Wed 8 Jul 2009

Wikipedia Maze Deserves a Shout

I got a friend request on Facebook today from Micah Martin, who must have seen my previous post about the Wikipedia Game. Micah has built a very nice site, called Wikipedia Maze, with a game similar to the one developed by Alex and Dorian, but with some nice improvements.

Micah has really gone all-out on the features. The site supports multiple login methods, including OpenID, which I'm starting to use more and more. Coupling this with the badges and voting, and the overall design, makes me think that he's been spending a lot of time on Stack Overflow. And, when I tripped over a bug in his URLs for users with OpenID user names, he had it fixed in about 10 minutes.

My favorite addition has to be that the puzzles are stored, and users can go back and repeat them to gain points. In fact, you can go back and take the lead for that puzzle. (Buzz Aldrin → Edwards Air Force Base → Space Shuttle Enterprise → Star Trek: The Original Series → Jean-Luc Picard) This means that connections between links can be refined. I have to wonder if finding the shortest path is NP, and what the probability is that users will hit a shortest path the first time.

Anyways, while storing puzzles for later improvement is interesting, it doesn't really become useful until there's room for improvement. Most of the puzzles I saw at a quick glance are somewhat related--even Buzz and Jean-Luc. To make it worthwhile to go back and refine puzzles, there's probably some optimal separation. The trick will be differentiating between things that seem to be separated (like Britney Spears and panties) and things that are distanced by Wikipedia editors (e.g., Britney and Alexander Friedmann).

The persistence of the puzzles alone makes Wikipedia Maze a different game from the Wikipedia Game. Which one you prefer certainly depend on that part of personality that either does or does not thrive on stress and deadlines. I don't know Micah, but Alex in particular is a "never sit still" kind of guy. I'm not surprised that his version is based on a time limit. Fortunately, both sites could add the others' gaming mechanic (persisted or stored), as an alternative mode of play.

Finally, I have to make an old guy comment: Ahh, screen scraping…when will it ever end? (Hint: That's the next challenge--from Wikipedia to Urban Dictionary.)

Topics: programming