Below are the official rules for participating in dormspam-the-game. If you have any questions, please email us at dormspam-the-gamemasters@mit.edu. 

Eligibility

In order to participate in these games and be eligible for prizes, you must have a valid MIT Kerberos. In order to submit your answers for each game, you will need to log in using Touchstone (linked at the bottom of the page, on the main menu, or whenever you try to play a game without being logged in). However, everyone (including non-MIT community members) will be available to view descriptions of the games and results on this website. 

Note that while this game is primarily targeted towards undergraduate students (including incoming first-years and recent graduates), all with a valid Kerberos (such as graduate students, staff, and faculty) are welcome to play dormspam-the-game.

Structure

Players will compete in a series of 5 games (involving game theory!) where they try to outsmart their fellow MIT students. Games will be released every Sunday at noon ET, on this website, as well as through dormspam and the dormspam-the-game mailing list. Players will have until Thursday at noon ET to submit.

Winners of each game will compete in a battle of wits, honor, and glory in a live "game show" that will take place over Zoom and that will be livestreamed. If the winner of a game wishes to not participate in the live game show, we will ask the person who finished in second place, and so on. But why wouldn't you want to participate?

If someone manages the unlikely distinction of winning more than once, we'll offer a spot in the final game to the second place competitor.

Prizes

Winners will receive monetary prizes in the form of an Amazon Gift Card. We're also looking into the possibility of prizes being in the form of Tech Cash.

The first place contestant of each of the 5 games will compete in a live game show run by the gamemasters, where they will have a chance to win a share of $399. The logistics of this "final game" will be released later.

We will also compute an "overall rank" across all 5 games for all players, with prizes awarded for top performers. Excluding those who participate in the live game show (so that prizes aren't duplicated),  the top 10 students will receive $15, and the next top 20 sudents will receive $10.

We compute this "overall rank" by taking the geometric mean of a player's rank in each game. If a player does not participate in a game, their rank will be (1+n), where n is the number of participants (such that a player is not completely out of the running just because they miss one game.) To be clear, the lower the rank, the better.

Random notes

Here's a few other notes about the game that don't quite fall under any other section.

• Collaboration is not prohibited: We don't really have any way of stopping you — and some recent events have informed us we shouldn't bother trying... Also, good luck trying to collude with everyone who plays this game. But hey, maybe you can properly collaborate with your living group, club, or any other group of people you feel remotely close to. And maybe even get them to play.
• We plan on releasing rankings with using players Kerberoses. If you're concerned about privacy, we'll have an option for your "public identifier" to be different than your kerb. Please, for our sake, use the same identifier across all games. Otherwise we'll be sad. Yes, we gamemasters have feelings too, sometimes.