Again, some time since the last post, but also no shock if you’ve been following this. Things are taking longer than planned. The learning curve on Silverlight has been steep, but it is a really big hill…
At this point, the demo works and almost all of the account functions function. There is still some work to do on a few dialog boxes and the bonus sections. A lot of the text on the website has been written, but still more to go. A few strategic decisions have been revisited, some resolved. For example, a decision has been made to pay out more places. The idea originally was to pay 8-10% of the players, like a poker tournament, but it appears that we can pay up to 20% of the players and still have significant prizes for the top scorers. However, this means rewriting all of the payout tables, a non-trivial effort.
There is an outstanding issue regarding the difficulty of the questions and the topics. Initially, the idea was to have rather difficult questions to make it a true test of knowledge. Then the thought was to make it somewhat easier so that more people would enjoy playing. Then the thought was to make it challenging, but not obscure. The problem is that is difficult to do. What you and I think are challenging and obscure may be very different things. A series of demo questions were put together, but the sense is that they are too hard, so new ones will be developed. However, in doing this exercise we found that we could use the topics creatively in order to add some humor, and at times to provide hints to the questions. The flip-side is that it makes it harder for the player to know what the topic area will be. We are going to try this approach. You will have to tell us whether you like our “fun” categories, or the usual suspects.
For what seems like the nth time, I’m analyzing a program for giving new players cash when they sign up so that they can try the games before they have to make a deposit. I think I can make it work, but I want to make sure that the math is right (again). This is the problem with being a liberal arts major. Players during the beta period will be able to play for free and make money, but I want to see if we can do something for players who are not part of the beta. Don’t worry, if you are part of the beta, we will give you whatever we give the non-beta players as well.
It appears that we will host the game on our servers vs. the website, but that will entail some other changes as well. We also have to decide what we want to do for the landing page. We want people to be able to play the demo game right away so they can quickly understand what makes Big Money Trivia different from other sites; however, if they do not get some instruction on the wagering before playing the demo, they aren’t going to understand what’s happening. More work needed here.
Bottom-line, we still have a way to go before launch. The big stuff is largely done, but the small stuff will kill you. Stay tuned…
