Spring 2011 Season

Scott Hardie | March 6, 2011
As we embark on a new season of Celebrity Goo Game tomorrow, there are a few changes to announce.

- Extra chances: For every ten goos that you solve during the regular season, you'll get another "extra chance" to survive in the tournament when you would normally be eliminated. A counter on the page will show how many chances you have left; when you run out, your season will be over. This should help to avoid the mass eliminations on a single unfair goo that happened in February, while also providing more incentive to play better during the regular season.

- Uncharted tournament: Each day in the tournament will be bracketed independently of what came before. Of all remaining players on any given day, the highest-scoring one will face the lowest-scoring one, and so on. This will be rendered visually as a separate column in the chart, unattached to any other column. For example, if this had been in effect last tournament after most players were eliminated on Valentines Day, then on day two, Russ would have faced Samir and Joanna would have faced Justin, with no byes filling out the rest of the chart. This should help to streamline progress towards conclusion, which is especially important in light of players getting all of those extra chances that will prolong the tournament.

- Hidden times: Until both players in a bracket have recorded a guess, their times (minutes and seconds to solve) will be hidden. I might possibly hide all times until midnight to heighten suspense further; I haven't decided yet. Either way, the player who goes first in a bracket won't be at a disadvantage against the other.

- As previously mentioned, categories have been restored to all goos, and bonus goos will now fill the gap between seasons of the game. There should no longer be a day on which there are no active goos to play.

Just to be clear, tournament goos and bonus goos will only appear on weekdays, with all expirations happening on Sunday night at midnight est, just like any other goo.

I've talked a lot about putting to rest the game's history of endless changes to the scoring system, and making the new format permanent. For what it's worth, I don't consider the changes listed above to be anything more than tweaks to the new format launched in December; the game is the same. Still, it's good to work out a few kinks in the system.

I'm excited about the return of the game tomorrow, once and for all thanks to the bonus goos. This is going to be a fun season!

Lori Lancaster | March 6, 2011
[hidden by request]

Steve West | March 6, 2011
Woohoo! Just what Russ needed - 5 more chances to kick me in the butt! Looks good, Scott. Thanks.

Chris Lemler | March 6, 2011
Im so looking forward to this round Good job Scott

Scott Hardie | March 6, 2011
Thank you. :-D

Jon Berry | March 6, 2011
Sounds awesome! Great work, Scott!

LaVonne Lemler | March 7, 2011
Love the changes, Scott.....it'll be a fun season! Thanks for all your hard work! :)

Chris Lemler | April 6, 2011
Scott I was wondering a good question...In the tournament we have extra chances after we get ten goo's right before the tourney......I have a question that everyone might be wondering.......That is what happens if you guess wrong and the goo is timed? How is that gonna work if someone guesses wrong and you have a timed goo r u gonna reset the clock or how is that gonna work in the tourney?

Scott Hardie | April 6, 2011
Good question. The extra chances aren't on the same goo; you still only get one guess per goo. So if you guess wrong at Monday's goo, then you lose one of your chances and you can't do anything else on Monday, but you can still guess at Tuesday's goo. Make sense?

Chris Lemler | April 7, 2011
Yes thank you scott

Scott Hardie | May 13, 2011
Participation definitely drops off towards the end of the regular season, when some players feel like they've achieved all they can and they just wait for the tournament to start. It's too bad, since I keep saving my favorite theme for last.

Steve West | May 13, 2011
This last theme is hilarious.

Scott Hardie | May 14, 2011
If the tournament runs well into July because of all of the extra chances, then so be it, but I'm going to at least try to make it quick by increasing the goo difficulty even more than usual. If you're one of those players who likes the tournament goos extra-hard, who would rather feel like you won by defeating a tough goo rather than defeating another player, then this tournament will be for you. Then again, I frequently miss the difficulty level that I aim for, so you'll probably solve every goo in 30 seconds now that I've said all that. :-) Anyway, no matter what happens, it should be a good time. I'm looking forward to this!

Scott Hardie | May 16, 2011
And we're off! The Spring 2011 Tournament promises to be a challenging campaign. If the extra-difficult goos don't intimidate you, having to face so many opponents who have so many extra chances is still daunting. Whoever wins this will definitely have earned it. Good luck, everybody!

There's one more new feature this round: The "bracket spotlight" halfway down the Current Scores page. I've wanted to dramatize the pairings for a while now, and I'm pleased with how this feature turned out. Consider it a virtual ringside announcer, introducing the opponents going head-to-head. Although the text is generated automatically, it is hopefully random enough to stay interesting. Plus, it sometimes changes depending on which two people are facing each other, so it should be a little different each day.

Scott Hardie | May 17, 2011
For this round, I programmed the site to conceal the time-to-solve for each player whose opponent had not yet recorded a guess. This was a widely-requested feature, since some players liked to wait until late in the day until their opponent had already guessed, giving them an advantage in that they knew they could afford to spend almost (but not quite) as long on the goo as their opponent did.

However, it was still kind of a giveaway that the site was reporting the outcome of your opponent's guess as correct or incorrect, even if the time was hidden. As an alternative, I have altered it so that all players in all unresolved brackets (any bracket in which at least one player has not guessed) are combined into a single long list at the bottom. Only after both players in a bracket have recorded a guess will the times-to-solve and the outcomes, correct or incorrect, be revealed. At the end of the first 24 hours, this list will disappear and the display will return to normal.

There's still a slight advantage in waiting until late in the day, to see how many players before you might have guessed correctly or incorrectly so that you can adjust your expectations accordingly. But that's not nearly as helpful as knowing your opponent's outcome in advance, since you're really only competing against that one person.

I know that any advantage available to both opponents isn't technically unfair since they can both abuse it, but if I can make a small code change that satisfies a number of frustrated players, it's worth it. For the record, this involves no change in the rules mid-tournament; it's only a change in how the information is displayed.

Scott Hardie | May 20, 2011
This has been a painful week to observe, so I can imagine what it's like to play. I know that some players prefer really hard goos at the end, because they often tell me so, but I still fret that the game just becomes miserable to play when it gets like this. It's better than the instant elimination of last round, but not by much. Extra chances will return next round, but there won't be as many of them, allowing me to vary the difficulty of tournament goos more.

For now, although the odds may look stacked against many remaining players, anybody still in the tournament can still win this. I've seen players triumph in direr situations than this. Don't give up!

After today, there will be no new goos over the weekend. The next tournament goo will appear on Monday.

Steve Dunn | May 20, 2011
I think, given the large number of extra chances, it had to be this way. Otherwise the tournament would never end.

I trust I'm not the only one in awe of Justin Woods' mad goo skillz these days? I don't know how he does it, but Justin is dialed in!!

Steve West | May 20, 2011
Whether the goo was hard or not, one person was guaranteed to lose based on the head-to-head setup of the tournament (aside from anyone with a bye). Making the goos extra difficult increases the odds of both players failing to find it. It's still good, though. And yeah, Justin seems to be on.

Justin Woods | May 20, 2011
Thanks guys! it's not been easy I wish I could get the first one back though.

Scott Hardie | May 21, 2011
I'm also impressed, Justin! You are willing to play very hard to solve these tournament goos, and it shows. But your many byes and extra chances are the result of playing just as hard in the regular season, it shows that doing well the game starts long before the tournament.

Five players remain: Justin, Jon, Russ, Steve West, and Joanna. We should have a winner sometime in the next week. Bonus goos will begin immediately after the winner is determined.

Scott Hardie | May 25, 2011
Then there were three: We're down to Justin, Joanna, and Russ. I salute the hard work that kept Jon and Steve in the running up to today, especially Jon's loss to Joanna by mere seconds today.

Just in case it's not clear: Last week's series of extra-difficult goos was an intentional deviation from the norm, not to be repeated this week or next season. The bracket system is designed to eliminate some players every day, and normally I'm happy to let it do its thing... but with so many extra chances in play this time, every player solving every goo would have taken more than a month to resolve by timed goos alone. I decided to speed it up by raising the difficulty, not my favorite thing to do. I should have had at least one less-difficult goo at the beginning to start on a positive note.

Scott Hardie | May 25, 2011
Also to be clear: I screwed up by putting in too many extra chances, and I'm sorry. What I'm hearing from a lot of players, publicly and privately, is that they like the way the timed goos force some players to be eliminated over time, and they'd have preferred for the tournament to go that way. I think it's a shame they didn't get it.

That said, I've also heard from many players over the years who don't like timed goos, and prefer to feel like they're competing against a tough goo rather than a fast opponent. There hasn't ever been a system that didn't get complaints, so all I can do is listen to the feedback and choose carefully which to act upon. I do welcome all comments, positive and negative.

Scott Hardie | May 25, 2011
Someone has suggested privately that because the byes provide a huge advantage to whoever gets them, maybe that should be someone other than a veteran player who is good enough to solve all 50 regular-season goos. (For the record, if multiple people tie for the highest season score, whichever of them has the lowest lifetime score will get the byes.) The more I considered my answer, I decided to respond publicly in order to foster more discussion. If you're tired of this topic, please feel free to skip all of this.

I've thought for a while about giving the byes to the lowest-scoring player in the regular season, who probably needs them most. But that seems like rewarding poor play. Hyper-competitive players would solve one goo and wait. There was too much of that in the betting system.

Similarly, I've thought about giving the byes to the player with the lowest lifetime score, which may be fine now when the player body is small. But if my changes to the site are effective, we'll gradually start to attract new players, and there will be a similar "race for the bottom" in which savvy new players will solve as few goos as possible.

What about giving byes to the player with the highest regular-season score who has not previously won? I think it's fair to say that we all root a little for these players, who have worked hard to solve many goos over the years and still not been lucky enough to claim victory. As much as I like that idea, it does seem arbitrary and unfair, which might be a root problem of giving it to anyone who hasn't "earned" it by direct action in the regular season.

There's a more complicated possibility. Next season, I plan to give extra chances for every fifteen goos solved instead of every ten. I could declare four tiers of players - those who solved 45, 30, 15, and less than 15. The byes could be shared by the players in the highest remaining tier, taking turns in some kind of order based on score - so, first bye goes to the lowest player in the highest tier, second bye goes to the second-lowest, et cetera. That might be fairer than the other possibilities, but it's daunting to understand and I wouldn't look forward to programming it.

What if there were multiple simultaneous byes to spread out the effect, so that it's not just one player who gains an incredible advantage? The top 3 or 5 or 7 players could get byes while the rest compete directly, or perhaps the 1st and 5th and 9th players and so on would get a bye while the rest competed directly. If you carry out that idea a little further, it just turns into last season's chart full of byes, which wasn't right for the game even if some of us liked it.

There's yet another option, fair but mean: The odd player out at the top of the chart automatically loses an extra chance when they face a bye opponent, whether they solve the day's goo or not. In the current tournament, that would put Justin on even ground with his final remaining opponent on Thursday, one last goo to win or lose it all. His reward for getting the top score would be not having to bust his butt to solve so many tournament goos like the other players; he can simply wait 50% of the time instead of stressing and risking burnout. However, I think this possibility would make the top spot undesirable, since many players would ultimately prefer having a shot at keeping their extra chances by defeating opponents rather than waiting comfortably on the sidelines while those chances dwindle. Thus, it would inspire another "race for the bottom."

There are many possibilities. We may yet find one that is compelling enough to give it a shot. For now, I think the rule we have in place is still the best one, albeit with fewer extra chances. More feedback is appreciated. This format of the goo game is here to stay, but I don't mind tweaking it a little, and one thing's for sure after all this time: We'll never stop talking about how the rules could be better. :-)

Scott Horowitz | May 25, 2011
I know i haven't been keeping up with the goo game, but it seems that the goos have gotten much harder

Scott Hardie | May 26, 2011
Do you mean in the tournament, or just in general? I've been trying to keep the regular-season goos fairly easy for the most part, but I don't always succeed. I tend to go for fun, whimsical themes over themes well-suited to easy goos.

Also: We miss you, and I'm glad to see you back again. :-)

Jon Berry | May 26, 2011
To be fair, the only goo I've seen since the site change that I thought was ridiculously unsolvable (or maybe it's just being a foreigner) was the Christmas one that was a Newspaper Clipping.

Personally, I've found the difficulty, as you said Scott, easier and tougher, which is a nice spread. The categories help a lot too.

Scott Hardie | May 26, 2011
I've gotten over my objection to the return of categories. They do make the game more fun.

Steve Dunn | May 26, 2011
Scott, when we've talked about the goo game in the past, you've indicated you prefer it to be a lighthearted, casual, fun thing for people to do, rather than a hyper-competitive contest in which winning is the prime objective.

You've undoubtedly noticed many of the dedicated goo players have a strong competitive streak. Your efforts to level up the playing field and inject randomness into the outcome (for example the tiered betting system) merely inspired creative ways to game the system and win. I suspect this was not surprising to you or anyone else.

Still, it worked on some level. The "best player" absolutely was not guaranteed a win under the tier system or the tower system. Factors beyond a player's control - essentially the (often unpredictable) behavior of other players - played a major role in determining the outcome. I figured this was in keeping with your "game philosophy" of devaluing winning so as to encourage casual play.

What is surprising, at least to me, is that the current system seems calculated to be maximally competitive. Especially with the inclusion of extra chances. The current system virtually guarantees the "best player" will win every time. Right now, obviously Justin is like the frickin' Mickey Mantle of goos - I bow down before Justin. Everything Justin gets, Justin deserves. Make no mistake.

I simply thought you had been trying to dial down the competition meter for quite some time, and so I wonder - have you changed in your approach?

Scott Horowitz | May 26, 2011
it seems the tournament...

Scott Hardie | May 26, 2011
Great observation, Steve. The answer is not so much that I have opted for increased competition, but that I have opted for a system that serves other needs first and maximizes competition as a result.

There's a much longer conversation to be had about the site's shrinking user base and what I'm doing about it, but the relevant part here is that I wanted a format that would be attractive to new visitors. I believe that a majority of people get into the game at first because it's fun and lighthearted, and continue playing long-term because of the competition. If I were to eliminate all scoring and just publish plain goos every week, few people would play for long because the game would lose that stickiness that keeps players coming back to win. But in the past, when the game became dominated by its scoring system, it was too daunting for new players to try. Having to understand the complex betting system and record a bet before you can even SEE a goo? Game design fail.

So, for those reasons and others, I opted for a format that would essentially separate the two parts of the game and let each one do its thing better. For ten weeks, we would play a fun, lighthearted goo game that would have little bearing on the competition and have little barrier of entry. Then, for 1-2 weeks, we would play a competition to resolve the season and name a winner. I chose the bracketed tournament scoring system because that was the easiest to understand and to play. Its simplicity also meant that it wouldn't have randomness or other curveballs to level the playing field; it really would be a Darwinian deduction of the best player from the field. I'm fine with that, even happy with that, since it gives the game veterans what most of them want while letting most of the season play like the lighthearted game that it needs to be if it's going to survive this drought.

To be clear, while natural talent and experience and luck all help, I personally believe that biggest factors in what makes the "best player" are hard work and smart choices. This season, that's Justin. How many players saw Lori's name on the Nate Richert goo early in the season and didn't even bother? There were only four guesses submitted. No slight to the three players who guessed wrong, but it's Justin's willingness to go the extra mile to solve that hard goo over the weekend that eventually granted him top seeding in the tournament, which gave him so many byes and extra chances that the odds of victory are now so very high in his favor. Not everybody can always go that extra mile because of busy schedules and so on, but in a basic sense, anybody is capable of becoming the "best player" by that definition. Victory is not out of anyone's grasp.

Scott Horowitz | May 26, 2011
Hey Scott... yes it's nice to be back... life/work has gotten in the way of play. and facebook too ;)

1 thing that I think would be cool, is if you didn't guess at old goo.. can you hide the answer, unless you guess at it, or just wnat to see the answer?

just a thought.

-Scott

Scott Hardie | May 27, 2011
Congratulations are in order: Justin has triumphed in the tournament, as it became increasingly clear he was going to do. The praise has already started, above. Justin, once again, I am thoroughly impressed with your dominance of the game. I'm also impressed with Joanna and Russ for lasting as long as they did, and everybody else who played hard over the difficult last two weeks.

Next week, we'll have five bonus goos just for fun. They'll have no bearing on any tournament, although they will boost your lifetime score. The Summer 2011 season will begin on June 6.

Scott: Good idea. I had been planning to add some kind of "guess these old goos again" feature to the Browse Goos page, but maybe I should incorporate it into every display of old goos. Let me give it some thought. Thanks!

Steve Dunn | May 27, 2011
Congrats to The Champ!

Chris Lemler | May 27, 2011
Congrats Justin for another welled played round

LaVonne Lemler | May 28, 2011
Justin, congrats on an excellent round and tournament! You're one tough competitor and terrific player! :)

Jon Berry | May 28, 2011
Great job, Justin!