Last week a graduate program at USC challenged the ETC to a games competition. When I saw the subject of the email, I thought it was a neat idea but I assumed it would be all video games that I don't play. When I actually read the email, I was pleased that they selected a variety of games to challenge different aspects of gaming. Other people in the ETC weren't as happy that USC had selected all the events or that they hadn't even heard of some of the games. While it is troublesome that they alone have probably selected their strengths, I'm sure we will be able to select the games for a later match. On the other hand, I am very familiar with the games that many people were not, so I am glad I will get this chance to represent the ETC. The five games were Halo 2, an FPS; Burnout 3, a driving game; Literati, a word game that is essentially scrabble; and two of my favorite games, Set and Carcassonne.

The most exciting part of all was that their rules dictated competing in Set via my website. I'm not sure if they realized what they had done, but if they had visited any other part of the website they could have easily seen that I'm a member of the ETC. On the other hand, it isn't really like they'd have a choice. I did a search and it seems that my website is the only place on the web to play Set. I've taken this opportunity to improve Set, even though I thought it was done. Things have been so busy that I've spent more than a week now on changes that I thought were only worth one evening. Of course any time I start working on a project I get more and more ideas of things to do. The biggest changes so far are that the cards are drawn, not loaded as images, and the game will show you sets that have been taken before they dissappear. There are also some internal fixes and improvements to the way the code works and is laid out. Finally, my goal is to finish a new webpage for it to explain the rules of set to people and explain how the features of my game work. In particular to help people understand the more feature. In addition, a new webpage will add more text to the page which will give Google more to index. Right now you can find my site on Google which is impressive since there are only 3 words on the page.

The inclusion of Carcassonne in the list of games for the competition reminded me of my goal to one day make an online version of that game. I've put it off because it has several challenges due to the synchronous nature of the game. But since it came up I've talked out these issues with my friends so now I'm ready to build it, as soon as I have a little free time.