Greetings from MIT Labs! by Chris Peterson SM '13
Introducing MIT: The Game
Since last summer, we here at MIT [Admissions] Labs have been working on an extremely awesome and extremely top secret project:
The game was conceived almost a year ago, when Admissions held a mini- GameJam during the 2010 IAP. We more or less locked a half-dozen current students in a room with a bunch of pizza and soda for 48 and let them come up with a bunch of ideas for levels and build very simple versions of them.
Since last fall Victor Hung ’14 has been collecting slivers of time that drop between the cracks in his schedule and has built out these concepts and ideas into a full Facebook game. With MIT: The Game, you will be able to participate in all the most important aspects of an MIT education, including:
- Building all the burritos you can eat at the campus taqueria
- Navigating the flood of fellow students down the Infinite Corridor
- Riding the East Campus Roller Coaster
- Finding your way through the labyrinthine tunnels
- Getting your (virtual) MIT diploma
We began closed beta testing of the game to our Early Action admits last month. Nearly all of them survived! So now we’re ready to unleash the zombie virus release it to the world!
To play the game, you may click here.
A few pre-emptive FAQs:
- MTG isn’t loading for me!
It probably is. The flash file is packed with so much awesomeness that it weighs in at a solid ~7 megabytes. If you’re not on MIT’s lightspeed internet connection, it may take a few moments, or minutes, to download for the first time. It’s worth the wait though. We promise. - MTG wants access to my profile information. Gadzooks! Are you collecting information from my Facebook machine?
No! We have an office policy against Facebook/mySpace/Googlestalking prospective students and applicants. MTG only collects your Facebook ID number, which is a numeric string that allows us to keep track of your scores so that our leaderboard works. We are not collecting anything else. We will not use it for anything other than the leaderboard. - A bug! I found a bug!
Congratulations, e-entomologist! There may still be some lurking out there. Specifically, we have been receiving some reports that for some users, some of the time, the roller coaster duplicates. Why? It is a mystery. But refreshing the page seems to make it go away, and we are working on a fix.If you have another, different bug to report, or if you want to send us e-valentines and/or commendations of some kind, you may email admitfbookgame-dev [at] mit [dot] edu.
I should also probably mention that we’ve launched a MITAdmissions Facebook Page today as well. It’s essentially where I post admissions updates, important blog entries, and entertaining photos of dogs. Again, we’re not going to collect any information or anything through here – but if you want to become a Fan of us, then you’re more than welcome to do so!
And enjoy the game!
I went back to using Facebook after months of not using it just to play this game! Man, it’s awesome, it certainly gave me a better feel of MIT. Man , MIT’s really truly a very very unique institute for doing such awesome things !
FIRST! WOW! This is so awesome! I’m gonna play right a way!
The Game.
You all just lost it.
@i own a horse
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
1. 114.27 Mb/s… Wow.
No really. Wow.
2. Yay! Game! MIT! Yay!
I’ll leave now.
Here is a quote from the facebook verification:
Hello everyone! First off -thanks to everyone who have played the game and have emailed me about problems…
Grammar fail, consider revising.
yep, the yellow error box should be down now.
OMG THIS IS AMAZING!!!
I LOVE YOU MIT!
EPIC!
Awesome idea. Mr. Hung, you are a genius.
Finally a game that will take my eyes away from Angry Birds!
♥♥♥♥♥
:D
Sigh…I think about the measly 256kbps I get at home, and then at that obscene number of Mb/s that you’re getting there.
You’ve probably forgotten all about the agony often induced by network buffering. That moment when someone shoots you a video link and you resign yourself to the fact that if you’re lucky, you will see that video sometime in the same calendar year (analogy not valid from 23:55:00-23:59:59, on 31 December). But anyway, I digress…
As for the game, I probably won’t have time for it now (and considering that it’s a 7MB flash file, I’ll have to estimate when I’ll have time and initiate the process a couple of minutes beforehand), but I’m sure its entertaining.
I certainly hope that a Facebook page doesn’t mean people begin to abandon this lovely admissions portal and community where I need to enter my name, email and URL *each and every time* despite checking the box labelled ‘Remember me’…
More lulz at nooooooooooooooo.com (I knew about it before, but even so, nice effect)
I stayed home from school today because I was sick. I decided to check my e-mail, got the MIT newsletter, saw “MIT the game” and decided to play it..
I REALLY should be sleeping…
It’s always because of Chris that I play games. Thanks. Thanks a lot. haha
P.S. That screenshot was taken at 5:41 AM on 10 December 2010. Have to factor in a number of things there:
5:41 AM might not be as effective a time to measure mean bandwidth availability as say, peak hours in the evening. This is just to put things in perspective.
It’s been over an year. Although I can’t rightly predict if the speed might have gone up, but I think it’s safe to assume that no intitvte worth it’s salt would consider such a thing.
Thirdly, I’m not even sure if winter break (if such a thing exists) was over at MIT, which means a substantial portion of the student body may not have been on campus, leading to further decrease in demand for bandwidth.
P.P.S. I still hate buffering…
This is pretty awesome! I laud the developer!
Only shame is that flash lags so badly on Linux :(
good points all vivek, but that’s a pretty standard bandwidth result in my experience at any given time on campus.
P.P.P.S – Corrigendum
“I think it’s safe to assume that no intitvte worth it’s salt would consider such a thing.”
This should read:
“I think it’s safe to assume that no intitvte worth it’s salt would consider such a thing as ‘reducing the bandwidth’.”
Inconvenience is regretted…
i cannot believe Kim got 526!
she must be one FAST burritadora (or is it burritista?)
– stuck @ 334
great game, Victor and Chris.
and extremely frustrating.
the roller coaster is plain MEAN.
and running down the Infinite Corridor is like crossing Mass Ave.
Oh!! I read about this – it was on the news!
Well.. that is a nice internet connection and all, but here at WPI it would take us about half the time to download compared “lightspeed” internet connection.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1180463273.png
( and that is a poor result, i’ve gotten it to do 500+ mbps down )
@Chris – Obviously. You’d know better. By the way, how’s the Wi-Fi at MIT? Campus-wide? Limited to dorms and specific hotspots? Or just wired dorms?
A game about MIT? Sweeeet…Wait, it’s only on Facebook?
:|
@paul..
Its a flash game.. so if you think you can use your magics on that facebook app and extract that .exe then you can play it on your desktop.. xD
Thats what am trying to do as of now..
Awesome game. Just got my diploma!
@Chris Peterson @ MIT Admissons:
Have you considered Kongregate.com? They provide free hosting for flash games.
@Spiderma-er, Peter Parker:
I’d get the .exe if I could, but I avoid Facebook like I do spinach, so yea. If you have an alternate site to view the game on, then I’d play it in an instant.
*rants about Facebook taking over the world conspiracies*
Awesome game!
I can’t seem to access the last level, though. Do I have to collect certain points before attempting to play? (I’ve already played East Campus Coaster.)
NVM..Found it XD
Hmmm,I guess there should be a restart button to repeat the level without having to wait. Also, the game doesn’t seem to save new high scores if I leave a level without returning to the map first (I went to check Leaderboards and ended up losing my high score).
you had me at “burritos”
A game made of pizza and soda, in 48 seconds! Kewl! (It’s weirdo for “Cool!”, if you were wondering!)
This game is so fun..
I got so many points on the infinite corridor level by staying on the side. Eventually, you get pushed off no matter what, though.
@Paul – Spinach is nice.
Please repair the Roller Coaster! :(:(:(
:)
Otherwise, I may have to walk!
ditto @ norah.. i would have been in the top 15
Ahh this game is so awesome! I like making the burritos the best
A few of my friends that didn’t even apply to MIT saw the wallposts about me playing it so they decided to try it too…they love it! 
I noticed that sometimes, in the roller coaster thing, It doesn’t allow you to cross the score of 7 even when the track is free of obstacles.
So just check that!
@ Derek C.
I tried the same strategy of staying on the side! But, Yeah! It’s true! You get pushed anyways!
Here is the File.. just click it and play the game.. But for which u have to resize ur browser.. i mean make it a smaller Box rather tham it covering your Full screen.. you can save it as well so that u can play it even when you aren’t connected to the internet..
<a>The Game</a>
Ps: Spinach Is good.. But yea Chocolates have better Cals..
LOL i dont knw what happened to the Anchor i just dropped.. anyway here is the link
http://fb.mitadmissions.org/apps/mitgame/main.swf
^^ All the above posts where of mine..
In re Facebook:
Thanks for the feedback from those among you who don’t use it. I definitely don’t want to encourage anyone who doesn’t use it to begin using it for this. I’m not sure if downloading that swf will work – if it does, do that! We will likely try to figure out a way to make this available for non Facebook users on the website when we launch our new design this summer. The feedback is helpful! Keep it coming!
Butterflies in the 36,000(?) stomachs will be alive for (3/14/2011 1:59PM – 3/3/2011 11:53AM) 11 days and 2 hrs 6 minutes more…
Haha!
hey, it’s great! ;D
but there’s a bug, sometimes when I start a game with rollercoaster there are two “me” ;D I mean these red cars are doubled. When I push arrows only one reacts, so I lose very quickly :( haha;P
Come on guys. Be honest.
The game is boring. Could have been more interactive, intellectually engaging with better music. Ideal game for a fourth grader.
@Vivek: I get way less than 256kbps at home. Probably won’t be playing the game in a while although I would love to. By the way, I certainly won’t be abandoning this portal, but I have to admit that my days of stalking it might soon draw to a close. What a joyous stalking it has been.
It’s a nice stress-reliever, but I’m totally too used to StarCraft. XD