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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Thomas is actively concerned that I describe our products as "games" but I've been having difficulty finding a word the market understands for this, since "CTF" gets blank stares from people on both sides of the market if they don't have a security background. Neither he nor Erin would self-identify as gamers in the same way that I do not self-identify as a ballet enthusiast.

Would I self-identify as a gamer? Well, "Ran a WoW raid guild", "I main AD Jungle Evelynn but haven't gotten many games in since having a kid", "My Steam account lists 720 hours of playtime on 60 games."

I don't particularly hide this on HN and also don't particularly go out of my way to talk about it. Games, books, and running software companies are my three big hobbies; one of these seems to be most relevant here. You can probably find 5~10 comments from me if you search for WoW, Warcraft, LoL, or Starcraft, but mostly they're talking about business, like you would expect.

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I'm just worried that "games" are something people judge by graphics quality, and I'm not even sure we have a competitively pretty debugger.

The alternative to "game" is "programming contest"

Contest generally connotes a fixed length group activity with a single, or small and usually predefined set of winners. Game is really the correct term, IMHO, but it's still negatively associated with productivity, to the degree some people don't like to admit they play games, which is likely only true in their mind because of their overly constrained idea of what a game is.

We spend much of our childhood doing accelerated learning through play (games). There's no reason that can't continue into adulthood, except for it culturally being slightly unacceptable. That's really counter-productive.

The word "contest" is bad for us because it implies that the only reason you'd participate is to beat other people, but really your primary adversary in these challenges is Erin, Patrick, and me.

Isn't "CTF" at least as bad, with the extra bad of making no sense to most people?

It's not great, I agree, but I like that we still have an opportunity to define what a CTF is for people who aren't already CTF players.

Also: we're very much structured like a conventional CTF; it's just a CTF we're not taking down after a few days.

> your primary adversary in these challenges

"Challenges" or "programming challenges" sounds good to me.

The textfile was a fun read, best of luck!

On a tangentially related note, I'm having the same trouble with the phrase "escape room" - I'm building a game that I want people to experience, not escape from!

What about "puzzle"? The negative is that it implies a single solution, but other than that it describes what's going on pretty well.

Why do people think "gaming" and "business" are such disparate interests anyway? Is it so hard to see the "Nevada Gaming Commission" and the "Securities and Exchange Commission" as not entirely orthogonal?

If it helps Thomas sleep better at night, I'd definitely encourage you describe your products as "experiences" instead, because seriously. Games ain't trivial.

> ...I'd definitely encourage you describe your products as "experiences" instead, because seriously.

Anyone who describes their thing as an "experience" automatically gets -1000 points. IME, when the description of a thing says that it's an "experience", it's a strong indicator that the marketing copywriter ran out of fluff words to use and reached for the most trendy and inoffensive one they could find.

It's okay if there's a lot of surrounding substantive description that makes it clear that the folks behind the thing are legit, and that "experience" was just added to meet a buzzword quota. If -however- much or all of your description centers around how much of an "experience" it is, I'm likely to skip over whatever it is that you're hawking. :(

How about "programming games" or "coding games"?? The word "games" by itself makes me think of mobile games like Crossy Road or Clash of Clans. CTF makes me think of Team Fortress.

Or Code 'em up a la Shoot 'em up?

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