Interview of a JetPunker #26 - SilverDog

Salut DDD! Je n'ai quasiment pas mis à l'honneur tout un pan du site au travers de mes interviews: la section mini-jeu. Aussi, en tant que fan absolu de Geography Snap, et même joueur talentueux de l'Even Split Game, je me demandais si tu serais intéressé pour être mon prochain interviewé.

C'est une grande surprise, mais je suis en effet intéressé !

Parfait! Nous pouvons donc commencer... Let’s start this interview! First, could you present yourself on JetPunk quickly for our readers who don’t know you?

Sure ! Hi, my name is SilverDog (formerly DogDeeDer). I live near the city of Caen, in Normandy, France. I started using JetPunk in June 2021, and I started creating quizzes in June 2022. I also play the mini-game Geography Snap a lot, and I am constantly grinding for World Records in this game.

With Changedaworld, you are with no doubt one of the greatest and most famous Geography Snap players. What do you like in this game? How often and long do you play Snap to have these impressive scores?

Well, I think I like 3 things about Geography Snap . First, its replayability. It's like random quizzes : each game is different. Then, there's also the emotions that I can feel with this game. I am very happy when I break a Personal Best, or a World Record. And finally, I would say it's the charts and the blogs that I make about this game. I love making them, and reading the older ones to see the evolution of Geography Snap over time ! As for my playing schedule, well it's very irregular. Sometimes, I might play every day, sometimes never for an entire week. Sometimes, I play a few minutes in a day, sometimes several hours. It depends on a lot of things, actually.

Talking about Geography Snap, you publish each month one or even two blogs with many stats about this specific mini-game. How did you get the idea to make them? Does it take a long to collect all the necessary data?

I had the idea of making them when I saw a blog that akjlddkjslfsd made about the Daily Word Search. I couldn't find any for Geography Snap, so I made one, and then two, three, and now I do them monthly ! As for the data, I could say it takes 5 minutes, or a month. The leaderboard at the beginning of each blog actually represents the position of the players at midnight (EST) of the first day of the next month. Because I can't take the screenshots needed at this hour, I take them at the earliest possible time, to make the leaderboard as accurate as possible. However, some sections of the blogs require collecting data over the entire month, such as the charts shown at the end, or the facts about the World Records that were broken this month.

To stay with JetPunk mini-games, you are also very well ranked on the leaderboards of the Even Split game. What do you think about this mini-game?

I think it's a shame that this game is very limited. I feel like new topics (like Capital Cities, for example) and new types of "splitting criteria" could be added. Maybe, a way to change the timer, to make the games shorter or longer, or something like that. I feel like this game could be more enjoyable that way.

That's with no doubt a good idea for an eventual future improvment!

After all these considerations, do you consider yourself more as a quizmaker, quiztaker, blogger or mini-game player?

It may be surprising, but I actually don't consider myself a mini-game player. Although I play Geography Snap a lot, I rarely play Even Split, and almost never the two other mini-games. I think I consider myself a quiztaker, although I am happy of the quizzes I make. I love to learn things by playing quizzes on JetPunk.

Interesting... So let's talk about quizzes, now, I guess. Since the beginning of the year, you are publishing a Daily Country Riddle each day, obviously. Did you get inspiration to do that from other quiz daily series? Since you can’t publish more than 196 quizzes like that, will you continue with something else when countries will all be done, or will you stop the series on the 15th of July?

I don't really remember how I got this quiz idea. Back in August, I made a few of them, and saw that a lot of people played them. So, in December, I was planning to publish an improved version of them, twice per day (one in French, the other in English). It works good, so I'm happy ! As for the date it will stop, well it will not be July 15th. In fact, only countries that are written using one word will be done, so that means that the final Daily Country Riddle will be on June, 6th. Then, I will probably get a little break from it, and it will come back in July, but not with countries, obviously. I'll stop there, as I want to keep the surprise !

Haha! You are quite good at creating suspense and hype. I'm sure that now, many of our readers want to know more about it. But like me, they will have to wait a few months...

As explained in some of your blogs and quizzes, you have created a whole country, with its own language, History, administration, geography,… Could you tell us a bit more about it, and your eventual new projects related to the Dee Island?

Unfortunately, nothing really "new" happened since I made these blogs. However, a lot things have changed, from the subdivisions to the name of the country, so I might do a blog in the future (in English this time) to talk about everything that has already been created, and another one (in French) to talk about the changed since the 2nd blog. I might create some quizzes about the geography of the country, too.

What is your own quiz you are the proudest of?

I would say it's the "100 biggest cities in Normandy" quiz, because it was fun and interesting to make, and I'm very proud of the result!

Do you have big projects of quizzes or blogs in preparation?

I have a lot of quizzes ideas, and, while it all depends on what "big" means here, there are 2 or 3 quizzes that will definitely require some time to make. As for blogs, apart from the Dee Island blogs that I mentioned earlier, I have 2 big blogs ideas. I don't want to say anything about them, but I can just say that one of the two will come in June.

What is the most important event in your own life of JetPunker?

I would say that what happened in Geography Snap is the best thing I experienced on JetPunk. It literally changed the way I see the world now, how I live, how I play games...

If you had to resume your JetPunk adventure in one word, what would it be?

Unexpected. 10 months ago, I barely knew all the countries, nearly half of the capitals and not a lot of flags or country shapes. And now, I know all of that, some countries subdivisions and a lot of cities in the world. There's also the quizzes and the blogs I made, there's Geography Snap and Even Split game... I really wouldn't have imagined that all of this would happen, all in less than 1 year.

Would you change something to your JetPunk adventure, if it was possible?

Not really, I feel like the way I use it now is good for me.

If you had to choose just three JetPunker for their quizzes, who will it be?

Without much hesitation, Stewart, SpiritOfFire and Chaddius.

And for their blogs?

I don't read a lot of blogs, sadly, but I would say Stewart (again), Qy, and you !

Thanks, I'm honoured to be in such good company!

What are your passions in life, excepting JetPunk?

Well, I'm very interested in computer science and coding, and I love to make graphs and spreadsheets. I love listening to music, and I also play accordion. I'm also interested to geography outside of JetPunk, a good example of that is the country I'm creating. And well, that is all there is to say, I guess !

You are on the JetPunk Discord server, and you are active on it. You have also been a member of the French JetPunk server, and you are the creator of a Snap-related one. What does Discord bring to you as a JetPunker?

Talking with people was always hard for me, since I'm very shy in real life, so I guess Discord helped me surpass this shyness, and I now enjoy talking with people, either in real life or in Discord. The discussions can be very interesting sometimes, and overall it's just good moments.

What do you hope for JetPunk development in the next months?

I wish that a new mini-game will be added, although this probably won't happen soon, and I also feel like some improvements to the quiz/blog/chart maker would be nice.

Do you have a message to pass to the whole JetPunk community (or at least to the few users reading these blogs…)?

Of course ! I would say that you should believe in yourself and be in an almost constant challenge. You might not manage to learn whatever as fast as whoever did, but it's really not a problem. You will succeed at your own pace, but you will succeed anyway! Try to always surpass yourself ! But not always, that's why I said "almost". There's a point where you should take a little break, and just look back and see what you've done so far, and be proud of you and proud of what you achieved!

What a beautiful message! You have probably already understood it: it was my last question for this interview. Quelle efficacité! Merci pour ton investissement dans ce projet!

Merci à toi, les questions étaient sympas! Je suis impatient du résultat.

Haha! Bientôt le retour des lecteurs.