Would you play a Stack Overflow board game? [closed]

Question

I've just been alerted to a company which produces board games - you design the game, artwork 'n all, and upload the assets to them. They produce the game and sell it in their store, taking half the profits.

I'm a big board game fan (1), and would love to help design a board game around Stack Overflow. Is this a crazy idea, or would anyone else be interested in it? Can we get it done in time to have some copies available for DevDays? :)

(Sorry, I know this is hugely silly, but the idea has a lot of appeal for me.)

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(1) For reference, mostly Settlers of Catan and similar games.

Answer 1

You'd need to invite somebody around to randomly edit the questions (often controversially), and occasionally you'd need to throw some of the questions into one of your other games (SF/SU) for no apparent reason.

None of the "rules" would be written down, but you are expected to just know them or face the wrath of the other players.

And you can play with multiple separate racks, as long as nobody spots you.

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OK, it would be novel and fun for something like devdays; but other than that I suspect:

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Answer 2

Draw a question card...

You get lost in a meta discussion. Lose a turn.

Answer 3

I found this one. It's called "Programmer's Nightmare." I think we could do better.

Answer 4

It sounds like fun.

What would it be like? Trivial Pursuit, but with programming questions? Or would it be more like Monopoly? If you ask a meta question you get sent to jail, etc.

Answer 5

Board games are cool (definitely ones designed by lifelong board game designers), but they're pretty hard to make right. You might find the following to be an easier game to make and publish, though perhaps not as on-brand:

• Create a game that is played by 3-10 people using only a pack of 100 blank index cards, and pens. Maybe dice.
• Write a PDF describing the game rules. Print as a booklet and fold it to the size of the index cards (use 4x6 for letter, or A7 cards for A4). Distribute with cheap pens.
• ...
• Profit!

The rules could be something a long the lines of:

- At the start of play the index cards are divided evenly among each player,
  any remainder cards are owned by the moderator.
- In the first round all players must play in the question stage by writing
  4 tags on the back of their card and placing it tags down in the middle.
  On the visible side players mark ownership with their username at the top.
- Score the new cards according to the scoring rules below.
- In subsequent rounds, place these newest question cards in a collection
  available to all players thus making them old cards.
  Per round, play moves in stages:
    - During the question stage, players choose to ask 0 or 1 questions,
      done as described above.
    - During the answer stage players choose to answer 0 or 1 old questions
      from previous rounds, becoming a respondent.
        - The respondent may not answer their own questions (unlike SO).
        - The respondent may only answer each eligible question once.
        - The respondent writes their username near the bottom of the front
          of the question.
        - An answer can be definitive or not, at the discretion of the
          question's creator. A decision must be made at the time of
          receiving an answer, and (unlike SO) cannot be changed later. A
          definitive answer will be marked with a check mark next to the
          respondent's username.
    - During the edit stage, players choose to edit 0 or 1 old questions if 
      that player has more than X points. (recommend that X be optimized to 
      occur in the 4th round, possibly X=50).
        - The editor may add tags up to a total of five, replacing only any
          struck through tags, or misspelled tags (unlike SO).
            - Before a player can strike through and replace a misspelled
              tag he must win a majority vote with the other players AND get
              final approval from the moderator. The player may not choose
              to edit a different question if permission to strike out a
              misspelled tag is not given. The moderator decides based on
              real arguments for actual misspellings or miscategorizations,
              and serves to disallow players from ganging up to vote on
              perfectly reasonable tags.
        - For convenience these should be added or replaced in a new color,
          or a separate area or column on the tags side.
- In a round, play progresses in stages. First all players choose to ask a
  question in the question stage, then all players choose to answer
  a question in the answer stage, and then all eligible players may edit a
  question in the editing stage. The round ends with a scoring stage.
- Play continues until end of the round in which the first player has used
  all of his share of index cards.
- At the end of each round, including the last round, score the new and old
  cards on the front under the username or by the answering username.
    - The moderator will flip all the question cards, and add any new tags
      on a master index sheet or card, place the creator's username(s) next
      to them and retain a use count of tag use in ticked grouped by five.
      This master list is kept secret during rounds of play.
    - If the moderator finds a tag to be inarguably off-topic (i.e.
      "breakfast" but not "off-topic") that tag is not counted or new.
    - The front of cards asked or edited in this round with new tags will
      get plus +3 for each new tag, the tag's creator will be noted as the
      person who added the tag in the question or editing stages.
    - If more than one player created the same tag this round, add an
      additional +3 points to each question card featuring the new tag for
      each other creator of that tag.
    - Any tag (from edits or asking) which was off-topic will receive -3
      points on that card and will be struck through.
    - Any pre-existing tag will add a +1 to the tag creator's card featuring
      it's initial use. The moderator should note the usage by adding ticks
      in the index.
    - Any replaced tags which were misspelled will first be replicated as
      corrections across all cards that feature the misspelling for free
      (unlike SO) then count as tags above, (potentially adding points to
      the editor, if they own a question with a misspelled tag, or inventing
      a new tag for each owner of a misspelled tag question), and further 
      add -3 points to all cards changed to mitigate the gain to the
      question owners.
    - Any definitive answer provides +7 points to the question card, and +5
      points to respondent (marked on the question card next to the
      answering username).
    - Any non-definitive answer added before there was a definitive answer
      will add +3 points to the question card, and +1 points to the
      respondent (also marked by the username).
    - Any non-definitive answer added after there was a definitive answer
      will add +1 points to the question card, and +1 points to the
      respondent (again marked by the username).
- Winners are determined as the player with highest points at the end of the
  game. Ties are broken by a badge count, with Gold badges being worth 7
  points, Silver badges worth 3 and Bronze badges worth 1.
- If any badges are needed they can be determined as follows
    - Any question with 10 or more points but less than 20 points gets
      1 Bronze good-question badge.
    - Any question with 20 or more points but less than 40 points gets
      1 Silver great-question badge.
    - Any question with 40 or more points gets 1 Gold famous-question badge.
    - The creator of the most new tags gets 1 Gold gift-of-gab badge.
    - The creator of the second most new tags gets
      1 Silver generalist badge.
    - The creator of the third most new tags gets 1 Bronze blah-blah badge.
      (not available in games with less than 3 players).
    - Any tag used between 10 and 20 times earns 1 Bronze taxonomist badge
    - Any tag used between 20 and 40 times 1 Silver project-maintainer badge
    - Any tag used 40 or more times earns 1 Gold project-lead badge
    - The player with the fewest answers earns 1 Gold know-nothing badge
    - The player with the fewest questions earns 1 Gold know-it-all badge
    - Badges may be affixed as [Bronze/Red, Silver, and Gold star stickers][1]
      to a player in tournaments.

Alternative modes:

- Players who know each other well may play without a moderator. In this
  case the tag index is known to all, as are the counts, and majority rules
  on misspellings (which can also be miscategorizations).
- Players with self-adhesive notes handy, such as post-it notes, may add a
  round stage after editing in each round called the comment round stage.
    - During this last stage of the round, self-adhesive notes may be
      affixed to questions on the shorter right hand side and feature
      comments, signed or unsigned. Comments may be added to fresh notes, or
      added in space on existing notes.
    - Comments may be anything, but comments in these forms affect scoring:
        - "I question *username*'s answer": The score for that answer
          receives -1 points unless that answer is definitive in which case
          it gains +3 points.
        - "Thanks, *username*": If there was an off-topic tag or misspelled
          tag that was edited by that username and that username has an
          answer to the same question, the question will gain +1 points.
          This can occur when the comment is made, or later when the other
          two conditions are met and the comment remains.
        - "Funny, *username*" or "Good point, *username*": Affects the points
          of the named username's answer, if it exists, by +1 points.
- Tournament play
    - Tournaments are matches played in a bracketed series of games
      consisting of groups of N players (where N is even and the number of
      people it takes to finish a game of 100 cards in under an hour, to
      allow for snacks and bathroom breaks between hours on which the games
      start; suppose N=10).
    - At the start of a game, players write their username on each card in
      their stack. Optionally affixing an SO logo sticker with GUID on it.
    - Stages of rounds are time limited to 10 seconds.
         - Before the question stage starts, players signal they are ready
           by either putting a fresh card out, or putting their writing
           hand's palm flat on the table. They may write tags for 10 seconds
           when all players are ready. They may write a maximum of 4 tags,
           but are not required to fill out all 4 tag slots.
         - Before the answering stage starts, players signal similarly by
           placing a selected old card in front of them, or placing their
           writing hand palm down. Conflicts over a question to answer are
           resolved by a coin toss with each challenger. Once all players
           are ready players have 10 seconds to write their username on the
           card, but probably require less time.
         - Before the editing stage starts, players signal readiness
           similarly and resolve conflicts similarly as above. They propose
           corrections before the stage starts and receive permission in
           advance at the sole discretion of the moderator (no voting). When
           they are ready, they again have 10 seconds to complete up to 5
           tags depending on how many available tag slots there are.
    - All new and old badges are counted for each game and added to your score
      before determining winners.
    - The top half of scoring players (E.G. 5 persons) move on to the next
      bracket of play. They retain Badges between games.
    - In the final game, badges are not counted except in the case of a
      tie-break.

Answer 6

Couldn't we just re-brand Jenga?

Answer 7

It could have "chance" cards which hold a podcast number, and you'd have to listen to the podcast and play Stack Overflow Podcast Bingo, before returning to the real game, except it wouldn't be a real game any more, because We Would Be Drunk.

Answer 8

I would play the Flash version :)

Answer 9

You'd have to base the game on getting 10k reputation or more, and grant more options to the players the more reputation they get.

Maybe you have tags in the form of cards, and you draw cards on your turn. Then you can play cards to either ask a question with the tags whose cards you play, or play cards to answer questions with those tags. Then you have an randomized upvote/downvote step wherein certain tags are voted on more than others. The strategy of the game would be to spread out in tags, but you could concentrate on popular tags as well to get more points from one tag. I see this as being similar to gathering resources in Settlers.

Alternatively you could make it more like Carcassonne, where ad-hoc teams of people work together to answer questions, and when it's answered they all gain reputation proportionally to the amount of work they put into it. Cards would be questions, and players invest a limited number of effort tokens into answering them. Every turn, there is a chance that the OP will reappear and either change the nature of the question (invalidating all effort up until now), add bounty (doubling rep gained from this question) or pick the answer with the most effort (giving lots of rep to the winner, or dividing it up for ties). Players can cast a limited number of downvotes, close votes, flags, etc per round.

I kinda like the second approach better, because Carcassonne is awesome.

Answer 10

You would have to make it a Massive Multiplayer Online game where we could all go to a web site, create an identity, ask questions, answers questions, vote up, vote down, make comments, tag, keep score...

Oh wait a minute that is what we already do on SO sites. Never mind.

Answer 11

What would you think about a game around building Stack Overflow where each person plays a Jeff. I see it as a cross between The Settlers of Catan and Monopoly, where you have to accomplish certain tasks in order to win (like building the servers, writing the code, etc.) There could be like fate cards you draw which slow down or speed up the tasks you have to do. Things like

1. You underestimate the amount of time it takes to finish tasks, lose your next turn. This could have the famous Atwood quote "I estimate it will take 6-8 weeks."
2. Fallout 3 just came out, lose your next turn.
3. You are on a call with Joel, and he tells you everything you just did was wrong and has to be redone, start over on your current task.
4. You con your friend to help you out with your "side project" telling him that it shouldn't take that long to finish. Take another turn.

Answer 12

I would personally enjoy it more if it was something non-programmers COULD play, (but probably wouldn't be interested =P) rather than a trivia-style programming question game. Mostly because the "trivia-style programming question game" already exists and is called "Stackoverflow.com"

Answer 13

Only if I get to play as Jon Skeet (and thus win every time!)

Answer 14

What? I'm not already spending too much time on Stack Overflow?

Answer 15

The Game

The game comes with a huge list of regular expression patterns stored in a thick paper manual, and you each take it turns with an eggtimer to see how fast you can solve it. Start at the beginning of the manual, and cross out the question when it's done so you know not to do it again. This also means we can sell extension sets when the players have finished the game.

Artwork

I've found a good picture we can use on the front cover of the box which reflects the objectives of the game, to have fun and learn about regular expressions.

_{(source: hiuniversalorlando.com)}

Difficulty Levels

One person at a time. The patterns would be in two categories, 'Hard' and 'Dry'.

The Winner

First to 25 wins

Special Cards

While you are waiting for your opponents to solve their puzzle, you can play special cards, like the 'alert to moderator' card which means you are allowed to wave a small red flag for 10 seconds. The flag will be made from a stick and a piece of flag.

You could also play the 'post a comment' card which lets you talk to other people who have also played this card on this particular turn as you are waiting for your turn. You must speak softly as to not disrupt the thought process of the player whos turn it is. If you do not have a post a comment card, you must sit in silence.

Free Gift

All with the quiet background Tracy Chapman soundtrack which comes complementary with each purchased set. Each card will have a photo of Tracy Chapman on it, I've negotiated this term in return for the Tracy Chapman distribution rights.

I've also had a chat with Greggs the bakers and they say we can put a 5% discount token in the box if we would like. The voucher will have a photo of a baker on it baking bread and maybe a slogan like "Get 5% discount on your bread".

Extensions

More manuals filled with more exciting regular expression patterns. Perhaps different categories as well, like a boolean logic game with lots of logic statements to prove if they are true or false.

Maybe a party set where you can have lots of people playing in teams and the set comes with three coloured hats in it for each team captain to wear. Red, blue and green would be nice.

A create-your-own-regular expression extension set, where you are given a list of problems, like "validate email addresses according to the RFC 822 grammar". Players attempt to write the regular expression and the other players analyse it and award points based on speculation.

Conclusion

The game would definitely be fun as it would end up with everyone having fun listening to Tracy Chapman, commenting to each other and learning about regular expression patterns.

Answer 16

It depends... I usually prefers a better game with a unknown universe than a bad game ripped-off a well known universe.

Answer 17

No I wouldn't.

Answer 18

I might play it, but only in particularly geeky circumstances like developer events. I can't see myself keeping a copy at home.

Answer 19

Fantastic. Let's do this.

I'm willing to put in 10 hours/week for the next few weeks to help.

I'll be at DevDays Boston, the first DevDays, and can promote it there.

One caveat: I'm incompetent.

Answer 20

How about some characters like the BOF, Luser, Power Luser (thanks Joel), Crappy Consultant, etc.

BOF gets an extra roll when he crashes a Luser's system. Crappy Consultant card doubles the cost of everything for the next three turns, etc.

Answer 21

Yeah, I definitely would play it - if it's been done nicely, of course.

But, as others pointed out, game design is hard to get right. And as a computer guy, I would say it's even harder for board games than for computer games. So here's a little tale about my attempt to design a game:

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A friend and I once tried to design a game which was a combination of sport, dexterity and stategy, and though our idea was kind of nice, it lacked proper balancing.

You need lots of testing, but we did not have test playes that were too motivated to play a non-fun game for hours, just to be told "Hey, stop it. We're reverting rule 652 to way it was three hours ago, and instead insert a new rule (#721) to fix that possible exploit of rule 124. Now start playing again...".

Some years later, I took a game design course at the university, and it really helped me to understand what's been wrong with the game. I was given the chance to fix the game, write about that process, and hand this in as a coursework. It turned out that it was rather easy to simulate the game and write a simple AI that actually played that simulation. Even though the simulation, the AI and the graphics were much too crude to be used for a computer game that would be fun to play, it turned out to be an invaluable tool to test the game balance. And it helped you find out if your rules cover every corner case - there's nothing worse than game rules that leave space for interpretation during the game.

I could see that some rules had large impact, so that minor changes could determine if a game was typically won after 5 turns (too quick), 80 turns (just right) or didn't end in a reasonable number of turns (I quit that simulation after 10000 turns). The AI happily did what my real testers didn't want to ;) Of course, the AI could not really tell if the game was fun, but my real-world-tests had shown could have been fun it had been balanced.

I never thought I might find an interested audience for it, because how often do you meet people who are interested in both programming and non-computer game design? But if anyone here is interested, you can download the full document as ultra-low-quality pdf file (19 pages, 592 kB).

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Having that said, if there is still a group of you willing to make that game, I'd be happy to support you, may it be by discussing the rules, implementing yet another AI-driven-balance-test or doing the graphic design. On the other hand, I have nearly no time to spare for this, so don't count on me too hard.

Answer 22

Ok, inspired by Stephen A. Lowe's comment about "playing Jon Skeet":

Make up cards based on the top N users, where N is maybe 100. Each player card has a score (based on rep, but adjusted to some scale, perhaps 1-10) and one or more tag+modifiers. e.g. John Fouhy might have a score of 3 and a modifier of python×2. Alex Martelli has a score of 8 and a modifier of python×5. Jon Skeet has a score of 10 and C#×5 and Java×5. Perhaps negative tags as well (this player knows nothing about xx).

Also make a bunch of tag tokens.

To start the game, shuffle the player cards and distribute them to the players. Also distribute the tags.

Each turn, one player must ask a question, by playing a small number of tags. Other players then answer by playing player cards face down. After everyone has played, the player cards are revealed and people score points.

Scoring would be based on the player's reputation and how well their tags match. Playing Jon Skeet on a C# question will score better than playing him on a C++ question, which will score better than playing him on a Python question. The highest scoring card played earns an accepted-answer bonus. The question scores based on the answers played in some fashion (the single highest score?).

Then the questioner role moves to the left and play continues.

Possible variations:

• The questioner gets to choose which answer to accept.
• Answers can be played in several rounds. Earlier plays get revealed, but have their modifier improved. e.g. a python question comes up and I play John Fouhy, while you pass. After my card is revealed, you decide to play S.Lott. My python modifier goes from *2 to *3 as fastest gun in the west.
• The player cards are separated into tiers, so that everyone gets (say) 2 A cards, 5 B cards, and 15 C cards.

Obviously I'm no game designer so there's a lot to be improved here, particularly the scoring. It shouldn't come down to "if you get the right top 2 or 3 cards, you win". But I think the idea has potential :-)

Answer 23

It would be an interesting idea. I think the point should be to be the first to the rep-cap. The main problem with that idea would be getting old fast. The questions would have to change constantly.

I would prefer an online game, maybe using your rep-tracker. You already challenge yourself trying to cap out every day, why not make a competition out of it? A timer could start from your first activity for the day (to keep it fair across time zones). The one with the shortest time to the cap wins. The tie-breaker would be total rep gained from accepted answers and whatnot.

Answer 24

Whatever it's going to be, the winner should build a huge stack of cards (or the loser, probably, as it throws an exception).

Answer 25

Only if I could play at work and get paid for it and not feel guilty

Answer 26

I think a mix between RPG and Trivial Pursuit would be nice. This is a first draft of the concept.

The board & cards

The board would be something similar to Trivial Pursuit, except that each case has is own title that would be either "Generic Question", "Hard Question", "Bounty Question" or "Subjective Question".

For the cards, it would be a set of card on which there is random tag written on it. (c#, php, java, strings, mysql, mssql, etc.)

Beginning

To start the game everyone has to pick a character (either a real one like Jon Skeet or a fictive one you can create). Every character has bonus related to tags (C#, Java, PHP, strings, etc.) that will modify your performance during the game. Additionally, everyone starts with 1 reputation.

The Gameplay

The person that starts is random. When it's your turn, you roll the dice to move forward. Depending on the case that you arrived, what happens during that turn is different. During those question, you will earn reputation that you can use strategically during the game (it will be explained after).

Generic Question
When you arrived on a "Generic Question", a random card is selected to determine the tags of that question. When the tags are determined people can choose to answer or not the question. If they choose to answer the question, they roll the dice and they multiply that score with the bonus they have associated to that tag. This will be the number of upvote they have on that question. The person with the highest number of upvote win the question, gets a bonus 15 reputations and it's his turn to play next.

Example : I arrived on a "Generic Question" case and the card that is randomly picked has the following tag : [c#]

My character has the following bonus [php] : 8 [java] : 2 [c#] : 1 ... and the rest is 0. Since I have a bonus in c#, this mean I can gain some points on that question. So I will answer it. I roll the dice and I get a 6. So my total score for this question is 6 upvote (60 reputations). Unfortunately for me someone is playing is playing Jon Skeet and he answer that question. Luckily he rolls a 1, but his modifier for that question is 5 so he gets 5 upvote (50 reputations). So for this turn I won the question (+15 reputation) and I get to roll again.

Hard Question
It's the same thing as a generic question expect that you must have at least a bonus multiplier of 3 for the tag that is picked in order to answer the question.

Bounty Question
It's the same thing as a generic question expect that you get a random bonus of 50 to 500 if you won the question.

Subjective Question
It's the same thing as a generic question expect that the reputation you gain is multiplied by 5.

The Reputation
As the game goes, you will earn reputation that you will make you gain power :

• With 100 reputations, you can downvote an answer at the cost of 5 reputation. It will make the one you downvoted lose 10 reputation. That ability has a cooldown of 1 question.
• With 500 reputations, you can retag questions. Once a question is retag, it cannot be retag. That ability has a cooldown of 4 questions.
• With 1000 reputations, you cast a vote to close a question. If 2 people cast a vote to close a question. The question cannot be answered by anyone. That ability has a cooldown of 4 questions.
• With 2500 reputations, you can delete an answer. No reputation will be awarded for that answer and the person cannot win the question. That ability has a cooldown of 9 questions.
• With 2500 reputations, you can re-open closed question. That ability has a cooldown of 9 questions.
• With 2500 reputations, you can lock a subjective question. This will make everyone that has under 100 reputation unable to answer that question. That ability has a cooldown of 2 subjective questions.

How it finish

It finishes when you arrive first in the middle. Having the highest reputation doesn't make you win automatically, but it helps you make nasty thing during the questions.

Answer 27

I think the most similar real-world equivalent to Stack Overflow would actually be Hungry Hungry Hippos, which unfortunately is not really a "board" game. =)

I would probably play an Stack Overflow board game, if I actually knew any other Stack Overflow users... like face-to-face knew them.

Answer 28

It would be very funny. And after adv you'll be even on the board game :P