The mark game

How the mark game works — and why it is our pitch

The mark is your company brand, and the page is your business. Build it up, ship it to a part of the business that needs it, and keep going until the whole operation is running on it. Over-build and it bursts. Sit on it and the momentum drains. That is the argument we make on every project, played instead of said.

The loop — build, ship, repeat

The page is the business: Every section heading with a w in it is a landing site — somewhere your brand has to actually arrive. Claim all of them and that is a full rollout.
Build it up, then ship it: Hold the mark to build. Let go in time and you are carrying something worth shipping. Then get it to a part of the business that does not have it yet.
Reading is how you score: The mark travels as you scroll, so shipping means moving through the business — which is exactly how a real rollout goes, one department at a time.
The tension is the real one: Resting on the mark holds it steady, but you cannot move through the business while you are sitting on it. Polish it, or ship it. That is the whole trade, and it is the one every SME actually faces.

Controls

Rest on it: Holds what you have built steady — nothing decays while you are looking at it.
Hold, let go near full: Builds it to the right size. Let go after three quarters; hold to the end and you have over-built it.
Tap: A small improvement, worth +1 — but only if you left it alone since the last one.
Double tap: While carrying, takes the small win now for +3 instead of shipping properly.
Drag: Carries it by hand. Put it exactly where it is needed and it counts for more.
Shake: Five quick reversals. Clears a setback, or throws away what you were carrying.
Scroll: Moves through the business to the next part that needs it, and hands it over on arrival.

What pays

Shipped: +10 — what you built reaches a part of the business that did not have it.
Hand-delivered: +100 — you put it exactly where it was needed (manually drag and drop) instead of waiting for it to arrive on its own (scrolling). Ten times a scrolled delivery, because it takes aim and it risks the whole charge.
Banked early: +3 — a double tap while carrying (charged). A small certain win instead of a larger one you might drop.
Small improvement: +1 — a tap, if you let it settle first. Three in hand, refilled by shipping something.
Recovered: +2 — shaking off a setback instead of waiting it out.
Full rollout: +25 — every part of the business is running on it. Everything resets and you go again, which is also what the next project looks like.

What it costs

Over-built: −10 and stalled — you kept adding after it was ready to ship. The most expensive mistake in this game, and in the real one.
Dropped: −40 — carried it somewhere that did not need it and let go. That is the risk you take for the hand-delivery bonus: aim badly and the charge is gone, and so is more than a scrolled delivery would have paid.
Thrown away: −6 — shaking while carrying loses what you built.
Momentum lost: −4 — it sat unshipped until it was worth nothing. Nothing decays faster than a thing that was nearly ready.
Rushed: −4 and stalled — five changes in quick succession. Every further one costs −2 until it settles.
Too soon: 0 — a change before the last one settled pays nothing at all.
Stalled: A setback leaves the mark shaking and unable to build for three seconds. Shake it to clear that immediately, and take +2 for the effort.

Sound and spectacle

It ticks as you charge: The wind-up ticks, and the ticks climb in pitch. You can hear the catch window coming without watching the bar, and a single chime marks the moment releasing would catch it.
Every outcome has a sound: Every verdict has one of its own. Delivering, a lap and an overcharge are recorded; the smaller ones — a nudge, a spill, a foul, a charge draining away — are played by the page itself, rising for a gain and falling for a loss, so you can tell what happened without looking at the readout.
Nothing plays unless you play: No sound is even downloaded until you first touch the mark, and nothing ever plays that your own hand did not cause. There is no music and no intro sting.
Mute it and it stays muted: The speaker button appears beside the leaderboard once sound exists. Your choice is remembered on this device.
The mark reacts too: A ring fills as you charge and turns solid when it is catchable, then dims like a lamp losing power as the charge drains. Overcharging bursts, a lap plants a flag, a delivery leaves one quiet ring. Everything else leaves a small mark: gold rising for a gain, red falling for a loss, and a shake that goes nowhere when a tap did not count. The readout and the leaderboard always show the same number — there is only one.
You are told when you beat yourself: The first time a run passes your own best, the mark says so and celebrates it — once per run, and only against a best you already had.
And when you climb: Rank is decided by the server, so it changes after the points that earned it. When a save comes back with you higher than before, the readout announces the move — "rank 7 → 4" — wherever you happen to be looking. A drop is never announced; that is somebody else’s good day.

What keeps, what resets

Refresh the tab: The running score goes back to zero on purpose — every visit is a fresh run, and a run left open for hours is replaced by one too. Your best is kept either way, because your best lives on the board and not in the run. The leaderboard shows when the run in front of you started, and that clock moves when the run does, so a tab left open overnight cannot be mistaken for a fresh one.
Close the browser: Nothing is lost. Your score lives on the leaderboard server under an id this browser keeps, so it is still there next time you open the page with the same browser — including a score you have not named yet, which is held for two days waiting for you.
A different browser or device: It is a new player. The id is per browser, so a fresh browser starts a fresh row with no score.
Clear site data: The id goes with it, and with the id goes the ability to update your row. The old row stays on the board, orphaned; you start a new one.
Private or blocked storage: The game still plays, and a run can still be ranked. It simply cannot remember anything between loads, so every visit starts as a new player on a new row.
The leaderboard itself: It can be wiped at any time, without notice — it lives on the server this page runs on and a redeploy clears it. Screenshot anything you want to keep. A wipe really does clear it: your score is the run that earned it, the server holds that run, and a board that has forgotten you has forgotten the run too. Your name, your id and your answers are still in this browser, so you keep playing on the same row — you just build it up again.
Leave it alone and it plays for you: After three quiet minutes the mark takes a lap by itself, then another every three minutes — each one showing a different rule: overcharging, shaking it off, delivering by hand, cashing out, and the rest. It runs silently, and it stops the moment you touch, scroll, type or move the mouse.
What it scores is yours: Those are real points on your real score — the same number, saved and ranked the same way. There is no separate demo score. If the board does not know your name yet it will ask, so the run it just built for you can be ranked.
It cannot out-earn you, and it stops: Waiting two minutes for a lap earns roughly a third of what playing earns, and it stops for good once it has shown every rule — so a tab left open overnight gains nothing more than one round of demonstrations. Touch the page and it may run again.
It never costs you a lap: Your run carries straight across in both directions: sites you already claimed stay claimed while it plays, and every point it earned is still there when you take over.

On a phone or tablet

It all works by touch: Tap, double tap, press and hold, and drag all do exactly what they do with a mouse. The mark is a small target in the corner; every other part of the page scrolls as normal.
Drag to the edge to travel: Holding the mark stops the page scrolling under your finger, so carry it to the top or bottom of the screen and the page moves for you — further in, faster. That is how you get a charge to a w that is not on screen yet.
There is no hovering: A cursor resting on the mark freezes the charge. A finger cannot, so on touch the charge keeps draining while you scroll — deliver sooner.
Do not rest your finger on it: Holding does not steady a charge you already have; it starts a new one, and a new one left too long bursts. Lift off and scroll.
Shake works too: Drag the mark quickly side to side. Five sharp reversals count, the same as with a mouse.
The panels become sheets: On a narrow screen the leaderboard and this guide slide up from the bottom edge and take the full width.

The rules the server keeps

Saving is automatic: Your run goes to the board as soon as it changes — as a list of what you did, not as a score — batched so a fast run makes one request rather than ten. You are asked for a name once and never again, and you can ignore the question: the server keeps scoring and keeps your result either way. Naming it is what puts it on the board, and you can do that whenever you like.
Only your best is ranked: The board keeps one number per player: the highest score you have ever reached. The server follows your whole run, but a run that does not beat your best never moves your row — so a bad run can never cost you your place, and a good one only counts from the moment it passes. The leaderboard shows the run you are on beside the best it ranks, so you can see the difference rather than guess at it.
Your row is yours: Ids are printed on the board, so they prove nothing. The first save issues a private key to this browser, and only that key can change your row.
Names may repeat, players may not: Two people can both be Ahmad. Every row shows the front of its id, and hovering a name shows the whole thing with both timestamps.
Refreshing is rationed: Holding down Refresh gets you one request, not twenty. The board also refuses to fetch twice inside two seconds.
Scores have to be possible: Your browser does not tell the server your score, because a browser can say anything. It reports what your hand did — how long you held, where you dropped it, when you tapped — and the server prices those moves itself, against its own clock. Building a charge takes three-quarters of a second whoever is asking, so a run can never be worth more than the seconds it really took.
It needs a connection to be ranked: Because the server works out the score, a run it never saw cannot be ranked. If the page cannot reach it when you start playing, the game still counts and the readout still climbs — the leaderboard says so plainly rather than pretending to save. Reload once you are back online and the next run ranks normally.
What the server keeps: Only what the game needs: the id your browser made, the name you chose, your best, and the moves of the run that earned it. The runs at the top of the board keep their move list, so a score can be shown to be real instead of merely claimed. Nothing else about you is stored, and nothing is shared.

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