In which Hypnos discusses various YouTube Puzzle Pirates videos he has found

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Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, everyone!

I put on my robe and Hypnos hat.

In which Hypnos links up photographs he had neglected during the times he had internet

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Double post because I missed last week and well, because we can:

A few weeks ago, neighboring San Francisco company Instructables felt their honor was challenged as "coolest place to work in San Francisco" and, donning the guise of pirates, raided our office.

Such was the cleverness of their disguise that the folks in the front room barely glanced up as they went YARRing by. 'Pirates? We have pirates coming through here all of the time! They must be for Hypnos.' No alarm was sounded.

They fought us with tinfoil swords! They took prisoners! They left us a plank.

Clearly, reciprocation was in order.

That is why, this Monday, we applied make-up and Victorian clothes, plentiful liquor, and practiced for a grueling 30 seconds before setting off for Instructables requital:

To their credit, Instructables was better prepared for the attack. Spying us via security camera, they pelted us with marshmallows and wads of paper before retreating to their inner office to be wholesale slaughtered.

Reeling in shock and horror, surviving Instructables members posted pictures aplenty in their blog, mourning the loss of their robot mascot and young, innocent intern.

Back at Three Rings HQ, the undead congratulated themselves with some drinks, some intern brains, and taught the robot mascot how to play Rock Band.

Some more zombie attack pictures can be found on undead Annie's Flickr page.

In which Hypnos ponders why people want to chat

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In which Hypnos rustles up some thoughts on foraging

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In which Hypnos is (ha) brief.

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In which Hypnos explores Spicy Town!

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Happy Wednesday, blog readers.

Having recently updating you as to some happenings at the office, I thought this week I'd try showing you some things that happen over a the course of a normal week during the oceanmaster shifts that are part of my job.

Working an oceanmaster shift, as many of you have no doubt guessed, isn't all zipping around in a gold rocket car for hours on end. You get asked a lot of repetitive questions, you deal with bad things such as thefts, and you meet a big range of pirates, from scammers and thieves to friendly souls who want to say hello. Naturally the good and interesting outweigh the bad, and I've met some of the friendliest pirates, from a lass on Viridian who sends me virtual food whenever I'm on duty there, to some pirates on Malachite who made me a little shrine out of crates and bedrolls. (They then tried to trap me in it and make me their pet oceanmaster, but I won't hold that against them.)

Starting with last Wednesday, I specifically kept an eye out for petitions or situations that I thought you all reading here might find entertaining. These are all genuine situations or petitions, though the names of pirates, people, crews, etc. have been edited out.

Petitions we get that stand out from the usual fare of questions range from the strangely obvious:
  "in the manual for navagation it says you need to be an officer in a crew to control a boat but be able to control it what if your not in a crew or you are just a pirate or lower will you"

To the bizarre: (special oceanmaster tip : use punctuation and format!)
  "ok it was this day that j**** call my mom crazy and shes said not to tell my mom, she said if i promised i said yes and i cross my finger them i told her i was going to tell my mom and i was but i didint couse i forgat so she decided to do revange and she have alot of things with her first pirate j**** she told me she pay some people for they could give her all my item to her other pirte o**** ."

(Petition subject: "Please dont!!!")
  "i believe that my friend,****c, sent a pettition about ****** ******(crew), he was acting very rude and my friend stood up for him please dont kill my crew i love it very much please dont!!"

To the WAT:
  "what is the in steronterns to Trusher hule?"

More commonly, I get really friendly petitions asking me to come visit, or to come check out somebody's house, or even invitations to pillages and sea monster hunts. I'm usually too busy answering other petitions or dealing with thefts or scams to give more than a polite decline and a thank you, but when I get the chance, I try to chat with people, sometimes with the oddest results:

  ***z tells you, "Wanna go to Atlantis with me? =P"
  You told ***z, "What kind of vacation invitation is that?!"
  You told ***z, "Who makes faces when asking somebody to the beautiful waters of Atlantis?"
  ***z tells you, "My face is stuck that way. =P"
  ***z tells you, "It was a tragic childhood accident. T_T =P"
  You told ***z, "I can just imagine your future. 'Will you marry me? =p'"
  You told ***z, "'I cannot live without you. =P'"
  ***z tells you, "Why must you mock me so? T_T =P"
  ***z tells you, "You've hurt me deeply today. I don't think I'll ever get over it. =P"

People tend to flock around an OM when we stand on the docks or in a building. I'm not sure what the appeal is, but they do ask very nice questions, and seem to really like discussing what it's like to be an oceanmaster:

  P***** says, "u know wat sucks.. u have to use proper grammer."
  I***** says, "i could never accustom to proper grammer"
  H***** says, "me either"

One of the things I like best about being an oceanmaster is recoloring familiars and renaming them for people. I like to plonk down a big vat of dye for recolors and use a big eraser for renames. And it leaves the most awesome vessel/house logs if I retrieve the familiar from a wardrobe:

July 17, 2008 4:09 PM  Hypnos has left a Snuggles.
July 17, 2008 4:08 PM  Hypnos has taken a Arsonist.

Finally, one thing about being an oceanmaster is getting e-mails and letters from folks around the world who would like to bring the fun they get from the game to other languages. A young man created a very cute blog in Hebrew and he's very eager that I hurry up and share it with other people through this blog. Enjoy!

Ahoy, pirates! New posting space!

First I'd like to thank web manager Terri and web programmer Sarah for setting up an in-house blog system and for setting up both the individual blogs for all oceanmasters who wanted them, and the feeds that allow all of them to be displayed in one long page of blogged textness.

Things churn along in the office with various bug fixes and changes to make Puzzle Pirates Adventures lighter and faster-loading. We had to bid farewell to beloved Nick Barkas (boo hoo! :() as he went back to the wilds of Sweden and graduate school, but not before partying it up in the Tonga Room. The Tonga Room is amazing. It has an impressive selection of fruity scupper-yer-barnacle-up drinks, seats set up on the deck of a ship, and an indoor pool with rain at 30 minute intervals. Also, a live band comes out on a boat(!) Much revelry and the sticking of paper umbrellas in Hypnos's hair was had.

We have also been shamelessly enjoying the fruits of the twisted mind of Jes Weigand including bacon ice cream (no, really. bacon ice cream!) and lime Cephalopod cake.

Notably, we were paid a visit by the Girl Game Company, a nonprofit outreach program for middle school girls in Watsonville, CA. They are an after school and summertime project that teaches young women to design and develop computer games, and they had done tours at Google and EA. The young ladies were all very web savvy, reminding me that mine was the last generation to grow up without internet access. Pictures of the group can be found on our Flickr page.

On the subject of visits, I also paid a weekend visit to Las Vegas last month and viewed the demolition site that was once the New Frontier, where the Las Vegas meet-up was held last year. It was sad. There's a very sharp line in that area of town between the old kitschy themed hotels and the giant resort luxury hotels, with their reflective glass windows and sharp angles. A lot of the old hotels and casinos are being torn down.

Lastly, Bunnywonder (and an accompanying cabinlad whose pirate name I did not catch) visited Three Rings! She promised pictures to the forum community, so watch that space.

Ahoy, all and sundry!

As you've no doubt been hearing, a new release is coming to all oceans, as posted by Bungleton (whose forum avatar still makes me snort every time that I see it) here.  Whee!

With this release comes hopefully the fatal crunch of these annoying bugs' exoskeletons:

• Fixed monsters getting overly aggressive and double-ramming in Atlantis

Atlantis navers rejoice! As an oceanmaster, I get a fair number of complaints about problems with the monsters in Atlantis, from them spawning in unlikely and impossible areas to their movement tokens being unreasonably high.  Thankfully, with each patch we've put out to modify creature behavior in Atlantis, I've been seeing fewer and fewer.

• Fixed treasure haul refusing to give out more chests after a gem was swapped next to a chest.

Finally! We'd been getting intermittent reports of chests not showing up in the duty reports and at first were looking into client/server timing issues.  Somewhat incidentally while Cephalopod was bug testing something else, he experienced the bug and, since he'd been testing something under rather unusual circumstances, managed to track down why it was happening.  Here's to more treasure!

• Fixed a timing issue that would allow clients to walk on water.

Actually, I'm going to miss the 'Jesus' petitions and forum threads.

From the Release Notes:

• Beta version of Puzzle Pirates Adventures available for intrepid pirates to explore.

While keeping in mind that this is just the beta and first set of beginning adventures, I really love the potential of Puzzle Pirates Adventures.  It still amazes me how the developers got the game to run in a browser, in an applet, and how slim they tried to keep download times for slower connections.  It's a complex carefully-timed back-and-forth with your computer only grabbing the code and graphics necessary when they need to be used.  *Because* the way it's set up is complex, there are also quite a few bugs to get working because people use a wide variety of systems with varying connection speeds.  Trying to wrap my head around making something work nearly the same across so many sets of circumstances makes my head pound. :)
  When the bugs are worked out, the possibilities of future adventures to take friends on, or player-designed storylines and puzzles is so exciting. Does anybody else remember The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary?

• New "Puzzles" tab on the notice board to show pirates the path to puzzling greatness.

This actually grew out of a suggestion from our partners in Japan, GungHo. They felt that Puzzle Pirates could use a feeling of progression, and a place to look for what to do next.  It took a lot of artwork, but it looks fantastic.  I can't believe we didn't have one before.

• New furniture: Wall map, ship's wheel and dart board. New paints and enamels: rose, mint, lavender, magenta and light green. New clothing: female sleeping hat. New permanent shoppe portrait backgrounds: Distillery by ickessler, Iron Monger by Nordenx and Shipwright by Albini.

Can't say anything new or witty, the items to buy in this release are gorgeous. I never have any money on my player account after releases. :(

• Display icons on a pirate's page for the houses they own or are roommates in.

No more petitions from new players who've lost their shacks for the win!

• Award mugs from chests in Atlantis.

I've heard folks saying this will kill the mugs business, but I hope this is not the case. Records show that very few mugs in general are purchased, and hopefully this will bump up their use, like bludgeons and swords were intended to do

That's it from me kids, go and patch!

This week, I'd like to highlight pirate Toppyhopp of Sage's contribution to the Yohoho Tools application that our island designers and artists often use to create Puzzle Pirates scenes.  Stepping up to fill the lack of a Mac client, this mate created, updated, and hosted a Mac client of the toolkit himself that is listed in the Y!PPedia Yohoho tools article.  Hats off to you, Toppyhopp.

As Malachite starts receiving its first greenies and Puzzle Pirates deploys some new items in a release preceding some new bits and bobs coming to Ice shortly, I would like to take some time to update you on how the Three Rings office is coming along.

We had some spring birthday festivities for our office mates, and we've been doing a touch of redecorating! Office manager Natalie has gotten us a new sign for our door, a new rug, and fancied up our front room/reception area with new furniture and some more custom furniture from Because We Can.

Personally, I have long since run out of room on the letter wall and have now started plastering the hallways between office spaces with cool pictures and other missives that you've sent us.  Keep them coming! With time, I'd like to wallpaper all available space on this floor.  It'll help slow down unannounced intruders.  (You know who you are.)

Lastly but not less importantly, we have welcomed a new addition to the Puzzle Pirates (Cephalo)Pod.  Please give a warm welcome to Puzzle Pirates intern Micah Weaver, who is joining us for a stint from Rose-Hulman University.  He completes the triumvirate of of Mich-type names from Rose-Hulman, along with Arcturus (Michael Thomas) and Jack (Michael Bayne.)  I, for one, welcome our new identically named overlords.

Our Captain Cleaver, Daniel James made Beckett Magazine's list of the 20 Most Influential People in MMOs.  Hooray!

The list is stocked with big names from the games industry, including Sanya Weathers of Dark Age of Camelot fame and mistress of GuildCafe, Rob Pardo from Blizzard, and Richard Garriott of NCSoft, to name a few.

When asked for comment, Cap'n Cleaver said,

"I am honoured to be recognised as one of the few influential MMO folks. It's of note that many of my fellows work inside major corporations creating very large and expensive MMORPGs. I'm pleased that Beckett's recognised a few of us who are working outside of the mainstream and moving the ball forward with our independent and quirky ways."

Also, he would like to know why he is not #1.

Not to be outdone, the entrants in A Sailor's Yarn contest made themselves Most Influential Pirates in Bowling Over Judges and Bystanders Alike with their textile entries.  If you have not seen the entries for this contest already, I give a screaming recommendation.  They are amazing.  I also noticed quite a few Viking vessels on the waves for this contest.  Something about the longship seems to inspire scenes of dramatic ocean struggles in all of us!  I'm inspired to put a Puzzle Pirates longship atop Hokusai's 'Great Wave', myself.

Greetings, fair readers!

I return from my voyages to the island nations of Taiwan and Japan replete with stories and treasure.

As you've all no doubt heard by now, Three Rings has a partnership with GungHo Online Entertainment Inc. to distribute our beloved pirate game in the land of the rising sun.

Things won't be changing from routine, though. We'll still be developing all of the features of Y!PP in-house here at Three Rings, and translating them to our new Eastern audience.  If any of you fancy practicing your writing and reading skills of the Japanese language, this could be your chance!

Speaking of Japan, while I was over there, I noticed a lot of people's jobs seemed to consist of standing around.  Staff often outnumbered customers in grocery stores, and walked around welcoming everybody. Once, I saw a fellow whose entire duty seemed to be standing outside a dirt lot greeting people and telling them not to enter the large construction site behind him.

Japan's is a service economy, and my me, the Japanese are really good at it. I stopped by the store once and bought a custard. It cost around $2 U.S., and the young lady asked me about how long it would be before I got home. Based on my answer, she selected an appropriately sized ice pack to package the custard with, put it in a cardboard box that had a separate area for the cold pack (heaven forbid that the two touch while my custard was being kept cold), added a wrapped spoon, taped it shut with a pink flowered bit of tape, placed it in a bag, tied the bag handles in a bow, and handed it to me, bowing, and with the most cheerful, chirpy thank you I'd ever experienced.

All of this was very interesting to me, and not just because the custard was delicious. Online games, especially MMOs that are updated regularly with new content and features, are also a service industry.

Different companies have very different approaches, of course. Some will listen to suggestions and complaints more than others. I am curious to see how much good service affects a game's success, and if Japan gets into the online games business, I really want to see how they'll blow the whole service thing out of the water and raise the bar.

As an oceanmaster, I deal with quite a few complaints every shift.  Aside from the valid swearing and theft complaints, I get a lot of complaints in which it's very obvious that the complainer just wants the complainee to be punished by a higher authority.

Reasons for complaints range from "she wuz meen" to "he did something and stopped when I threatened to complain" to "threating to report me for no reson."

We all live in very pacifistic societies.  I remember being told over and over in school to not respond to teasing or attempts to pick fights, but to ignore them and walk away.  While I can see the logic of this policy (if you come across two children fighting, you have to punish both of them. you cannot determine who started what or who said what on the kids' say-so.) it obviously doesn't address the human desire for vindication and action.  So quite logically, children tell authority figures and want those figures to do something that they can feel happy about.

That's not the lesson I want children or our players especially to learn.

The problem is of course that you cannot always control what happens to you.  Terrible things can happen to you, especially when you are a child and relatively helpless.  What you always have control of is how you react to a situation and what you do.  Somebody out to provoke you?  You have better things to do with your leisure time.  You can't control of somebody decides to be an jerk on the interwebs, but you can decide whether you're going to waste your game time shouting pixels and getting frustrated or use your game time to go do something fun.  (I plan to come up with a programmatic way to teach this to computer game players and get very wealthy while benefiting society.)

And hey, if arguing with people is your way of having fun in Puzzle Pirates, that's fine.  Don't spam the complaint queue expecting some higher authority to help you with that, though.  Honestly, the higher authority has bigger things to deal with, like that manager who took off with 200 items of black/gold/Atlantean clothing that didn't belong to him from the tailor rack.

Furthermore, there are game tools that take care of problems like these with unbelievable efficiency. Often are the times that I have wished for a /mute function in real life.  I have encountered persons on the bus so personally offensive that I wished for nothing more than a white-hot meteor to come raining down from the sky to incinerate these persons to nothing more than mineral powder from their bones, leaving no trace of organic material so that their accursed DNA was wiped clean from the face of this earth.  By fire. CLEANSING FIRE.

Love the mute command.  The mute command is your friend.  You know that question "What if there was a war and nobody showed up?"  What if there was an idiot in Puzzle Pirates and everybody on the server muted him?

Bliss.