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The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

ravn.com

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Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#11

Post by seanalltogether »

yosho wrote: post #8
kyledr wrote: post #7

I had top score until someone got a score of 100001158 (mine being 3385. You may need to take extra measures to ensure the scores are valid and from the game.

Lol, if you're able to hack the score, please send your resume to hiring@ravn.com

It looks like a post request with an authenticity token that never changes during the session, so you can just post a new request with the same authenticity_token and invite_id, but with any value for new_score :)

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#12

Post by humj »

jastanton wrote: post #9

you should obfuscate that js ;)

haha good job stanton. obfuscate probably would have added 30 seconds to the time it would take to hack it. If we really wanted to make it more robust, we would have added a validation to the score, a validation ensuring that time had passed between duck clicks, (looks like you didnt click ducks at all in your case), a minimal time to beat the game, a validation that ensures you didn't exceed the maximum possible score, and whatever other means to make it more annoying to hack, but even then... and in the end, we're not a gaming company and this was just a fun lil exercise we threw together to test a concept. Good job though haha, we knew if we posted in tech, this would probably happen :)

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#13

Post by kyledr »

yosho wrote: post #8
kyledr wrote: post #7

I had top score until someone got a score of 100001158 (mine being 3385. You may need to take extra measures to ensure the scores are valid and from the game.

Lol, if you're able to hack the score, please send your resume to hiring@ravn.com

I hadn't tried, but with your encouragement, I just gave someone a score of 9001.

Edit: and now myself. I had accidentally typed the wrong id.

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#14

Post by stevenou »

seanalltogether wrote: post #11
yosho wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, if you're able to hack the score, please send your resume to hiring@ravn.com

It looks like a post request with an authenticity token that never changes during the session, so you can just post a new request with the same authenticity_token and invite_id, but with any value for new_score :)

you're right. honestly we didn't try at all to make it difficult to hack. figured that no matter what we did, anyone with decent skills should be able to hack it. after all you can see all the source code! (like jerry said in another comment, we're not a gaming company after all - it was just a fun little experiment) - excites me that it piqued people's interest enough to go poke around in the source code though! :)

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#17

Post by thesash »

rhizome wrote: post #4
yosho wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm one of the creators of the landing page. We thought traditional beta signup pages were boring (ie. Launchrock style) so we added a "Ravn Hunt" game to our landing page. Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code. It also helps that we invite the top 10 users who achieve the highest score ev…

You could just have the game ask to enter your email address if you want to save your scores.

+1 or even have the game prompt you to enter your email address to play level 2.

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#18

Post by citricsquid »

stevenou wrote: post #14
seanalltogether wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a post request with an authenticity token that never changes during the session, so you can just post a new request with the same authenticity_token and invite_id, but with any value for new_score :)

you're right. honestly we didn't try at all to make it difficult to hack. figured that no matter what we did, anyone with decent skills should be able to hack it. after all you can see all the source code! (like jerry said in another comment, we're not a gaming company after all - it was just a fun little experiment) - excites me that it piqued people's interest enough to go poke around in the source code though! :)

The best way to prevent any sort of manipulation is a combination of two things: have a "maximum conceivable score" and regulate the scoring server side. Every time a "round" ends (ducks on the screen) send the data to the server, compare the score relative to the previous score and if it's ridiculous (eg: the max score they could get is 500 and it's 10,000) you dump the session for being fake.

The obvious flaw with this is people who just work out what your maximums are and then get the 100% score, but it discourages the ridiculous scores.

edit: one of your people said this below, disregard :-)

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#19

Post by humj »

rhizome wrote: post #4
yosho wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm one of the creators of the landing page. We thought traditional beta signup pages were boring (ie. Launchrock style) so we added a "Ravn Hunt" game to our landing page. Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code. It also helps that we invite the top 10 users who achieve the highest score ev…

You could just have the game ask to enter your email address if you want to save your scores.

really good point, lots of room for optimization

Re: The splash page that drove up conversion by 300%

#20

Post by stevenou »

rhizome wrote: post #4
yosho wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm one of the creators of the landing page. We thought traditional beta signup pages were boring (ie. Launchrock style) so we added a "Ravn Hunt" game to our landing page. Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code. It also helps that we invite the top 10 users who achieve the highest score ev…

You could just have the game ask to enter your email address if you want to save your scores.

you're totally right... feel really stupid that we didn't do it that way in the first place!
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