StackEgg - what is this thing called "fun"? [closed]

Question

Is there an aim to this game?

Is this to educate people or just be "fun"¹? Also, is it multi player?

^{1 Great use of dev time! :P}

Answer 1

Based on a summary of the FAQ of the game.

What is StackEgg?

Welcome to StackEgg, a completely REALISTIC simulation of the growth of a Stack Exchange site! Start from your pet Site's birth on Area 51, witness it grow through private beta and public beta, until that special day when your once-little Site finally graduates as a fully-featured Q&A site, ready to take on the task of becoming the best site on the internet.

How does voting work?

Don't worry, you don't have to do everything on your own. Whatever your little Site should do next, it is decided by a majority vote of all players. Each voting round takes 20 seconds, after which your Site performs the action with the most votes.

There is a minimum number of players who are required for a round to count. This number starts at one (so you can in fact play on your own, if nobody else is playing), but it increases if many users are playing, and it decreases again if there aren't.

What are the phases of your site's life

Each game consists of three phases, each harder than the previous one. In order to complete a phase (note the progress bar at the top), you have to help your little pet Site to keep all its stats up as high as possible.

Private beta, your Site's infancy, is all about creating the initial content. Focusing on asking keeps your Site's question stats up; focusing on answering increases its answer count. And make sure that the questions don't drop too low, otherwise your little one's answers suffer as well.

Once your Site reaches public beta, it's eager to prove itself a healthy site. Make sure you support it! It needs to continue working on those questions and answers, it must keep its users happy by giving upvotes, and it must ensure to keep the quality up by downvoting bad content. Unfortunately, users don't like it very much when their posts are being downvoted!

What happens when my site graduates?

Then comes that day when your Site, all grown-up, finally graduates as a full member of the Stack Exchange network, and sets out on its quest to win the internet! It must keep doing what it was, but life gets more complicated: Now it also has to watch the internet traffic that comes visiting. The traffic will grow eventually if your Site attracts it by continuously offering many high quality answers. High traffic is great because it brings new users, but it also makes it harder to keep up the good quality.

And once your no longer small Site has completed that final phase, it surely has won the internet! You have helped your pet Site to achieve great things.

How can I increase my internet traffic?

Finally when your Site graduates, it receives a fifth stat to worry about: increasing the internet traffic that's reaching it. It would be great if one could just push a button to get more traffic, but of course it's not that easy. In order for your Site's traffic to grow (and not shrink again!), it must consistently offer lots of good help to the world – and that means continuously keeping both its answers and its quality high.

What happens once my site has a huge amount of visitor traffic? How can I handle downtime?

Once your Site has a huge amount of visitor traffic, it suddenly becomes much harder for it to keep its quality up at acceptable levels. Such are the challenges of growing up.

What happens if my site has low to no-traffic?

If a stat is dangerously low, it will be highlighted in red. Your Site must act quickly now, otherwise its situation will become so critical that only flagging for moderator attention can save it from being shut down – if it even has any flags.

What actions my Site can take?

There are up to five major actions that you choose from during each voting round, depending on the phase that your Site is currently in.

During private beta, your Site can ask to improve its question stat, and it can answer to improve its answer stat.

Starting in public beta, your Site gains the power to upvote, thereby increasing its users stat, and to downvote, which not only increases its quality stat, but unfortunately also has a negative impact on your Site's users stat.

Once your Site has graduated, it can close questions, which helps its quality stat even more than downvoting does, but it severely decreases your Site's questions stat.

How do I get rid of StackEgg?

Look yonder → where there's a checkbox that lets you remove it.

What happens if not enough users vote for a voting round to count?

Nothing. The day does not advance, and another voting round starts. All votes that have already been cast are kept, and the number of votes necessary in the new round is reduced by half. Note that this is different from when a (sufficient) majority of users vote to do “Nothing”, in which case the day will indeed advance, just without any particular action taken.

How are the standings in the network leaderboard calculated?

The site that helped its StackEgg win the internet more often is on top. In case of a tie, the site wins that on average needed fewer days for winning the internet – however, each flag that was left when winning the internet gives a bonus worth ten days in this calculation. So if sites A and B both won the internet four times, site A averages 300 days for winning and had 1.5 flags left on average, site B took only 296 days on average but only has a 1.0 flag average, then site A comes out on top. If there's still a tie, which will be rare, the number of times that a site reached earlier game phases will also be taken into account.

Wait a second?

Okay, okay, enough; I'll spit it, this is probably an April fools' joke.

Nice one, StackExchange.

Answer 2

I think it is a secret tool to learn SE users to pet their site, just like younger girls petted their Tamagotchi.

In the end, we should have perfect SE users, knowing exactly when to vote, ask questions, and flag. :)

Answer 3

As Patrick says, I think it's trying to teach us how to use and grow our sites - from what I've seen beyond a certain size up-votes have no real bearing on the site (in fact they most often lead to a decrease in quality) while down-votes are required to increase quality and have little or no bearing on User counts...

So: play the game, and remember to down-vote more in real life (and only use close in moderation ;)).