47778 fools, some of them sane

An April’s fools joke should in my opinon walk the thin line between truth and obvious joke. At the first (and second perhaps) glance it should look like it is for real, but when you really start thinking about it you’ll soon find out that it has to be a joke.

With this in mind I have to say that our fools joke this year was really good, and from the reactions on the forums so did most managers. Far from everyone fell for it naturally, but some did and others were convinced it was a joke – but had to set their settings anyway as they felt they weren’t 100% sure.

What I think was really cool was that there were so many who openly confessed on the forums that they had fell for it, and I especially enjoyed reading about those who first rushed to the forums in anger over the stupid new feature (but then calmed down when they realized it was just a fools joke). Confessing like this is quite uncommon for humans I think, as we in general rather don’t tell anyone that we’ve been fooled if we don’t have to. But here people confessed and then had a laugh about it; just shows that Hattrickers are something extra.

Anyway, 47778 mangers set their pitch settings. Which doesn’t mean all of them are fools, quite naturally many did it just for fun. The most popular grass type was Kentucky Bluegrass followed by Perennial Ryegrass. Conclusion: We like homegrown oldies?

Gradient is not common in real life when it comes to football pitches, and neither here in Hattrick. Some 65% had set their at 0. Only 15% set the gradient to 15 degrees or more by the way. Further more it’s clear that the grass is kept relatively short in Hattrick, about 80% had it at 50mm or less. The rugged area around the keeper was also mostly kept at 0, and the 2/3 choose round goal posts.

The most interesting stats are for the cut pattern though. My personal favorite was the star (if I’m allowed to say so, I was really satisfied with the silly description “All players that get more stars than they should get an additional star”), but “only” 8% choose that one. The most common cut pattern was the diamond (30%) followed by the labyrinth (26%) and then the stripes (19%). So, conclusion is that people rather want to impress fans/sponsors than getting a very nice benefit (opponent having it harder to score). How sweet. πŸ™‚

And just for the record, and as a reply to those who think this joke took a lot of time/effort and could be better spent on other things. It didn’t take much time to do this and it didn’t require much dev effort. Remember, we didn’t have to think about game balance, testing etc etc. All that was needed was a “dummy” page which close to no logic behind and some decriptions. And when you just can let your creativity go nuts to 100% without thinking about balance restrictions and what not, it’s a pretty fast job.

We did this joke and earlier ones for the fun of it. No more, no less. We have a lot of fun creating them (and I know most of you enjoy them as well) , and I also think it’s nice to show another side of us. One doesn’t need to take oneself too serious, you know. There’s a time for everything, and I certainly believe that jokes of this kind have a place in Hattrick as well. Because having a good laugh is never a bad thing.

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