Field Day

A weekend of scored games turns scorekeeping into someone's second job. Nobody agrees on the score, side bets are forgotten by Saturday night, and fixing one result breaks everyone's math. So I set a few rules before anything else.

• One number everyone trusts
• Nobody does arithmetic
• Every screen answers its question in a ten-second glance
• The host runs it from one button, because the host is playing too

It came together on July 19, with a leaderboard, betting, draws, a TV view and host controls, all on one server every phone talks to. It was called The Invitational, in black and gold. By that evening it was Field Day.

The ideas that still hold it together all showed up that first week.

• Everything is chips. One chip is 100 real ones, so your stack on Saturday night is your stack at the poker table
• Betting works like a rack of chips. Pick one and tap it onto a side
• You can only risk half your stack
• Standings are worked out from results, so fixing a result fixes every payout with it

I sent it out months early, so check-in was the first thing anyone saw, and it had to explain the weekend.

• Claim your spot on the roster
• Flights go in as boarding passes
• Build a player card with your chip color and photo
• Rate yourself privately, so team draws come out even

By the end of September, 12 of the 13 had checked in. Their answers were sitting in production, so no later redesign was allowed to reset anyone or send them back through setup.

I'm the commissioner and a player, so the host's controls collapsed into one pill that always shows the next step, whether that's announcing, locking bets or recording the winner. Each tap moves the tournament along and points the TV at the right scene in the same instant.

• Anything on a timer runs itself, and one switch pauses it all
• Fixing a result shows what it changes before I confirm
• Friday check-in is a code on the TV, so the lobby fills in as people walk in

Not everything worked. I folded an awards feature into a betting rework, it muddied the betting, and I rolled both back the next day. Awards came back later on their own.

In early September I tried a light redesign in paper and burgundy, with rewritten copy. I put it on staging and turned it down the next day. It was harder to use, and it lost what held the dark version together.

On October 1 I threw out visual rules I hadn't chosen and started over as a lit pinball backglass, with blue-black glass, bone-white type and lamps that each have one job.

• Magenta means live
• Amber means chips
• Cyan means information
• Yellow only ever means you

Anything that needed explaining got drawn instead. Every game's rules became three or four drawn steps.

A scoreboard you glance at still has to tell you what just happened, so the moments got motion, and the motion got rules.

• Standings are towers of each player's chips that clack as they land and re-sort
• Draws reveal card by card on the TV and every phone at once, on one server clock
• Only fresh changes animate. A phone back from sleep shows the result without replaying it
• Win, and your song plays on the house speaker

• Where and When. One of my photos goes up, everyone drops a pin and picks a date, and the reveal draws every guess to the answer
• Trivia started as a team game. A day later I made it individual, because on a phone it plays solo
• A Jeopardy-style board on the TV with every phone as a buzzer, ordered by each phone's own reaction time instead of whose signal arrived first
• Karaoke. Everyone picks a song ahead of time, and the room votes

When something worth yelling about happens, the TV reacts, whether it's an upset, a third win in a row, a new leader or a big losing bet. Each one is a short bit starring the players' own chips.

The first bits were cartoon slapstick with white gloves. On October 14 I redrew them as neon in the app's lamp colors, with chips that hop, spin and wobble and no hands. The winner's song now lands on the bit's beat.

• One Cloudflare Durable Object runs the whole game. Phones send actions, and the server decides
• The TV shows everyone, from standings and the draw to the face-off and the crown
• Your phone shows you, with your next game, chips, bets and buzzer
• Every match goes face-off, then bets, then lock
• A phone never replays a moment it missed. It shows where things stand

The newest version is on staging. What's left is what a screen can't test, like dragging chips on a real iPhone, how the 3D chips run on a phone, and how the TV feels in the room.

It isn't done until the weekend happens, October 30 to November 1. I'll add how it went.