The original /r/Place was created (invented?) by /u/powerlanguage who recently rose to prominence again when he created Wordle.
I remember at least one that existed years before r/place. Drawball was created in 2005 and was probably better.
How We Built r/Place (2017)
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#52The original /r/Place was created (invented?) by /u/powerlanguage who recently rose to prominence again when he created Wordle.
The OP's post was written the engineering team behind r/place. Wardle was indeed Reddit's product manager at the time. He wrote this blog post about 2017 r/place https://www.redditinc.com/blog/place-part-two/
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#53Was it a honeytrap for spotting bots and alts I wondered?
Having carefully placed a pixel childishly contributing to the humour of a banner depicting a favourite football club, I noted it was replaced by a very serious user within seconds named 'ProBiotic587' or something similar.
I was not alone in my contributions, as others were rewriting the very serious banner in a manner similar to scratching out parts of a 'Please mind your head sign' to 'Fleas in your head'. Seeing that sign on the train as a 10 year old was a reminder both that were I a few years younger there may indeed be fleas in my head and headlice shampoo was no fun, and that a small act of rebellion by someone anonymous makes a monotonous train ride pass with a little humour.
Just as the fleas in your head sign was restored every few months on seat pairings, so were user contributions of 'art' to this football club's banner. Both by very serious anonymous people. While I never knew the names of train maintenance staff, Reddit made the names of these people known, but made them no less anonymous. A bot army of 3-8 letter word + 3-8 letter word + 2-4 digits at the end.
Fine, some people take their football club vary seriously, and would likely not be much fun in the terraces. To each their own.
But it wasn't just a serious fan of a football club. There were numerous examples of a voice shouting disproportionately and artificially louder over, well, over a lot of pixels. Ego? Other?
And that was entirely disengaging.
Reddit is, by subreddit definition, a place of sharing common interest, herding, or denying others' contribution to common interest through such herding. But Place was not just a place for herding, of tuning into and manipulating a group for one's own aims, it was an affirmation of the dominance of bots, alts as magnifiers of this, in discussion and voting in all but the most resilient subreddits, or subreddits of the most inert subject matter.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#54I participated and constantly had to fight against flags that keep severing and overriding our artwork and coordinators threatening to erase it entirely. We managed to make do, but the white only pixel at the end felt like a slap in the face after all the effort.
> but the white only pixel at the end felt like a slap in the face after all the effort.
I'm not invested at all in Place, but to me it seems like the whole point of the event is that things are not permanent. The inevitable time-lapses is the ACTUAL artwork, not the final state of the canvas.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#55I don't like /r/place - I spend time in several regional subreddits, and they've transferred their nationalistic identity wars to Reddit. They're constantly fighting to build and rebuild their flags. Now those regional subs are littered with one post after another of "come on, we need your help to defend our flag" nonsense. It's all pointless and divisive.
The first time was really fun and exciting, one of the last times reddit felt like an actual community and not an agitprop botspam amplifier.
Honestly, Robin was the last time I felt like reddit was actual people, instead of bots and bullshit. The random chats that grew or died was a fascinating way to talk to new people. it was genuinely fun.
Now they have a chat feature apparently (I'm always on RIF now) but I'm betting that's just awful.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#56I don't like /r/place - I spend time in several regional subreddits, and they've transferred their nationalistic identity wars to Reddit. They're constantly fighting to build and rebuild their flags. Now those regional subs are littered with one post after another of "come on, we need your help to defend our flag" nonsense. It's all pointless and divisive.
It's a game. Games can have competition. Sometimes that's what makes them fun.
One might call it a "capture the flag"
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#57The botting makes it more boring, in my opinion, it's just a user count system at that point. It would be more interesting (in my opinion) if somehow you could get your OWN pixel by being the one who claims it, something like if you change a pixel, others can't change it for 5+x minutes where X increases each time you "defend" it or something.
Doesn't really solve botting though. In fact, this might make it even worse, if you ``own'' a pixel longer than the cooldown to set a pixel, once you get a pixel, you set up a bot to refresh it every 5 minutes. The map becomes mostly static very quickly, and if no art got in quickly, I mean static in both senses of the term.
If the ownership is shorter than the cooldown, then the botting game just becomes clicking every pixel until you own one, then finding someone (really a bot on a different account) to take over for you.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#58I didn't care for /r/place this time around. It felt like a lazy and uninspired move by Reddit to just copy the exact same idea from 5 years ago. As pointless as their other events were, like /r/the_button, at least they were unique. Not only that, it spoiled the treasured memory and experience of 2017. This year was so full of hate and fighting over flags, stream raids, bot scripts floating around, none of it felt g…
Bottling was an issue in 2017 too.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#59I don't like /r/place - I spend time in several regional subreddits, and they've transferred their nationalistic identity wars to Reddit. They're constantly fighting to build and rebuild their flags. Now those regional subs are littered with one post after another of "come on, we need your help to defend our flag" nonsense. It's all pointless and divisive.
It's a game. Games can have competition. Sometimes that's what makes them fun.
And flags are some of the few pixel arts that most people can casually coordinate for, once the intended size is apparent.
Re: How We Built r/Place (2017)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would probably be the last person to suggest this, but why not put it on the blockchain? It would be a pointless display of conspicuous consumption, almost as bad as the monkey NFTs!
you can’t get the required tps for this. observability would also be bad between blocks and you would also have states where you could end up with different pixels based on the block that won. so nope. wouldn’t work with blockchain
Are you talking about a specific blockchain or categorically condemning all L1s? Solana could definitely handle the level of tps for something like this. A cache could handle the observability issues and you can just keep the old pixel until the transaction goes through.