InstantAction Beta Blog

Feedback Welcome

In case you didn't know, InstantAction has forums.  In those forums you can find a home for every single game that is playable on InstantAction.  In those game forums, you can have conversations about the game, most importantly you can provide feedback about the games.  The developers of the games see this feedback and take it into consideration when they are working on the game. 

What does this mean?  Plain and simple: Your feedback is important to us and with the forums you can provide the feedback.  It is much appreciated when you provide feedback about games in a productive manner.  This way we know what you like and what can be improved upon to make the experience more enjoyable.  This is live development!

You can find the forums here.

::NOTE:: The forums are open to anyone, that means you can browse them and get an idea of what they're all about.  You'll need to login or create an InstantAction account (I know you have one) if you want to post.

-Dr Wiley

New InstantAction Store

I know you've been looking for it and now it's here!  InstantAction has a store!  Log into your account and click the Store icon in the navigation bar.

Once there you'll find all the content on InstantAction that you can spend your ActionTokens on.  Some of the content includes new avatars, new skins, and new maps for your favorite games.  Here's what to expect when you get to the store:

Click image to enlarge

Head on in and check out what you can purchase with your ActionTokens.  Obviously, keep your eyes on the store as we add more content to spend ActionTokens on.

-Dr Wiley

New Avatars Available

Guess What!  You can get some new avatars for your profile on InstantAction now.  They are currently available for 100 ActionTokens per pack.  They look neat and some of them have food on them.  Below is a sample of some of the packs.

To access these new avatars, log in to your InstantAction account, then click profile, and choose to change your avatar.  There's also a new avatar selection screen.  Be jealous of my Ham avatar!

-Dr Wiley

Rokkitball and Latest Version of InstantAction

Hey Everyone,

Rokkitball and the latest push are not yet ready for the public to see, so we are delaying the release until early next week.  I know this happens in the gaming world and it irritates me too.  But honestly, all the delays really are for the better.  Rokkitball is awesome and we want everyone to experience it that way.  Once again, sorry for the delay.

-Dr Wiley

Rokkitball Release and InstantAction Update

Hello everyone.  I know people are excited to play Rokkitball and some of you are excited to get in on some action of the Legions private beta.  So here is the update of what's going on.

Rokkitball - The release of Rokkitball ran into some hiccups that have delayed its release until tomorrow, Friday, April 18th.  We are all excited about how awesome it is going to be so we wanted to make sure those issues got ironed out before rushing its release.

Legions/InstantAction update - This update has been delayed a bit as well, but we should see it going up tonight.  That means those folks who won their way into the beta will have access to the Legions as soon as this goes live.  Once again we apologize for the delay in this, but hiccups happen and we have to roll with 'em. 

Thanks everyone for your understanding and patience in this matter.

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction Tech & Architecture

This Friday we will be interviewing Michiel Frishert, InstantAction Architecture, and we need some questions that you guys might be interested in.  Post your suggestions as a comment and we'll try to get as many answers in there as we can.  The final pre-recorded video will be posted sometime next week.  I'll let ya know.

We're looking for questions like:

"How in the world does InstantAction work?"  Or perhaps, "How are you planning to scale InstantAction as it is undoubtedly going to grow exponentially."  You get the gist. 

This is the guy that you will be answering the questions:

He likes Steampunk

He's a smart guy so make them nice and challenging.

Reminder:  This is not a live chat, so we need questions in advance.

-Dr Wiley

Current Known Issue

Heads up with a current known issue.

InstantAction e-mails are not being sent properly. You may or may not receive e-mails from InstantAction including party invites, friend invites and confirmation e-mails. We are working to correct this and hope to have the issue resolved soon.

For a list of all known issues please visit the InstantAction Support Center.

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction Forums get a Makeover

If you don't ever visit the InstantAction forums, what's wrong with you?  If you haven't visited the forums in a while, what's wrong with you?  If you are hanging out on the forums all the time you've probably noticed the new face lift they've received.  To get to the forums all you need to do is click the link on the lower right of every page that says 'Beta Feedback Forums'.  For those of you who don't like to read, I present images...

Click image to enlarge

Thanks to the design team for making these forums look the best they've ever looked.  To whatthecrap, ZombieGorilla, blamFantastico, and Dangerman, many pats on the back.  Forums are a great way to chat and interact with other community members.  You can also make friends, help other people out that are having troubles, participate in creating art, talk about your favorite games, get a clan together, provide suggestions, you get the point.  Forums are plain rad.

To get there you can click the 'Beta Feedback Forums' link or follow this link and login with your InstantAction information: http://forum.beta.instantaction.com/smf.   So go there, chat up a storm, and give props to the creative talent behind the design.

-Dr Wiley

Oh yeah, here's what the forums look like:

Click image to enlarge

The Difference Between Inviting and Adding Friends

There's been a bit of confusion about the contest to get into the Legions private beta.  Allow me to clarify in this post.

Inviting Friends - To invite a friend is to send an email via the invite system to invite people that you know to join InstantAction. 

Adding Friends - To add a friend is to find someone already playing on InstantAction and send them a friend request. 

The contest to gain access to the Legions private beta that is currently underway is to invite new people(via their email address) to InstantAction; and these are usually people that you already know.   Not people that are already on InstantAction.

I like visuals, they help me...visualize things, so here you can see what adding friends looks like versus inviting friends. 

Click to enlarge the image!

Feel free to send friend requests to people on InstantAction, just know that having super-inflated friends lists will do nothing to get you closer to the Legions private beta.  Sure you'll be able to brag to your mother that you have thousands of friends on InstantAction, but the Legions private beta doesn't care about this list.  And remember, not everyone wants to be your friend, sometimes they don't know you and sometimes they just don't like you. 

Hope this clears things up a bit.

-Dr Wiley

ActionTokens and You.

Remember those tokens that you've been accumulating since you joined InstantAction?  You can now begin using them to unlock the complete InstantAction experience.

You may be wondering, “what can ActionTokens do for me?”

Fortunately I have an answer. 

Beginning today, ActionTokens  allow you to access:

• -New Levels and Maps: get more out of your favorite InstantAction games.

• -Premium In-Game Items: new characters, power-ups, and other exclusive extras means more ways to play.

• -Special Site Privileges: such as the ability to invite a friend to join your party even if they do not own the same level, character, or other game-related item as you do.

And what do you do if you don't have enough tokens to unlock something?

You will be notified if you have an insufficient amount of ActionTokens and will be given the opportunity to purchase additional tokens.  From there unlock until your heart is content.

That should about do it.  Feel free to post here if you have any questions.

-Dr Wiley

Epileptic Gaming talk InstantAction

Josh Williams, CEO of GarageGames, was recently interviewed by Epileptic Gaming.

Epileptic Gaming is a weekly Internet TV show about Video Games and the Culture that surrounds it. Airing LIVE every Thursday at 7PM EST (4PM PST) on EpilepticGaming.ggl.com, the hosts aim to bring you the best in gaming news, reviews, and interviews.

This episode covers Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Microsoft and Blu-ray, Infinity Ward on WWII Shooters, Grand Theft Auto 4, and of course InstantAction.  You'll get some new footage of Legions and a demo of ThinkTanks.  The InstantAction section jumps in around 45 minutes.  So check out the goodness.

You may have also noticed the slick new look to the blog.  We're working on getting some other visual aspects changed on other areas of the site as well.  I think it's spiffy.

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction goes Open Beta

InstantAction will be moving into open Beta Friday (shhh, many have found that you can actually get started today). This means all users will be able to play games as soon as they register!  We wanted to let you followers of the blog know as soon as we had an official date and that time has finally come.  If you are reading this and haven't signed up yet, at that time you'll be able to register and get right into the action.  If you've already registered, you can go ahead and login NOW!  I'll be on and I'm sure you'll run into many other members of the InstantAction team, so be sure to say hello.

Thanks to everyone that has been reading, keep checking back and I'll be posting more info as I get it.

www.instantaction.com

**UPDATE**

Joystiq - GarageGames' InstantAction beta open to the public, c'mon in

 

-Dr Wiley

IA Art Contest Winners

The art contest has come to a close and the winners have been announced.  Saw some great artwork, there are many talented people around here.  Anyway, let's get to the winning pieces. 

FIRST PLACE: Delkaes

SECOND PLACE: RIGGER

THIRD PLACE: Pak

There you have it folks.  If you want to check out some of the other submissions head over to http://forum.beta.instantaction.com/smf/index.php/topic,444.0.html. 

In addition to this contest we've added a new forum section, IA Fan Art. So if you've got some artwork you want to share go ahead and post it there.  Interested in seeing what you people can do.

-Dr Wiley

New Hot Legions Vids

Hey guys and gals.  If you haven't checked out the teaser page in a while, you may want to.  It's extremely slick since the re-design and we've got some new footage up there.  In case you forgot where it was, I'll help you out -- just head to www.instantaction.com. 

Things you should be looking for include but are not limited to: the video selector so you can check out a few different games that you'll find on InstantAction, obviously the new Fallen Empire: Legions trailer, InstantAction news, and more. 

As a reminder, you can:

• Earn ActionTokens when you register. Tokens can be redeemed at launch for free games, new levels and more.
• Be notified instantly and play InstantAction games before anyone else.
• Reserve your GamerName now.

I also got some footage of Adam Larson (lead programmer for FE: Legions) playing Legions at GDC.  It's not too exciting but it's something new.  So enjoy!

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction Developer Contest Finalists Announced!

We announced the finalists yesterday at GDC. Without further ado, here are the five finalists for the contest:

CannonBattle
Trash: Wasted Earth
Day of War
Grudgematch
Switching Gears/Survival
Affectworks

Congrats to the finalists, the Grand Prize Winner and the two 1st Prize Winners will be announced next week. Thanks to all for your submissions!

InstantAction Beta

Hey InstantAction gamers,

As some of you may know we have officially launched our Private Beta and people are on InstantAction playing games as we speak!  We’re still quite early in the Beta and know we have lots of kinks to work out.  This is exactly why we wanted to let some of you in for an early peek – to help us stamp out all the problems before we launch to a wider audience.  Please send us any issues and/or suggestions you may have and thank you to those who have already done so.  We plan on rewarding the extra diligent users with cool stuff.

Here are some additional tips and information:

Bugs and Feedback

Bugs can be reported via the forums at forum.beta.instantaction.com in the ‘Bugs’ section under ‘Troubleshooting’.  We really appreciate any feedback you can give us here so that we can improve InstantAction and make the site a much smoother ride for everyone.

The forums are a great place for other feedback and suggestions as well.  Please take a look around and let your voice be heard.

Email Support

The other method for submitting problems that you may be running into is to send an email to support@instantaction.com. We’d prefer that you go to the forums first since someone else may have encountered the same problem already and got an answer.  Also it’s just a great way for everyone in the community to be notified of new issues that pop up.  However, we know that sending an email is just a lot easier so feel free to fire away!

Why can’t I play games yet?

One of the biggest confusions we’ve heard from those who have registered via www.instantaction.com, is the inability to play games.  For now, only our Private Beta users are able to play.  We’re letting people pre-register for now so that you can reserve your GamerName and to get in line for access to the Beta.  You will receive an email from us (or from an existing Private Beta player) when you’re let in and at that time you should sign in at http://beta.instantaction.com to play the games.  Pre-registration is also a good time to earn ActionTokens which brings us to the next point…

ActionTokens

There has also been some confusion around ActionTokens so let me try to clarify this.  For a limited time, all users who register on InstantAction earn 500 free tokens. For every new user you invite as a friend (and by new user we mean someone who has not yet registered to InstantAction), you get another 50 free tokens.  Your friend has to complete and confirm the registration in order for you to earn these points.

Thanks for participating in the Private Beta and we really appreciate your feedback.  Hope you’re all having as much fun as we are!

-Dr Wiley

Happy Thanksgiving & Internal Alpha Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all our fellow American users!

Today also marks the beginning of our closed internal alpha testing of InstantAction. It's looking very good so far. The whole team is happy to get to play from home with all the functionalty up and running!

So while you, our friends, still can't get to the site, the closed beta is just around the corner. If you haven't signed up for the closed beta, better do so now!