Thursday 30 October 2014

Scoreboard system

Outlined below is an idea for a scoreboard/leaderboard system for a PvP (player vs player) type game. It would work for games like chess and for team first-person-shooters, and potentially also for soccer (although it doesn't lend itself well to seasons).

The system is designed for players joining at any point into an established leaderboard, much like in online PvP computer games.


  • When a player first starts they get 100 points.
  • Each game you win you take 10% of your opponent's points.
  • Hence, no player can go below zero.
  • For games that are purely skill-based (no luck or pay-to-win), it is very quick to rise to the top of the leaderboard, just challenge and win against players with high scores.
  • To stop players at the top only challenging / accepting challenges from weak players, a player cannot challenge another player if he/she has unanswered challenges and challenges must be accepted in order.
  • To avoid players stalling for time, games can time out, with a penalty to both players in excess of the 10%
It would be possible for a person at the top of the leaderboard to just stop playing any more games, and thereby keep their score. However this would just serve as an incentive for other people to out-do  them.

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Siri Full Metal Jacket crossover

The current iterations of intelligent personal assistants like Siri are fairly reactive. You ask them a question, they respond. But the future generations, and the ones I will be intrigued to experiment with, will be proactive. They will push information your way. They will remind you of things.

And the step beyond that is the intelligent personal assistant that challenges you. One that tells you off for eating too much, or for slacking off, or for not going for a run. And we'll be able to "skin" them too, so I can have Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (of Full Metal Jacket) calling me a "puke" and "maggot", and pushing me to exercise harder.