So. Coke entered a sponsorship relation with the upcoming Battleship movie, which has resulted in several vaguely military rewards (dogtags with no ID) and an instant win game which was scheduled to begin on Friday. The game itself is a slightly weird setup: it's free to play, but only at Level One. At Level One, the most you can get is a movie poster (along with a $0.99 off coupon and ye olde Exclusive Footage). To reach Levels Two and Three, you need to enter codes from Coke Zero caps into your MCR account. Eight caps will unlock the entire game, from which you can win a $1.50 coupon, $10 Subway card with two movie tickets, your choice of a classic Battleship game or a movie tie-in video one for the system of your choice, 52 twelve-pack coupons, $150 for LiveNation and, at the highest level, a concert trip. There's only four concert trips for the two-month duration of the game, as opposed to 100,000 coupons for $0.99 off. And you can play for all the prizes in one visit just by working your way through the game's levels.Seven a.m. Friday came: the game's scheduled launch. And went. The game did not load. The page just said 'coming soon'.
Same for Saturday.
And most of Sunday.
Now: this was a code error. The Coming Soon graphics didn't know to get off the Internet and wouldn't let anyone past them to play. But by the machine's logic, the game is running. Randomly assigned winning times come and go without anyone there to claim the prize. And by the game's own rules, a prize is claimed by the first person to play at or after that time. The prizes must be given away. More than two days pass and winning times are backed up out the door.
Guess what happens to the first person to play the game after it came back up?
Right. Just about every prize. No concert trip: the randomly-assigned time for that hadn't hit during the blockade. But everything else was available and won. The next person to play got everything up through the game choice -- and apparently, so did the next fifty or so people to go after that.
I? Had put in my points for the week already. On purpose. I'd been waiting for the game to come up, but yesterday was the big storm and sometimes heavy rain sends my home connection down for the duration. I couldn't play until Monday, when the limit reset -- and by then, the backlog would be cleared out. But because black caps were needed to get access to the larger prizes and possession of them guaranteed you at least a six-level prize run, they were suddenly in very high trade demand...
Ultimately, I'll get back more points than I gave out. (Waiting on a few return codes.) Also in the swapping was two movie passes and a $5.00 Amazon code, all very happily traded by people who knew it was the prize of admission to more than they paid with. I didn't ask for anything people hadn't already offered. Swap out all my black cap stock excepting the eight I needed for myself, and watch everyone else ride my points bank down Winner's Highway.
I put my last eight in this morning. Got access to the game, now cleared out of backlog and operating normally.
It won't load.