Are Gooed Pictures Worth Any Words?

Samir Mehta | January 4, 2022
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Steve West | January 4, 2022
I believe I'm on the record that pictures should be part of the clue and that they should at least be recognizable as a human being vs animal. Distortions beyond recognition may be acceptable if the end shape is a clue, in and of itself. That's not easy to achieve so I rarely try it. I hope none of my images reflect that and I apologize if they do but I've made sincere effort to make certain they're useful for a couple of years, now. One older than that might have slipped through, though...

Scott Hardie | January 4, 2022
100% my fault. Sorry!

It was years ago that Chris created that goo and other recent heavily-distorted goos, before we had that conversation. They've been floating around in the backlog for a very long time. When I approved a bunch of goos in a recent burst, I was hurrying due to holiday commitments and not really being thoughtful about what I was doing, and I should have been more careful not to let those through.

A few more like that got through, but I have just now replaced them with new gooed images. I also put a big fat reminder on the page where I finalize a goo, not to let this happen again. I hope it won't.

Speaking of holiday commitments, this whole project to flush the backlog came at a really good time, because I spent November and December pretty thoroughly swamped with family and home responsibilities, so there haven't been many goos from me in the mix lately and I've been grateful to be able to run some from other people. I'm catching up on my to-do list and expect to be back to normal soon.

Samir Mehta | January 4, 2022
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Chris Lemler | January 5, 2022
I understand players' complaints, but i see a couple problems. If one or more players can solve a distorted goo, it's a solvable goo hands down. So if players are complaining about distorted goo's, then why shouldn't the difficulties be removed? Are players upset that streaks are being broken? Maybe all goo images should be submitted like the one on January 3. BTW, Erik's goo is more distorted than the one on December 29 of last year.

Scott Hardie | January 5, 2022
Scott, I think you've previously argued that the picture is essentially irrelevant.

I think we've learned over time that some of us see the game differently. For instance, to me the picture is just one part of the total package that is the goo, so there can even be a right answer different than the person in the picture, on those rare frustrating occasions when the wrong source image is used. To other players, the point of the game is very much to identify the person in the image, so the two cannot be separated. It's fine if we disagree on this philosophically as long as the rules are clear and consistent.

If one or more players can solve a distorted goo, it's a solvable goo hands down.

I think we can all agree on that. I took Samir's question to be more about the meaning of the game rather than solvability in and of itself. (In other words, I don't think Samir was saying "these heavily-distorted goos are too hard;" I think he was asking "are goos supposed to look like this in the game as we understand it?"). But I shouldn't put words in his mouth, so please correct me if I'm wrong, Samir.

Are players upset that streaks are being broken?

Maybe. I don't know. I would like to know!

Maybe all goo images should be submitted like the one on January 3.

Oh, please no! :-) I am not a fan of the palette-swapping "distortion" effect. It works on a narrow spectrum of yellow and purple, and as Chris indicated, it does little to obscure the original image. I basically just left it in because there were so few other distortion effects available in the code library on the server. Blah.

Erik's goo is more distorted than the one on December 29 of last year.

If you mean his January 5 goo, I have to disagree on that. I can imagine in my head what the source image looks like from January 5. It's hard (not impossible) to imagine what the December 29 source image looks like from the gooed image alone.

How were your holidays?

Well... Emotionally, 2021 has been by far the most trying year of my life. I mentioned a few problems but there's been much more that I choose not to get into for the time being. Kelly and I needed something to look forward to at the end of the year, so we planned a two-part break for the holidays, a week with her father visiting in early December and a week with other family visiting in late December, which meant a lot of chores and overdue house repairs and shopping and so on to get ready. The latter trip got cancelled because 2021 can't even end well, so we basically just had early Christmas with the father-in-law, watching Christmas shows and eating Christmas food and relaxing outside on the porch watching the neighbor's horses. It was weird feeling done with Christmas by mid-December, but I needed that break to rest and laugh, so I'm so glad it happened.

Honestly, I had great ones. I think with everything so crummy in the real world, I am better at appreciating things right now.

I'm so glad to hear it! And yes, I think if nothing else, 2021 has taught me to appreciate what matters and ignore what doesn't.

LaVonne Lemler | January 5, 2022
Goo images are certainly important to the game, whether casually "regenerated" or highly distorted. Many times I've used images of possible guesses to determine whether a difficult goo is correct. Sometimes that worked; other times I wasn't able to locate an image at all. It's funny to see a goo highly distorted when its difficulty is easy, as the answer is usually found on a search or two. Don't believe I've every guessed a goo wrong based on the image --- the answer is always in the clue.

Samir Mehta | January 5, 2022
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Scott Hardie | January 7, 2022
You're still talking about December 29, right? I wouldn't say that's equivalent to a blank image. You can make out a head and face, you can tell it's a man wearing dark clothes with a light space (possibly sky) above him, and you can tell that he's bald. I realize that "bald man wearing black" is not much to go on; it could be anyone from Billy Corgan to a member of Blue Man Group. But it's not blank, either.

Samir Mehta | January 7, 2022
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Scott Hardie | January 29, 2022
Someone asked privately about today's Mysteries goo and why it doesn't resemble a face. I created it before the above conversation, and when I reviewed all pending goos for non-faces, I only reviewed player creations and not my own goos. Obviously that was a mistake, and I'm sorry about that! I have just reviewed my own pending goos to make sure that this doesn't happen again.