The Earth2.io Easter Egg Hunt went off relatively smoothly yesterday with the Earth2 team releasing a video on YouTube (Watch Here) and thousands of posts being labeled #Earth2EggHunt on social media platforms claiming to have found one of the elusive five eggs hidden in the video (I called this on the My Name is Human podcast by the way). The reviews came in fairly mixed with one group loving it and others claimed it was a disaster. As is usually the case with anything like this, the haters were much more vocal. However, it wasn't nearly as bad as the post-Dubai bashing that took place.
Here are a few key takeaways from the Hunt:
The video showed a peek at some buildings as seen in the following screen capture:
A note at the end of the video explained in more depth that these are just template versions and that more is coming:
It was also interesting to not the first mention of streets (something that's never been said as being required, but seems more of a requirement now - good news for those MegaCities that have been planning roads). It does beg the question though of if there is not a street can you drive a car through the terrain?
Also what player placed objects? So many things to speculate on that regard.
The two biggest complaints I saw were 1) the video quality was bad and 2) reporting of the eggs on social media just basically made camping on social media and then replicating what someone reported the modus operandi. On those points:
Video quality - it was definitely choppy and pixelated during the live stream. I was thinking to myself "how did they go so far backwards from the terrain video?" - turns out this was a YouTube compression thing and not the actual quality of the video. If you download the video or watch it now, it's in the same high-quality you might expect.
Social media reporting - this is definitely the point I agree with the most. It made it too easy to go and find an egg someone had reported previously (although admittedly I still had difficulty locating precise locations where a couple were). When asked why they did it this way Shane Isaac stated it was so people couldn't ever claim the contest was rigged in any manner.
Was the Easter Egg Hunt a success? Compared to the Dubai release... absolutely. But there's still room for progress and growth and hopefully the Earth2.io continues to learn from these user experiences.
As for how my Easter Egg Hunt went personally? I'll leave you with this tweet...