Well, so much for that. For reasons I'm not going to go into here, I'm no longer employed. It's a shame, not just because I'm out of a job, but because I was really enjoying working there. I learned a great deal, and loved the fact that we could help 90% of the people who came to see us.
So now I'm job hunting again. This may also allow me some spare time to work on the game, but I'm not going to promise anything.
16 comments:
Sorry to hear about that Evan. Wishing you the best in finding a new position.
I'm sorry also. I just made a donation for the game -- everyone who enjoys the game should think about doing the same!
sorry to hear about your job. Keep up the good work. Any chance of having a version of the game that has a minimum of five letters?
Hang in there. Bankruptcy is a field that will unfortunately most probably be in great demand in the next few years.
WordSplay is a wonderful version of Boggle. Here are some suggestions for the game:
1. Provide a chat option so that players can chat with each other.
2. It looks like the game is using an unweighted random number generator to choose the letters. I think the game would be more enjoyable if a weighted random number generator that reflects how often each letter appears in the english language in general would be better. Also, a rule or 2 that discards "bad" boards that have way too many vowels or consonants. For example, in the 5x5 board I have seen boards that have 3x3 or even 3x4 blocks that do not have a single vowel.
Sorry to hear about your employment. As you might imaging, it is hard for many to understand why a bankruptcy lawyer would be out of work these days.
I was laid off in April. There are a couple of things I am working on, but no such thing as a paycheck yet.
Python is a lot of fun. Please let me know if I could help. Do you have any plans to get to Python 3.x?
I'm a firm believer things do happen for a reason.
Maybe your next job you will help 95% of the people!
Best to you as you search for new endeavors.
Evan,
I'm one of your longtime web boggle folks; love and am addicted to the game. Very sorry to hear about your unemployment.
Since your survey didn't have an "Other" category (in what we'd like you to work on), I'm writing it here. Is there any way a "Chat" feature could be set up? That would be what I'd like the most! I play on Team Levinovich -- which was set up for my family members in diverse states -- but frequently strangers join it and I'd like to be able to chat with them (like, why play with Team Levinovich? Where do you live? Good game! - that sort of stuff.)
So, my two cents. Thanks for such a great web game!
Carol in Louisville, KY
savkofam@bellsouth.net
So sorry to hear about your job. I hope that you get a new one pronto. I have no suggestions or complaints. I have been playing for a long time and really enjoy it!
For those of us devotees who don't have PayPal accounts, you should go ahead and put a snail mail address and a check payee name on your Donate page. I can understand that you might not want your home address out there in cyberland, but perhaps you could: 1) get a P.O. Box (nah, that costs money), 2) ask an employed friend if you can use their office address, 3) think of something else because you're smart (probably). Lastly, and I would not suggest this unless your situation is dire, but is there anyway to monetize the game with ads (hopefully, discrete, unannoying ones).
Good luck with your career. It might be a scary thought, but think about hanging out your own shingle. Your specialty should be in demand!
Aww, sorry to hear about your job loss, Evan. Hopefully you'll soon find a position you like even better!
As for game improvements, I don't care about chat or any other new features, but I agree with RoastyToasty that a weighted RNG and a bad-board discard would improve playability. Also, the game still takes too long to register typed letters, and that latency means I constantly have to retype what I've already entered. I'm not that speedy a typist (~65 wpm?), and I'm connected via a 7 MBPS broadband connection, so I don't think it's me, especially since your previous Weboggle game had no problem keeping up with my input. Reminds me of the 300 Baud connections to ASCII online services in the early '80s, and the minuscule "type-ahead" keyboard buffers that would overflow before a whole sentence could be transmitted. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!! :-)
Anyway, best of luck with your job search. I'll be glad to contribute if you post a surface mail address. (I don't use PayPal either.) And as always, thanks for the great game!
Thanks for the game, which I enjoy playing for a few minutes when I can. Wishing you every success in your job search!
So sorry about the job, Evan!!
Yes, everyone who enjoys this game should send along some bucks to help Evan to support this game. He has provided us with so much pleasure it is the least we can do. As for those who are out of a job, perhaps I could help. Contact me at celticrose48@hotmail.com and we'll see.
Sorry to hear about your job, Evan. Hope it all works out in the end.
Thanks for all your work on the game so far. I also think a chat feature would be great, though I don't know how much work that would be. How about adding a 6x6 sized board? I'd love to learn more of the longer words that don't show up so often - plus that would alleviate some of the "bad boards" problem RoastyToasty mentioned.
Good luck on finding and transitioning to a new and satisfying job!
-gremlinn
Bummer, dude.
I confess I'm not a regular reader of your bloggle (though i may become one), but i'm a regular player at wordsplay. there wasn't an "any other ideas?" on your survey, so i thought i'd leave one here insead. (I hope you don't think me pretentious.)
what i would LOVE to see added to the wordsplay site is an IM feature. It would be great to be able to send and receive short comments to/from the other players. Obv it would have to have an enable/disable function so people who didn't want to be bothered could turn it off, as well as the ability to block comments from specific players should someone become rude or abusive.
I think this would add a lot of fun to the game and increase the commutity spirit of the website. Anyway, just an idea to mull over.
Thanks for all the fun.
Sorry to hear about your unemployment -- the news about unemployment stats sounds really different in that situation, doesn't it? I experienced that sense of hearing about myself in the news this Spring!
I hope you can enjoy your enforced time off and do good work of your own. Good luck with that and the job search. Thanks for all your work on wordsplay -- it's good fun and one of the few online games I return to very often. Thanks!
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