I've been insanely busy lately, and I can't really talk about any of it. I got some great-- really, truly great-- news last week that I can't tell you about yet. Work's been frantic as a number of things begin to converge this week, the details of which would be excruciatingly boring to most of you. And, as ever, work on the Mooncurser's Handbook Game continues in secrecy.
Virtually all my free time-- and much time that really isn't free-- is being consumed by the Game. We've run 1.5 betas now and gotten some outstanding feedback. It amazes me that some people actually run these things without testing them first. Sure, it's quite a bit of work to run a beta, but the real event will be vastly improved as a result. There are some parts we just can't test ahead of time and are therefore leaps of faith for us. We trust that we can pull them off, if not with aplomb, then without disaster. Now we're tidying up loose ends and working on the little details.
As with any Game, our biggest concern is about timing. Some of our teams will be superstars, others will be a few thrusters short of a hyperdrive. Managing the experience for that wide range of performance levels is a difficult challenge. Some of the top players have told us that they don't mind if they have to wait around sometimes because they're at the front of the pack and we're not ready for them yet, but that's my biggest fear. That doesn't seem like fun to me. But that top end represents just a couple of teams, and we need to optimize for the rest of the curve while still trying to preserve the fun of the leaders. We won't know if we've gotten it right until Game day.
Still, I suppose I'd rather outsolve other teams and the organizers' estimates and spend an hour relaxing while we wait for everyone else to catch up than spend a couple of hours strugging fruitlessly with an obscure, completely intractible puzzle.
When it's all over, I will of course give a full report and I'm sure some attendees will chime in with their impressions of the experience. Once we regain consciousness. And then maybe someone can tell me why we agreed to invest such a staggering amount of time into a one-time, 30-hour event.
Posted by Peter at August 9, 2005 10:34 AMWithout violating any gag orders, and assuming that Mooncurser's participants have been set, can you tell us how many people/groups you're expecting? No particular reason to ask, just curious.
Posted by: Dug Steen on August 9, 2005 11:36 AMI'm waiting eagerly, too... not for the Game to finally stop consuming my life, but for it to start. Only a few more days of anticipation...
I've looked at graphs of PuzzleHunt solving, and typically there are a few (
Posted by: Steve Dupree on August 16, 2005 11:21 AMAlmost certainly unrelatedly, I was pointed at this and thought of you.
Posted by: Chris M. Dickson on August 17, 2005 02:56 AM