So, You Wanna Make a Listology Game?

Intro

Creating a maintaining a game on Listology is a great way to entertain, build community, and even gain higher esteem among your peers!

I've enjoyed creating several Listology games. One challenges contestants to identify movies by a screenshot, and another by their poster. I've also made games where contestants guess a song from a sound clip, an album by its cover art, or even a celebrity by an artfully modified photo of them!

Naturally, I'm not the first or most prolific Listology game-maker. Other Listologists have created fun text-only Listology games where contestants are challenged to identify the opening lines of novels, famous movie quotes, film directors, and more!

If you are interested in making your own Listology game for fun and for profit (well, the existential kind, anyway), look no further!

Most popular games are a type of 'matching' game where the creator (that's yoU!) provides one piece of information, and players identify the matching detail. The difference is, you don't usually provide a list of matching details - they just have to know them! For example, you provide the movie, and they guess the director. Or, your provide a screenshot from a film, and the players guess the movie. Or, you link to a sound clip from a song, and they guess the song. Certainly, there are other ways to make a Listology game, but these types of 'matching' games are the focus of this article.

First, you need to decide what type of game you want to make. Here are the basic choices:

1. Text. This is the simplest, quickest, and most popular choice. All that is required are the text-entry skills you already use creating lists on Listology. One issue with text games, though, is cheating. Because text is 10x easier to search for on the Internet and elsewhere (as compared to images and sound), it is quite simple for contestants to cheat if they like. For example, in a game that asks you to identify famous movie quotes, a player could copy and paste the quote into Google and be directed to a page that identifies the name of the film. This eliminates the fun for everyone, but some still do it, so you need to consider this.
2. Images. This is an exciting approach that is nearly impossible to cheat if done correctly (you cannot search for, say, graphical patterns the way you can with text). However, it is slightly more difficult to create an image-based game than a text game. Also, low-bandwidth users may be turned away from a game with dozens of images (and thus, a long load-time). But, the number of people turned away by bandwidth issues will be very small, and I will guide you step-by-step, the easy way, through the process of creating an image game, below, if that is the approach you'd l Tike to take.
3. Sound. This is a fun approach that requires a lot more work than the others. But, of course, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide for making a sound-based game, below.

Making a Text-Based Game

This is a very simple process, and a good candidate for your first game. Here's how you do it:

1. Decide the subject of your game. Do you want players to match a movie with its director? A quote with a movie? A character with a book? An artist with an album? Anything you can think of might as well be a subject for a great game! Just make sure that your subject is fairly well known, because you want as many people as possible to be able to participate. For example, a game asking players to match a mathematical thereom with its author might not be very popular on Listology (though maybe you could post it here if you like!).
2. Make a 'Master List.' This is your answer sheet. For example, for a book-author matching game: "1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein, 2. The Illiad - Homer, 3. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens, 4. Hunt for the Red October - Tom Clancy, 5. My Life - Bill Clinton." But, of course, you'll want more than 5 items in your list, or your game will be over too soon! A good number of items for a text game seems to be 20-50. And, you can always add more items as the game progresses. Be sure to verify that the answers on your answer sheet are correct!
3. Put the game on Listology. Make a new numbered, discussion-allowed list on Listology. Add your items, including only the first half of each item from your Master List (e.g. "1. The Lord of the Rings, 2. The Illiad, 3. Oliver Twist, 4. Hunt for the Red October, 5. My Life"). Be sure to give your new list a title that describes the game (e.g. "Guess Book by Author Game" or "GAME: Book and Author"). It's usually helpful to include the word 'game' in the title somewhere so that people know it's a game before opening the list. Be sure to prefix your list (using the _ symbol) with instructions on how to play the game, if they aren't implied by the title. Then, SAVE the list!
4. Maintain the game. It is now your duty to keep the game going. As contestants make guesses in the discussion below your list, you'll want to edit the items in your list they guess correctly by filling in the answer and adding something like "guessed by [player]." You can also respond to players' posts, congratulating them on their correct guesses and notifying them of incorrect ones. You can continue to append your list with new items, if you like, or start a new list with the same idea. When every item on your list has been guessed correctly, you may want to add "COMPLETED" to the title, the author comments, or a description above the list.

That's all there is to it!

Making an Image-Based Game

Making an image game can be very, very fun. Here's how you do it:

1. Decide the subject of your game. Do you want players to guess a movie from its screenshot? A location from its photo? A famous painting and its author from a photo of it? Keep in mind that more people will recognize a screenshot from Shrek than a Tintoretto painting. You want your game to be challenging, but not impossible for everyone but you and your fine art professor.
2. Make a 'Master List.' This is your answer sheet. It should include numerous pairings of an image and an answer. For now, the 'image' may just be a description of the image you want to use. For example, in a game of identifying movie characters and the actors that player them: "1. Photo of Daredevil - Daredevil played by Ben Affleck, 2. Photo of Hannibal Lecter - Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins" etc. Later, you will replace the description the image with an URL for the actual image. When choosing which images you want to use, you should consider availability. While you can find images of most popular movies, books, music albums, fine art, and more with a simple Google search, more obscure items can be hard to find unless you have a photo of them on-hand (though, that requires additional work beyond the scope of this article).
3. Find your images. Google Image Search and alternatives are your best friends, here. Simply input the name of what you're looking for and browse the results for the best choice. When you find an image that will work for your game, you have a few options. (1) You can link directly to the image where it is now, but that's a bad choice because the host may take it offline while your game is in progress, and the file name of the image where it is now might reveal the answer. (2) You can save the image to your hard drive to resize or edit it to suit your game. (3) You can re-upload it to TinyPic. #1 is a bad choice. If you need to resize or edit the image, save it to your disk by right clicking on the image, choosing 'save to disk,' selecting a folder you can find again (I recommend your Desktop), and clicking 'Save.' Then, read the section below called 'Editing an Image.' If the image is fine as-is, right-click the image, choose 'copy image address, go here, paste the address into the text box, and click 'Host Picture.' TinyPic will give you an URL back: copy and paste this into your Master List.
4. Put the game on Listology. Once you've got URLs for every item on your Master List, you're ready to put your game on Listology! Make a new numbered, discussion-allowed list on Listology. Add your image URLs, one by one in an <img> tag (or, if you just want to link to the images rather than have them appear on the page, an <a> tag). Here's how you do it: <img src="[url]">, replacing [url] with the image URL. Or, if you want to link to the image, this: <a href="[url]">[text]</a>, replacing [url] with the image URL and [text] with a descriptive term that won't give away the answer (for example, "Image #1"). And, if you can't tell, those angle brackets in the examples were bold, so include them.
5. Maintain the game. It is now your duty to keep the game going. As contestants make guesses in the discussion below your list, you'll want to edit the items in your list they guess correctly by filling in the answer and adding something like "guessed by [player]." You can also respond to players' posts, congratulating them on their correct guesses and notifying them of incorrect ones. You can continue to append your list with new items, if you like, or start a new list with the same idea. When every item on your list has been guessed correctly, you may want to add "COMPLETED" to the title, the author comments, or a description above the list.

Editing an Image

If your image needs some cropping and resizing, I'll tell you how, here. If it needs more complex work, that's beyond the scope of this article.

1. Download and install Image Analyzer.
2. Open an image you've saved to your hard drive.
3. If you need to crop the edges of an image, click on the 'rectangle select' tool (to the right of the one that looks like a magnifying glass). Click and hold at one corner of what you want from the image, drag to the opposite corner of what you want, and release. Then, press Alt+C to crop that piece from the image.
4. If you need to resize the image, press Ctrl+R and enter the width and height. Make sure 'maintain aspect ratio' is checked (unless you want to squish your image), then change either the width or height and the other will automatically adjust to maintain the image's shape.
5. Save the image and then rename it (select it, press F2) if necessary so that the filename does give the answer away!
6. Upload your image here (or, if your image is bigger than 250k, here), and copy and paste the URL given you into your Master List.

Making a Sound-Based Game

Making a sound-based Listology game can be fun, but it does require some basic computer proficiency. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Decide the subject of your game. Normally, you'll want to link to a short clip of compressed (MP3) sound for bandwidth reasons (more on that later). So, it'll be some kind of 'guess song by sound clip' or a Jeopardy-esque sound-clue game.
2. Make a 'Master List.' This is your answer sheet. It should include numerous pairings of an sound clip and an answer. For now, the 'sound clip' may just be a description of the sound clip you'd like to use; later you'll substitute it with an URL for the sound clip itself. For example, in a game where players guess a song by sound clip: "1. Chorus Intro - Creep by Radiohead, 2. Yeah Yeah Yeah - Lithium by Nirvana" etc. Be sure to consider the overall universality and difficulty of your audio clues and answers.
3. Find your songs. You need the original song in order to take a sound clip from it. Make sure you have every song on your Master List on your PC, a CD, or that it is available as a free download (and if so, download it). The process we'll be using will not edit the actual song files, so it is not necessary to make additional copies of all songs from which you will extract clips, but you may do so if you wish.
4. Create your clips. This is a fairly involved process, detailed thoroughly below under 'Creating a Sound Clip.'
5. Upload your sound clips to webspace. You need to get the sound clips you've created onto the web so people can listen to them! If your ISP (Internet Service Provider) provides webspace, use that (every ISP is different, so consult their FAQs on details for how to upload files). If your ISP does not provide webspace, there are many free webspace providers that allow you to sign up for an account and upload files. Again, each webspace provider is different, so you'll need to follow their specific instructions on how to register for an account and upload files. For recommended free webspace hosts, see 'Free Web Hosts,' below). Once you've uploaded your files, get their URLs and paste them into your Master List.
6. Put the game on Listology. Once you've got URLs for every item on your Master List, you're ready to put your game on Listology! Make a new numbered, discussion-allowed list on Listology. Add your sound clip URLs, one by one, in &lta&gt tags, like this: <a href="[url]">[text]</a>, replacing [url] with the sound clip URL and [text] with a descriptive term that won't give away the answer (for example, "Sound Clip #1").
7. Maintain the game. It is now your duty to keep the game going. As contestants make guesses in the discussion below your list, you'll want to edit the items in your list they guess correctly by filling in the answer and adding something like "guessed by [player]." You can also respond to players' posts, congratulating them on their correct guesses and notifying them of incorrect ones. You can continue to append your list with new items, if you like, or start a new list with the same idea. When every item on your list has been guessed correctly, you may want to add "COMPLETED" to the title, the author comments, or a description above the list.

Creating a Sound Clip
2. Download LAME - it is the encoder we'll be using to compress the audio data into MP3 format. Unzip the archive with Winzip or similar program to a place you can remember.
3. Download and install Audacity, the program you will be using to isolate the sound clips.
4. Once you've installed Audacity, run the program and open the first file you'd like to extract a clip from (whether it's a audio file on your hard drive or a track from a CD in your CD drive shouldn't matter).
5. Find the section of the audio file you'd like to create a clip from in the timeline (the long series of vertical lines of different lengths). Hit the play button to play the audio file. Click on the timeline anywhere to reposition your cursor, hit stop, then play again to play from that point in the audio file.
6. Once you have determined where in the timeline your desired clip appears, you must highlight (select) it. To do this, click and hold the left mouse button at the start of your sound clip, drag to the end of the clip, and release.
7. Hit Play to verify that you've selected the correct portion of the audio file. You can expand or contract either end of your selection by clicking on an edge of the selection (your cursor will change to a pointing hand) and dragging it left or right. Keep hitting Play and readjusting your selection until you are satisfied.
8. Click File -> Export Selection as MP3.
9. I generally save the file to my Desktop to make everything easy, since I won't be keeping the file after I upload it to the web anyway. Also, be sure to name the file nebulously so that players can't guess the clip by the filename. Save the file.
10. You will be prompted to find the LAME encoder you downloaded and installed in step #2. Click "yes" and navigate to the folder you unzipped the LAME file to. Select the lame_enc.dll that was extracted there and click 'Open.'
11. You will be prompted to edit the ID3 tags for the file. Clear every field so no one can guess the clip through the metadata (unless you want to leave hints that way). Click OK.
12. Congratulations! You've created your first sound clip! Open the next audio file. Audacity will open it in a new program window, so you can close the old one. If it prompts you about saving changes, select 'no.'
13. Repeat the steps (only this time, you won't be prompted to locate the LAME encoder file) until you've created all of your sound clips.

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Epilogue

So there you have it, the complete guide to making a Listology game. I look forward to playing your games!