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Spot the Ball

projects.nytimes.com

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Re: Spot the Ball

#42

Post by _alastair »

wooyi wrote: post #36
_alastair wrote: post #2

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

Do you know if these kinds of interactive content perform better (ie clicks/shares/views) vs other forms, ie longform or just plain data visualization pieces? I personally enjoyed it a lot.

This isn't really my area of expertise - we have people at the company dedicated to studying this kind of thing in far more detail than I know how, who may end up reading this - hi! - so I don't want to speak out of turn.

But in my experience there's a lot of variation - things like this interactive aren't as tied to the news cycle as many articles are, so it won't peak as high but may make up for it in longer term traffic.

Re: Spot the Ball

#43

Post by _alastair »

danso wrote: post #38
_alastair wrote: post #2

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

How did Maureen Dowd do on it?

I'm trying to come up with a good joke for this, Dan, and I'm failing. So I will tell you that last year Nicholas Kristof scored a respectable 54%:

https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10150426093994999

Re: Spot the Ball

#44

Post by _alastair »

pervycreeper wrote: post #41
_alastair wrote: post #2

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

What was the concept behind this, and what is interesting about it?

Thanks for the question, pervycreeper!

The concept is not new at all - Spot the Ball is a competition that ran in UK (and possible other) newspapers going back at least as far as the 70s. It was a cash prize competition and was pretty popular, though it's died out in recent years.

I wanted to bring it back to get people to interact a little more with a highlights photo gallery - it's a lot more fun that way. IMO, it's interesting because it's just the right level of infuriating.

Re: Spot the Ball

#45

Post by ars »

jmhobbs wrote: post #8

This is infuriating. I tried using where players were looking and it got me squat. Very cool though.

I used where the fans were looking instead. It worked sometimes.

I assume the players look where they are going, and at other people instead of the ball (since they can predict the trajectory they probably look where it will interact with something, not where it is.).

Re: Spot the Ball

#46

Post by phaemon »

bherms wrote: post #9

reminds me of bestofthebest's car raffle... since you can't really gamble in the UK, they do a skill based game that is exactly this... you buy guesses and then click where you think the ball is... the person each week with the closest guess to where a group of judges says the ball is wins the car of their choice

> since you can't really gamble in the UK

Of course you can really gamble in the UK - that's what the bookies are for.

However, the regulations are a lot tighter for gambling, so it's easier to make it a "skill based game" which has much looser rules. Bingo and raffles have their own rules which, again, are a lot easier to comply with.

Re: Spot the Ball

#47

Post by pervycreeper »

_alastair wrote: post #44
pervycreeper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the concept behind this, and what is interesting about it?

Thanks for the question, pervycreeper! The concept is not new at all - Spot the Ball is a competition that ran in UK (and possible other) newspapers going back at least as far as the 70s. It was a cash prize competition and was pretty popular, though it's died out in recent years. I wanted to bring it back to get people to interact a little more with a highlights photo gallery - it's a lot more fun that way. IMO, it'…

Interesting, thanks. Definitely a tradition which is very well suited to revamping for the digital age.

Re: Spot the Ball

#48

Post by w-ll »

bhhaskin wrote: post #20
Pyrodogg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Chrome on a Surface Pro 3. Doesn't react to click events, only worked if I actually touched my screen.

Same here.

Try with the stylus, I could be wrong but last time i played with a Surface Pro, I noticed that using your fingers on the touch screen game touchEvents and using the stylus gave mouseEvents.
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