Flo Rida Goo

Samir Mehta | June 2, 2009
[hidden by request]

Steve West | June 2, 2009
Intentionally misleading clue. Super-distorted image. Celebrity of relative obscurity (obscure only to me, perhaps - I don't do rap). We've seen all three of those things several times but when they're all used simultaneously...Woof! It's almost impossible to solve.

Samir Mehta | June 2, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | June 3, 2009
Sorry about the loquacious answer, but I gotta be me...

I think the request system needs to be overhauled, and I'll get to that in a minute, but first let me defend the Flo Rida goo. The man himself is one of the more prominent rappers these days, so he's not obscure. The clue is intentionally misleading, yes, but we've seen a lot of those lately and the others have been fair game, and a good number of players realized the trick. The fact that gooed photo looks nothing like the source photo when you find it is, to me, irrelevant, since finding the source photo is not supposed to be part of the game. It's a little technique beyond the game that players developed over time to confirm their guesses, and if I could make them guess in a vacuum (which I get to do at GooCon), I would. When I try to make a hard goo myself, I intentionally either seek out a photo that isn't indexed by search engines or I distort one that is until you can't identify it any more. Jason doing the same thing might have made the Flo Rida goo a pain to solve, but it didn't make it illegitimate. I rather liked the request when it came in, knowing that it would be controversial but solvable. I seek out goos like these in tournaments, ones that will get a bunch of players to guess wrong at first and the rest to be stumped, until only one or two players triumph over the goo and solve it through much effort. It's not the kind of goo I like to put up all the time, and I held this request until the end of the round for that reason. But it's a good request, in my opinion.

Anyway, regardless of whether Flo Rida was a good goo or not, the requests system is clearly dysfunctional right now. Too many player-requested goos are too hard and no fun, and they expose the requester to controversy for being too obscure or for accusations of cheating when friends & family are the only ones to get it right. Maybe Jason told his girlfriend Jenee the answer, or maybe he's just a huge Flo Rida fan and she can tell the answer because she knows him; we have no way to tell.

It's been my policy to grant almost all requests, because we all have different opinions about what makes for a good goo (see above) and I prefer not to arbitrate that. I've gotten around 300 requests over the years, and I've rejected only about a half-dozen because I thought they would make for lousy goos. That's not counting another dozen or so that I rejected on technicalities, like the request was for multiple people or the celebrity had already been a goo. This proportion gives you some idea why so many questionable goos have resulted from player requests. Plus, hey, let me be honest, it's a lot of work for me to keep the game running, and requests lighten my load.

All of this reminds me of a little feature I added to this site back in 1999. I enjoyed a game called "Who Would You Kill" that I found online, a game that developed from a conversation between friends on a long car trip, about which character on this TV show or that TV show they found most annoying, and what cartoonishly diabolical demise they would imagine for the hated pest. (Steve Urkel was a perennial favorite.) I really liked the site and it's silly sense of humor, but it drove me crazy that the creators went so long between updates, so I created a version of it on my own site where players could send in kill votes and request their own favorite shows to be next, and I would put up a new show each week. Lori requested Sailor Moon, and even though I didn't know it and most of my friends using the site didn't either, I knew it was a favorite of hers and so I was willing to give it its own week in the game. Lori wanted to get other people to my site, so she invited friends from an anime forum to come vote for the Sailor Moon character poll and then try other features. This was great, except that the invited players all requested other anime productions for the poll. I figured that each one meant something to somebody for them to have asked for it, so why not, week after week I granted their requests. After a few months, the feature had been almost entirely anime, and nobody was using it, so I took it offline. I hope Lori doesn't feel put on the spot with this story, since she did me a favor by bringing me more users. Obviously, the experience illustrates that I have to perform some quality control on the requests or they'll slowly drag the game down.

I'm still not sure what final form the changes will take, but it's time for me to make some policy changes about player requests. I see four changes so far, with possibly more to come:

1) Only one request granted per player per round. This was the policy years ago, I think when the game was weekly instead of daily and there weren't as many goos to dilute the frustration of a poor request. Anyway, this should give players incentive to create better goos, and it will make me choose more wisely.

2) Just like players are not allowed to guess at their own requests, their friends and family should not be allowed to guess at their requests either. This will hopefully reduce both actual cheating and false accusations of cheating. It might also have the bonus effect of giving players even more incentive to create better goos, since only a really good goo would be worth denying their friends & family a point in the game, right? Maybe that's a stretch, but I'm willing to try.

3) This has been a long time coming, but I need to alter the request a goo form so that you can edit requests that you have already submitted. Several times this round alone, players have written to me with alternate photos or alternate clues that they'd like to use instead, or they just plain ask me to cancel their request. You need to be able to do that in the form. What makes this more important in light of this discussion is that, when I decline a request from a player, they can use the form to revise it until it's acceptable for the game.

4) Most importantly, I need to safeguard the game's quality by only approving goo requests that are truly appropriate for the game. I would probably reject three-fourths of recent requests if I were honest about their worthiness. This might take the form of me editing the request myself until I'm satisfied with it, or it might take the form of me rejecting the request with specific comments about why so the player can try again, or it might just be a silent rejection. I need to give it some thought. What's murkier than the method of rejection is the ground rules for rejection. Before I start telling players that one goo is acceptable and another is not, I think I need to devise some clear terms for what qualifies, rather than shooting from the hip (with eleven years' experience) like I do now. This will take time.

I don't know if these four changes will happen, and there may be additional changes yet to come. All of this will be announced in time. What's clear is that the current system isn't working out, and hasn't been for a while now, and I'm going to change it. Suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Ryan Dunn | June 3, 2009
First...i love this site. Thank you Scott for putting all this together.

Now...Not a fan of 2. I would never tell my brother Steve the correct answer to a goo I created for two reasons: 1. Wouldn't want to mess with the integrity of the game. 2. It would bring me great pleasure to stump my brother because we're very competitive.

I like the honor system. Why rob friends and family of an opportunity to participate? That rule would make me not want to submit requests, and I love submitting requests!

As far as suggestions...what about giving credit for an accepted request? As in, if you accept a request, the person that submitted the request gets a credit for a correct goo guess, rather than having to fall behind in the Goo rankings. Just a thought. That rule could possibly help the quality of requests.

Sarah Kyle | June 3, 2009
I don't like rule 2 either. Simply for the fact that I know Chris, Jason, Lavonne, Chris dad, Dennis, Vicki and more. I would be crap out of luck then. lol.. Seeing as how they request goo's.. I like this game but when you are distorting the image and tricking to make it not make sense where is the fun in that. I mean why make it so impossible? I don't give my answers to my aunt or any of my friends because if I had to search for it but all means so do they. I don't get on much with my son but if the goo's are impossible to solve why bother?

Samir Mehta | June 3, 2009
[hidden by request]

Lori Lancaster | June 3, 2009
[hidden by request]

Sarah Kyle | June 3, 2009
I was questioned before if I was cheating when it comes to chris's goo's. If it would cut down on that I would not guess. But I get his wrong to. With me having a baby I don't have time to hop on and call people and ask them for the answer. If I can't get it right that is my bad. I believe there are still people on here doing exactly what we are saying about sharing answers. It doesn't seem fair to me. I mean we are all trying to figure out the answers but it is weird when you see that all of them got the answer and in about the same time. Doesn't seem like they even looked for the answer when all there names are popping up around the same time that they got it correct.

Samir Mehta | June 3, 2009
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | June 4, 2009
I second Samir's opinion -- even if I don't necessarily find the source, I still get a lot of relevant information from a cleverly distorted image to decide whether or not to go with my guess. In the case of an intentionally misleading clue, I agree that it isn't really fair... and that does cast considerable shadows on friends and relatives getting it correctly, whether by intimate knowledge of the requester or by blatant sharing of information... *especially* when there are a large number of similarly incorrect guesses that would seem to indicate that *nobody* would have gotten the answer correct otherwise.

Scott Hardie | June 4, 2009
Everybody: I had no idea that my #2 suggestion would be so unpopular. Perhaps I won't use it, then. I might instead put up some kind of notice like "this goo was requested by a sibling and your guess might be perceived as unfair to other players," but I first I have to figure out how to word it kindly. :-)

Ryan: Crediting a player for a goo request has been suggested before, and usually declined on the grounds that people would flood the game with requests to get "free points." I see what you mean about this raising the quality bar, though, since only worthy requests would get published. I will consider it. If I do this, it would only count +1 towards your round score, not +1 to your overall score (userrank) or towards your streak of correct guesses.

Samir: I like your feedback idea about goos. Over the years I have considered adding a rating system such as "I like this goo" to find out which are the most popular, but I only ever got around to adding this to bands in Rock Block. Maybe if a request attracted many negative ratings, it would be some time until they could request again. I fear that might be manipulated by players who have personal animosity towards certain other players, but I'll think about it.

Lori: Kelly did lose interest in the game, but she has said several times that the other reason she stopped playing is because she could see me creating the goos and didn't think it was fair. You're right on about that. I would also hope that people who had been accused of cheating would avoid any suspicious activity from then on, but it has only happened some of the time.

Samir again: The gooed image is part of the game. My point was merely that the source image is not. To me, Googling possible answers until you find the source image and then comparing it against the gooed image is a mild form of cheating. Everybody does it, so it's not like it gives any player an edge over another (except where Googling skills vary I suppose), but I do think it's unfair in the spirit of the game. The gooed image is definitely the point of the game, and the clues & categories are secondary to it in my opinion.

Steve Dunn | June 4, 2009
I don't see how #2 is workable at all. Who gets to decide who everyone's "friends" are?

I'm not real crazy about someone's close friend or relative getting an Imelda on a goo they submitted, but at the end of the day, who cares? I'm a steadfast proponent of the theory that if you're cheating on the Celebrity Goo Game, you've got big enough problems in your life that it's probably best for you to enjoy whatever psychic benefit you achieve from it. Congratulations!

I don't find super-hard goos fun or rewarding at all, but they're part of the game. I usually just don't mess with them unless they're in the tournament.

Mostly I'm cool with whatever. However, I do strongly object to #2. People just need to play fair. Simple as that.

Amy Austin | June 4, 2009
That's easy to say if you're not interested in competing for Imeldas, Steve.

Steve Dunn | June 4, 2009
Huh? I said I'm not crazy about it. What do you want from me? Stronger condemnation?

Scott Hardie | June 4, 2009
My plan for #2 was to use the Friends system already built into the site. When players didn't fill in relationships themselves, I used to do it for them, but I stopped bothering after a while, so it's incomplete at the moment. Most of the time, I can tell who knows who. It wouldn't have captured every last relationship, but it would have gotten us close enough to use in the game I think.

Amy Austin | June 4, 2009
Steve: You asked, "...at the end of the day, who cares?" If you personally "don't find super-hard goos fun or rewarding at all" and "usually just don't mess with them unless they're in the tournament", then it seems pretty obvious to me that it's very easy for you to ask and answer that question ("not you"). As someone who has worked very hard to achieve nine Imeldas, I am simply answering that I, for one, do care... and I'm also pretty sure that I'm not the only one. Not asking for your stronger condemnation, simply stating that not everyone shares your indifference to Imelda-worthiness.

Steve Dunn | June 5, 2009
Yeah, we definitely approach this whole thing from different levels of seriousness. For what it's worth, I'd be bummed if I'd gotten the goo and one other person got it to ruin my Imelda (of which I have zero). I just don't mind so much if someone else gets an Imelda. I realize different people have different views on this, and I think that's great.

On a different note related to the cheating undercurrent in this discussion, I don't think we should be so quick to assume cheating exists. Fact Number One: cheating on the goo game is pathetic. Most people aren't pathetic, therefore I tend to assume very little cheating goes on. Fact Number Two: people who know each other are likely to share common interests. It seems reasonable to me that two people who are dating would listen to and appreciate the same rapper. Once it was obvious that the obvious choice was incorrect, the goo might not have been all that difficult for someone who knew the guy who submitted it. Similarly, as Ryan Dunn's brother, I have a pretty good sense of his cultural tastes. This helped me get a couple of his goos, but it hasn't helped me with his most recent one!

Samir Mehta | June 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | June 5, 2009
I don't think anyone in this discussion assumed any cheating. As far as I can tell, we were discussing *the appearance* of cheating, which is a perfectly legitimate point of discussion. Also, I seem to recall plenty of seriousness when it came to the tweaking of the overall rules of play in the tournament, so I rather resent your implication there, Steve. I don't take it any more or less seriously than any other big fan of the game... including yourself.

Steve Dunn | June 6, 2009
Um, OK!