more dough you'll earn when you do.\nQuick Strategy Tips\nTake a few risks: Spymaster was engineered to reward risky behavior. You won't gain a thing if you continue to do low risk tasks or only attack weak opponents. Sure you're bound to fail in a high risk assassination plot, but if you succeed you'll gain necessary experience, a large sum of liquid assets, and add to your Attack and Defense Sums.\nDon't attempt assassinations on low health: This one seems obvious in hindsight, but if you go on a killing spree, you might stop paying attention to\u00A0your overall health. So watch that number like a hawk, and be leery of making attacks when your health is lower than 30 or 40, because you could die. It's been known to happen.\nEquip all Spymasters with weapons and defense: You will see your success in battle increase exponentially if you ensure that the weapons and defense items in your possession reflect the overall number of Spymasters in your Spy Ring. Buy in bulk to support them and you'll be effectively increasing the power of your network.\nSave time during assassination plots: You'll notice that as you attempt to assassinate more and more Spymasters, you continually have to wait while the virtual battle ensues. If you're impatient and just want to get right to the results, you can. Check out the URL during the assassination, it reads http://playspymaster.com/assassination/progress/XXXX. To hurry up the process, just replace \"progress\" with \"results.\" Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.\nCreate #spymaster alliances: Your followers may hate the #spymaster Twitter notifications, but there is an advantage to those auto-tweets and it comes by way of being able to expand your Spy Ring. So, as explained above, your ring's strength increases as you're followed by more active Spymasters.\nUse the hashtag to search for more active spymasters and follow those who you think will follow you in return. You can take this to the extreme and create group alliances where all members follow each other, thereby exponentially increasing the strength of your Spy Ring.\nSerious Spymaster Tactics\nTake a defensive strategy: You can do quite fine in Spymaster if you take to protecting your army over the more aggressive route. The key here is to level up through tasks and buy tons and tons of defense, which will keep you safe from attacks. If you do adopt this strategy, you're probably best served not trying to instigate any assassinations.\nChallenge opponents ahead of you: It may seem like an obvious tactic to pick off newbie members from your dashboard and attempt to assassinate away. Yours truly picked on the little guys and though it was great fun, it wasn't great for the bottom line. You'll gain more experience and assets if you attack Spymasters where there's a higher risk of losing. You'll have the most success in these riskier endeavors if you build up your Spy Ring, Attack Sum, and Defense Sum.\nThe power of teams: A little known secret of the game is that if you want to actually kill your opponents, instead of just wounding them, you need to combine forces with other Spymasters. To do this, you'll need to identify a target, and collaborate with three to four other Spymasters to attempt a barrage of assassination plots at the same time. Though the game doesn't support this type of interaction at this time, it is definitely encouraged to plan attacks via Twitter Direct Messages. Should your orchestrated attacks prove fruitful and you assassinate your target, they'll be out of commission for a full 15 minutes.\nEncrypted codes: For those of you up to the challenge, the Directorate releases company updates to Spymasters via their Get Satisfaction page. At the end of each update there is an encrypted code that contains information on upcoming changes for players that are up to the challenge of doing cipher decoding.\nOur inside sources tell us that the cipher changes with each update, and that a majority of the messages are all variants of the Shift Cipher, though one message used the Vigen\u00E8re Cipher, and a more recent update was a Running Key Cipher (which is oh so tricky).\nEncrypted messages look something like this:\nA HCBXE TFE WHX XGMYLGGHFF AW TFR DTJS YHFBWSS EIMF COI USEIMEXBVRV QE ZCKWFUL EYMK VBWCUXUUEF RG QPUNY MS PGW O YCVXR WHT PT HXP DIIGZBK KLGZGMY PATGA GAHZD MJJZUUI AFNK HGD CWBPVD E NLZMNUA TUH QVRQ OSTE HSUI JIQHJNBS WKVWW FXD EWICOPZ AAJ HAJEEGV WEPUF CWFE XM ZVQAZ VYG WLHS EHVBA NAMO E JIDHLNTGW KN ESV KBMPS GCWD ZXRMUTMJM NNW QT NDJ YHIE OYNS XETXGKSV KAFEBFCF QCN SLC PZZPH BSTYTT YSQLU TZVW OMCN IE FCMR TO XPVY AT ELX HLQJ KRHWZ VKHVVC INXZF BG EIP B WYIYL AOO ORALM EUUJWFW SSKR GH CHB CTGUWL WMOD XY FKKNLLIIY NK XHWKLT\nHere's the actual message:\nA BONUS FOR OUR SPYMASTERS WE ARE ALSO WORKING WITH OUR CONNECTIONS IN VARIOUS ARMS INDUSTRIES TO BRING TO YOU A LARGE SET OF NEW WEAPONS SHORTLY WHICH SHALL INCLUDE MANY NEW RIFLES A SHOTGUN AND EVEN SOME MORE HANDGUNS THESE NEW WEAPONS AND DEFENCE ITEMS WILL BE GOING OUT SOON ALONG WITH A REBALANCE OF THE GAMES TASK STRUCTURE AND IF ALL GOES WELL EXTENDED GAMEPLAY FOR OUR LEVEL THIRTY USERS"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/06/07/spymaster-twitter/>