Fastest or First?

Scott Hardie | September 28, 2010
Both of these options have been controversial in the goo game before, but I'm curious which has more support. If you and another player could both solve a goo, and the game had to find a way to eliminate one of you, would you rather try to survive by solving the goo fastest after activating it when you're ready (a timer would count the minutes and seconds until you record your guess), or by solving it first after it appeared on the site at midnight, before the other player guessed? And if the goo wasn't published at midnight but at some more convenient time like 9pm Eastern, would that change your answer? Thanks.

I'm aware that another system of elimination, two players facing an indefinitely long series of very difficult goos until one of them guesses wrong, is generally preferred to both of these options, so I'm not bothering to include it in the poll.

Scott Hardie | September 30, 2010
Congratulations again, Justin! You have been working towards this goo game victory for a long time, and you're well overdue for a win. The rest of you played hard too.

I'm planning to change the rule format again, but not right away. GooCon coming up in 13 days means that you'd have to wait about a month before I could program another rule system, and that's a long hiatus between rounds. Let's play Round XLVI starting next week with the betting system and a few tweaks to the math, hoping to find a balance somewhere between Justin's near-lock this round and the leapfrogging chaos of the previous round. When Round XLVII begins in December, we'll switch to the new format.

Your votes in the poll above will help me plan that format. Thanks for participating. The voting has gone as I expected it to, but I'm surprised - not one player would change their answer to "first" if the goos were published at a more convenient time like the evening?

Ryan Dunn | September 30, 2010
Convenient times are relative. One man's convenient time is another man's date night. Timed goos are like timed 100 meter dashes...fastest wins.

In the next round can we get a heads up on who designed the goo before we open it?

Ryan Dunn | September 30, 2010
...And congrats Justin!

Scott Hardie | October 7, 2010
The page should now report who requested the goo, and the themed week, before you activate the goo. The calendar on Dashboard also displays this information.

Multipliers have been doubled for the new round that begins in 90 minutes: .1 instead of .05. That doesn't sound like much difference, but it should be enough to allow players to catch up from behind, whether they fell behind on purpose or not, while preserving the advantage gained by consistent players. We'll find out soon how much of a balance has been struck. Good luck, players.

Scott Hardie | November 6, 2010
For those of you following only goo-game-related discussions and nothing else: Don't miss the discussion about the site's 14th anniversary, which contains details about the future of the goo game. I guess I anticipated more feedback by now (thanks Ryan), but there's nothing wrong with waiting to see how it plays out before commenting.

Scott Hardie | December 1, 2010
Some congratulations are in order:

- After a long wait for the victory to become mathematically certain, Steve West has become the winner of Round XLVI. This is Steve's fifth win in six years. That Steve is one of the game's most accomplished players ever is already a matter of record, but this victory shows his mastery of yet another rule system: It took very careful timing and betting to triumph with such a slim margin over several tough competitors.

- Jon Berry, Justin Woods, and Russ Wilhelm all played a perfect round, a difficult feat in and of itself. This is Justin and Russ's third time each, and Jon's first time, only three months into his goo game career.

- Justin has now surpassed Russ's record for most consecutive goos solved: When the last goo of the round expires, Justin will have an impressive streak of 112 goos and counting. If anybody expected Justin to take it easy after his victory last round, I'm sure he's happy to disappoint. :-)

Congrats, all!

My plans for the future of the game are pretty close to what I explained in the 14th anniversary discussion. I have several objectives:

- Simplify the rules. The betting system is good at producing a fair winner with a close competition (it took six days to determine for sure that Steve had won), but it's too complicated and a big impediment to getting into the game. You should be able just to see current goos without having to understand the rules and fill out a form.

- Give themes a more prominent role. Feedback about themed weeks, or themed rounds in the case of the world tour, has been very positive. I'm taking the all-themes format of the live game and bringing it online. The themes are varied enough that everybody should have a favorite.

- Reprogram the guessing form. One player recently reported an inability to use the betting and guessing forms, which I have been unable to fix for her. As I look at the dwindling number of players, I wonder if other people are having the same trouble. A full rewrite is the best chance I have to fix the problem, and it allows me to do new things with the guessing form at the same time.

- Avoid the mistakes of the last format change. When I tried what came to be called the "whitewash" of the game, it was unpopular because 1) the plain white design was unappealing, 2) it launched with some features still frustratingly under construction, and 3) there was no alternative to the ajax-based guess form if players had javascript disabled. These problems obscured the improvements that came with the new format at the time. I don't intend to let next week's new format suffer the same fate.

- Implement SEO changes that will make the game more attractive to search engines and hopefully bring in new players to reverse the downward trend in participation.

A whole new game begins this Monday. I can't wait!

Steve Dunn | December 1, 2010
Bravo Steve West.

Justin Woods | December 1, 2010
yeah yeah congrats Steve ;-)

Ryan Dunn | December 1, 2010
[fist in air] WEST!

Congratulations...you are a baller.

Jon Berry | December 1, 2010
Congrats, Steve! :D

Ryan Dunn | December 1, 2010
Jon has proven to be a baller as well.

I don't know how the hell some of you people figured out some of them there goos...Darvin frikkin Moon???

Jon Berry | December 1, 2010
Awww shucks, thanks Ryan! Darvin Moon was just 1% inspiration, 99% google-fu, at least in my case.

Justin Woods | December 1, 2010
Well since there was no explanation on that GOO I will tell what I did to find it. "I wouldn't put money on this goo to win the world series." I took (world series sports) Google search web and found WSOP world series of poker then used Wikipedia and found that Darvin Moon was the runner up last year...

Jon Berry | December 1, 2010
He also got knocked out pretty early on this year, I think.

Steve West | December 1, 2010
Thanks all. Tough going, indeed. Several did well to keep it close to the end. Congrats to them as well.

Scott Hardie | December 2, 2010
Chris gave me a chance to solve Darvin Moon by email. I got the WSOP part, but named the wrong player (Chris Moneymaker, who I think some players guessed too). It was especially frustrating because I don't really know professional poker players very well, and Moon is one of the few who I do know about, thanks to his colorful life story and attitude. I've never even seen him play and I like the guy.

Anyway, there were objections to Moon being classified as a Sports goo, which is debatable. The new format will probably solve that problem while creating other ones.

Chris Lemler | December 2, 2010
Congrats Steve Welled Played

LaVonne Lemler | December 2, 2010
Congrats on victory #5, oh "Great One" of the Goos! :)