Word Ace Review

[selfawaregames]

New version of Word Ace is out! Includes the ability to up-rate a user once an hour (instead of just once, period), in-game leaderboards, and "blasts" - notifications that broadcast when you do stuff that's really hard to do.

Check it out, and lemme know what you think.
seppo

[bangharder]

everytime I play my pre fades out and restarts!!! Help me please! I was becoming a legend. I've deleted it and downloaded it back 3 or 4 times and it keeps happening.

[nuglas]

fun to play and chat with other people... but don't play if you only have 20% left on battery! lol

[selfawaregames]

Nice! Gamespot just reviewed Word Ace & gave it a 9/10, Editor's Choice!

Check out the review here: Word Ace Review for Palm webOS - GameSpot

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's their first-ever official webOS review? If you like it, leave comments & user reviews, and let 'em know they should be doing more of this!

seppo

[preftw]

user score seems to be more realistic......considering even the low level tables are now there for anagrammers to take advantage of cause they lose their money to "card ace blackhole". 9......far from it. used to be awesome. why take away the $40 and $10 tables hmmm? blackjack not producing enough chip purchases? deleted all self aware crap......card ace, still buggy after all this time......word ace, anagrammers.....blackjack, bull**** odds. ok bye.

oh and wheres the physical decks that was supposed to come out in another couple of months?

[Danload]

I like this app....

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by preftw

user score seems to be more realistic......considering even the low level tables are now there for anagrammers to take advantage of cause they lose their money to "card ace blackhole". 9......far from it. used to be awesome. why take away the $40 and $10 tables hmmm? blackjack not producing enough chip purchases? deleted all self aware crap......card ace, still buggy after all this time......word ace, anagrammers.....blackjack, bull**** odds. ok bye.

oh and wheres the physical decks that was supposed to come out in another couple of months?

The Word Ace decks are still in progress. Yeah, it's been longer than we thought. We're working on getting custom boxes for the next run, because what we found from the first run was that no off-the-shelf boxes were the right size, the plastic boxes cracked during shipping (even though they were pretty heavy duty), and frankly, having a nice custom box would be awesome. But it takes time to do that, and we're all already as busy as can be. I know it may sound ridiculous, but we're not making *any* money off the physical decks. Unless you're printing thousands of decks, the setup costs for these things eat your profits. We do it because we love the results, and we know the players will like 'em.

re: Anagrammers - we've been really aggressive about banning cheaters. Will there be people who anagram for a while before they get the boot? Yes. But we're hunting them and banning them as fast as we can. We've banned hundreds, if not thousands of users already, and don't have any intention of stopping.

re: Blackjack odds - we've gotten a lot of complaints about Blackjack's odds, and the simple fact is that there's nothing we can do about it, because the odds are exactly what they should be, and we can't mess with them. To be totally straightforward, here's the thing - there are a lot of reasons that people feel that blackjack's odds are skewed, but they all have to do with the fact that psychologically, you're more inclined to remember losses than wins. People don't walk away when they're ahead - they walk away when they're busted. I can't tell you how many e-mails I've gotten from people who say that they think the odds are jacked up because they lost a bunch - but then I'll look at the logs, find that they started with like, $1,000, worked it up to $500K, and then got really crazy about their betting & blew it all in a single hand. But what they remember is that they went from $500K -> $0, and not from $1,000 -> $500,000 -> $0.

People are also biased to remember "streaky" or unusual behavior - so if the dealer gets blackjack three times in a row, they scream "RIGGED!" and go bonkers. That's not how randomness *works*. Random is *random*, and given that people are playing hundreds of thousands of hands a day, behavior like that would only be surprising if it *didn't* happen a couple times a day.

I understand peoples' frustration - I play enough blackjack to have been in exactly those situations myself. But at the same time, again - the odds are the odds. We can't "fix" them without cheating, and we're not cheating. Never have been, never will.

Think of it this way - all purchases anyone makes in our games are totally optional. No one has to purchase chips. No one has to purchase a donation star. We hope they will because they love the game, or want to play at the high-stakes tables. But it's all optional, and for people to spend their hard-earned money with us, they have to trust us. We need them to trust us to stay in business - that's the long and short of it. If we lose that trust, we literally have *nothing*.

So any short term gains we'd make by screwing with the odds would cost us *everything* in the long term. That'd be a pretty stupid decision to make, and I assure you, we aren't that stupid.

So, one more time, for the record - our games' odds aren't rigged. In any way. Not now, not ever.

seppo

[bangharder]

please don't ignore me. I love playin word ace but my pre fades out n restarts every time!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!

[thermodynamic]

Originally Posted by selfawaregames

....
So, one more time, for the record - our games' odds aren't rigged. In any way. Not now, not ever.

seppo

Perhaps a future update can include a log of previous games to finally prove the naysayers that the odds are as they should be?

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by bangharder

please don't ignore me. I love playin word ace but my pre fades out n restarts every time!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!

What do you mean by "fades out & restarts"? Does this only happen when you start one of our games? Or does it happen with any other apps? Honestly, it sounds like a hardware issue, rather than a software one - there's nothing in any of our games that should cause that to happen, and you're the only person (so far, at least) who's reported a problem like that, which makes it unlikely (though not impossible) that it's a widespread, systematic thing.

IMO, I'd take the phone to the carrier, and ask for a replacement...

Sorry I can't be of more help!
seppo

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by thermodynamic

Perhaps a future update can include a log of previous games to finally prove the naysayers that the odds are as they should be?

It's an interesting thought - but I'm not sure how much good it'd do. We could show a graph of a player's winnings over time, so at least they'd see the up-slopes as well as the down-slopes, but at the same time, when people have angrily e-mailed me about the odds being jacked up, I'll generally go through their logs, show them the various results, and try to explain that the logs show the odds are legit, but many people aren't really looking for a rational explanation - they're just ****ed they lost a bunch of chips, and nothing's going to dissuade them that things aren't stacked against them.

I know that sounds like I'm being down on people, and I'm not - I totally understand the frustration - all I'm saying is that this is often an emotional reaction, not a logical one, and it's very difficult to make a rational argument when someone's ****ed that they took a big risk, hoping for a big win & lost.

seppo

[RocketRick]

Originally Posted by selfawaregames

I know that sounds like I'm being down on people, and I'm not - I totally understand the frustration - all I'm saying is that this is often an emotional reaction, not a logical one, and it's very difficult to make a rational argument when someone's ****ed that they took a big risk, hoping for a big win & lost.

seppo,

You can't reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself in to.

Blackjack is a game of chance in which the odds are stacked slightly in favor of the house. That means that, over time, and given enough hands played, everyone who plays it will eventually lose money by doing so.

Regression to the mean is a fairly simple statistical principle, but it also flies in the face of the common emotional attachment to ideas like "lucky streaks" and "hot tables".

Don't sweat it. Some people will always be emotionally convinced that there's no way they could have lost, even after they lose. That's their failure, not yours.

Please keep bringing us these cool games!

Thanks for 3 fantastic ways to while away the hours.

- Rick

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by RocketRick

seppo,
Please keep bringing us these cool games!

Thanks for 3 fantastic ways to while away the hours.

- Rick

Thanks, Rick. We're hard at work on the next game. It's very different from WA/CA/Blackjack (We're still working on updates for those, too, so don't worry! There will also be Android versions out soon, so you'll have more people to play with!), but it won't be ready for a little while, yet.

Cheers!
seppo

[bangharder]

I've tried but I can never tell when it will do it, two weeks ago I dloaded it back and played for like an hour shut it down. Then went back like two hours later and as I was tryin to join a friends table, it froze for about 15 seconds. Then palm came on the screen and I had to wait for it to come back on. I'd love to take it in but I can't predict when to show anyone.

[selfawaregames]

Hey, all - it's been a while, but we've got a new update out for Word Ace that adds Drag & Drop! You can now rearrange your letters by dragging them with your finger. Or remove any letter from the rack by just dragging it out.

I hope you get a chance to check it out!

Thanks!
seppo