InstantAction Blog

[Contest] The Newblood Initiative

There are a whole lot of people on IA that are not aware of the InstantAction Forums and many more that may not harness all the skills to truly dominate on some of the games.  This is your chance to help them out and earn something in return.

Gamethief has started up the Newblood Initiative to help out noobs and reward the helpers.  The rules are simple:

1. Find a newblood
2. Offer the newblood some help (tips, how to play the games, etc.)
3. Introduce the newblood to the forums.  

What you get:

The top 3 "newblood wranglers" will be awarded tokens on the following token amounts:

1st place: 1200 ActionTokens
2nd place: 600 ActionTokens
3rd place: 300 ActionTokens

In addition all newbloods of the first place winner will receive the "DarkOnes" avatar pack.

That's the lowdown of it.  For more information and details of what the rules mean please head to the forum topic: The Newblood Initiative

Lou Castle Talks with Gamasutra

Louis Castle is an established name in the gaming industry as a simple google search will show.  Command and Conquer, Dune II, BladeRunner, Boom Blox (left: Castle and Spielberg), are just a few of the big titles that Castle has worked on in the past.  In addition, nearly everyone around IA is also aware that he is the new CEO for InstantAction and has recently discussed his new position and plans for InstantAction with Gamasutra. 

Lou covers a myriad of topics including why he joined up with InstantAction, the future of InstantAction, the state of the gaming industry, distribution methods, the move to Portland and Las Vegas, and more.  Head on over to Gamasutra for the full interview. 

Everyone at InstantAction is extremely excited to have Louis Castle working with us and look forward to the many awesome things coming in the future. Stay tuned and get excited!

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction on XFire

So what is XFire?

Xfire is a free application that combines multiple gaming tools into one powerful tool to alleviate the need to run multiple different gaming related programs. For instance, Xfire allows you to chat with your friends, see what games they are playing, what servers they are playing on and join them instantly with one click. Xfire also allows you to show off your gaming skills by capturing screenshots and videos and uploading them to your Profile page on the Xfire website.

Now XFire supports InstantAction so you can use all of the great XFire features while playing games on InstantAction.

So head on over to the XFire Website to grab the client and visit the InstantAction Page while you're there.  For discussion on XFire and IA on our forums, click this link.

-Dr Wiley

Complete Offers, Earn Tokens

With today's release you'll notice that you can now earn tokens by simply clicking the "Earn Tokens" button from within the InstantAction Store.  Once there you'll be presented with several different offers, for example, signing up for Netflix or taking a survey.

Each of these different offers yield a different amount of tokens so be sure to take note of how many tokens you will be receiving from the offer you are completing.  Also note the rate at which certain offers take to go through, so you may need to be patient for your token balance to update and reflect the offer you have completed.

In addition to this change in the store below you'll find some of the other updates that came with this release:

New Features

• Super Reward (see above)
• New Lore Build

Bug Fixes

• Users in a shazbot game should now have the game status panel after a game has been played
• Legions- Fixed an issue where Play Now button does not load on a mac
• Users with guests in their party should no longer get flash errors in Rokkitball
• Fixed an issue where exiting Legions from a DS make the party blank
• Resolved a conflict between Mav Lab and pre-roll ad block
• Clients in Legions Game should no longer get blue screen on game end when host goes home
• Chrome - Users will now be messaged to restart the browser after installing the plugin.

Huge Legions Update - It's Coming

It's that time of the month when we shut down InstantAction so we can add some new updates to the site.  This time the updates are heavily focused around Legions and these will include customizable armor and voices for your character.  In addition to the different custom helmets, skins, and voices here are some of the other highlight you'll find in Legions.

General Gameplay
-player collision damage added

-added several new loadouts for each class
-added observer mode
-added a fix for the hot-swap exploit

Missions
-added new forgotten mission

Laser Rifle
-laser rifle no longer needs to be charged, but instead drains all energy when firing
-damage is now based on energy used to fire
-players can now jet while using the laser rifle

Rocket Launcher
-specialist no longer has remote detonation
-specialist rockets can now be triggered to accelerate by holding the trigger

Chat
-enabled flood protection
-added new quick chat voices

Systems
-added player customization options for skin and helmet

-Added a second "small-map" dedicated server to all regions

-Added a "middle-sized" map server to all regions which includes Mirage, Core, Zenith, and Forgotten.

For the full rundown of the Legions update please click the link.  Finally, everyone has been wanting to know how much all the content was going to cost.  Here's a breakdown of the Action Token price per item:

New Voice Packs: 250 ActionTokens/item

New Helmets: 225 ActionTokens/item

New Skins: 275 ActionTokens/item

-Dr Wiley

Facebook and Legions

 

Facebook Photo Contest

Isn't Ralph adorable

We've recently re-created the InstantAction fan page on Facebook and want everyone to become fans.  So to encourage this we thought we'd kick off a photo contest.  Read the rules and take a look at the above photo from a previous photo contest.

The rules are simple.

1. Take a photo of someone or something playing a game on InstantAction or really anything InstantAction related.

2. Post the photo on the InstantAction fan page. 

3. We'll pick our 3 favorite photos posted and the winners will each receive 1000 ActionTokens. 

See.  Simple.  So get your cameras out, put your creative caps on, start snapping photos and post 'em on the InstantAction fan page.

-Dr Wiley

Twitter Avatar Giveaway is Live

These could be yours

The twitter avatar giveaway is now live.  All you need to do is follow InstantAction on twitter and check out the most recent post.  Follow the instructions and you'll receive a promo code to unlock yours.  Quick, easy and best of all free.  Enjoy!

-Dr Wiley

What's New on InstantAction

As you most likely know InstantAction is down for a scheduled update.  Within this update you'll find the following.

New Features:

Lore: Implement Mav Lab Free Trial

Bug Fixes:

messaging about the full-screen options have been improved
when you remove an online friend from your friends list, the number of online friends will now decrease
Fixed a bug where some users are getting quick joined into ghost parties
Fixed an issue where some ads on FF3 in Vista are causing scroll bars to appear
Import Contacts Function Does Not Support AOL Mail
Messages sent should now appear in the "Sent" tab in the Inbox
The Browser compatibility screen does not list all compatible browsers

Pre-roll Ads are Coming

We wanted to give you, our favored users, a heads up about a change coming to InstantAction in our next release.

Beginning 5/26, you may be asked to view a video advertisement before a game and after you have played for a certain amount of time.  Adding video ads allows us to keep InstantAction free while working to continue to develop what you've been asking for: more features, dedicated servers, more game content, and, of course, more games.  We encourage you to support our sponsors by clicking on a video ad now and then to get a closer look at what they are offering.

In addition to the release of these new ads we are working hard to make the advertisements on InstantAction appropriate and relevant to what you guys would be interested in.  We've heard several stories from the forums about ads that don't necessarily fit within InstantAction and are working to correct this so that everyone isn't bombarded with ads that are constantly flashing and emitting random noises.  We apologize for some of the horrible ads that have made it to the site, but expect those to be gone soon.

If you have questions, please ask them in the forums here and we'll get back to you as fast as we can.  Your feedback is invaluable, as usual, so we want to hear it.

Personally, I'm hoping to see some more of those Swedish Fish ads.  I liked those.

-Dr Wiley