Turf insider Januari 2013

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Happy Turf new year!

Different Turf Insider[redigera]

The Turf Insider will have a slightly different look to it this time, I will write about the big things that happend during this year. Also, I'm happy to give You all an interview with this rounds winner Snusmumriken. A new and hopefully recurring part of Turf Insider!

Results of round 30[redigera]

This round was a snowy one, at least in Sweden. Winter struck hard and it was no surprise that the northern turfer in Umeå, bUs, took an early lead, in hard competition with bill out of Västerås and Bullmannen in Stockholm. However, lurking just behind this trio was Snusmumriken, from the look of it guarding a top spot, waiting to strike.. And she did, a resolute finish week and she had no problems taking the lead and later on the Gold medal. Silver goes to bUs and the bronze are in the hands of bill. Congrats to the three of You :-)

An interview with a winner[redigera]

Name Mona a.k.a Snusmumriken Age 49 City Linköping

Congratulations to winning a round of Turf! How does it feel?

  • Cool, I did it! Even better than I planned.

What's the best thing about winning a round of Turf?

  • The medal will serve as a token, acknowledging the hard work I put in. But I will also remember when different turfers started to cheer me on when they realized what was about to happen. Especially Mazarins messages in the snow in different zones and Mipsons Christmas gifts, consisting of red "zone caramels" on my route home helped a lot, motivating me to show everyone that I could get a medal.

What was your tactics for the round?

  • Tactics..? Ehh.. My plan was to get the 7 500 takeover medal, which would be around 40 zones/day. Then after about 10 days I realized I was much higher in the top list than I had expected, at this time I started thinking about a Bronze medal. If only Mazarin could stop stealing my zones during the nights! I had thought that he would take it much slower this round.. But we had a chat and he became my biggest supporter, cheering me on - but most importantly: taking my zones so I could take them again and get more points.

How hard was it? And how much time did you spend every day on turf?

  • The first weeks I took about 50 zones a day, to get the takeover medal. Closing in on Christmas, I had a lot more free time and averaged about 150 zones a day. It took a lot of time, but I had plenty of that the last week since my children didn't spend Christmas with me this year and I was out between 8-13 hours a day. I wasn't fast on my bike, but the important thing was that I kept going and I felt great when I realized I had the strength to do so. I really enjoyed being out in the beautiful nature, even though I had some trouble with icy and snowy streets. But that was part of the challenge! The hardest part was to reveal to every turfer out there that I was out bicycling instead of celebrating Christmas. Also, Bullmannen seemed very disappointed when I challenged him, at this point I almost quit.

Linköping keeps lining up victories in Turf, why do you think the game is so popular in your city?

  • The bicycling here is pretty ok. We have some hills, but most areas are flat when you get there. The different parts of the city also have quite a few zones and turfers have their routes on their way to work or school, many also go out for a quick session in their lunch break. Visiting turfers can easily take 20-25 zones in the central part of town in a couple of hours.

What's the best thing about Turf? That you get to be outdoors and the exercise. And that you always take a few more zones than you planned, which is good for the weight among other things :-D Also, meeting other people - both other turfers and those who haven't started to turf yet, they're usually wondering what you're doing.

Which new features would You like to see in turf?

  • Bigger numbers on the blocktime counter, so you can read it when it's dark without reading glasses. Clicking a turf avatar and directly being able to send them a chat message, without having to type their name would be nice. I would also like to see revisits in a separate column in the warded stats and in the session history. It would also be great to have this information on turfgame.com, so you could easily see how many of your takeovers are normal or revisits.

How do You think Turf will develop during 2013?

  • My adjustments as above and a lot more turfers.

What's your Turf new years resolution? :-)

  • Not to turf too much or too little. Spending time on getting more unique zones, bicycling in other towns - I did that earlier this fall in Nyköping, which was very nice. I also went to Mjölby and Tranås earlier, this kind of turfing is very fun!

A big thanks to Snusmumriken who agreed to share her thoughts about Turf!

2012 in retrospect[redigera]

What a year 2012 was! In the future, when we look back at the history of Turf, many wise men will say that 2012 was the year Turf really took of. Many fun and great things happened this year and I will try to list a few of them here today :-)

The winter bonanza in Sundsvall. Sadly I couldn't be there myself, but the reports from the competition and the social activities around it was very positive. The winner was bUs, someone I will mention further down this text :-)

The article on swedroid. This was for me the most important thing that happened this year, a horde of rookie turfers started to pop up all over Sweden and they kept coming! The servers took a heavy blow from all the new players, thankfully the devs was there very fast, fixing the problems and keeping the game afloat. And all of the sudden the zones we had was not enough anymore! The Zone builders almost had to quit their jobs for a couple of weeks, literally sprinkling zones all over the country. Very busy, but extremely fun times! The best memory I have is a screenshot someone posted in the facebook group (I think it was) where the map of Sweden was completely full of turfers :-)

Takeover #1.000.000. It happened in the end of July, MadMax was the lucky turfer to take it and got himself a brand new Nexus 7 for the trouble :-) The zone itself was renamed to MadMegaZone. And now, not six months later, we're rapidly closing in on takeover #2.000.000 which is awesome!

The bonanza in Västerås. Early in September, the turfers of Västerås hosted the biggest bonanza yet. Around 65 competitors participated in the 2-hour hunt for zones in a beautiful and sunny Saturday. The arrangement was a success, the competition extremely exciting and the dinner afterwards a very nice round up of a perfect Turf day :-) Winner with a 1 point margin was bUs (again!). Maybe next year someone else will step up.. ;-)

The development of Turf. For us who have been around for a while, it's easy to see the development of the Turf application. We remember the times when the zones didn't show themselves, we remember the times when the points decreased instead of increased if you took a zone or had points per hour, we remember countless times of waiting for the takeover to be registered... This is now all in the past! Turf is so much more stable, many bugs have been fixed and this at the same time as many new features and medals have been incorporated in the game! New, expensive servers (thank you, donators!) are one reason of this development but the big reason is the developers who continously work hard to make this game as functional and fun as possible. A big new years cheer for Drassen and Simon who spend so much of their free time just to give us a free and awesome gaming experience :-)

Last but definitely not the least: The Turf expansion. I'm always glad to talk about the new countries that keep joining the Turf family. As we finish up 2012, we can find Turf fully launched in six countries. Our hopes is that during 2013, there will be quite a few more! Our hopes are of course that in time Turf will be popular all around the world, and we will keep growing, be sure of that. After all, why shouldn't people be able to play this game everywhere? :-)

There are many, many other things I would like to write about but I would probably keep on going for ever.. I'll just finish this last Turf Insider of 2012 with wishing everyone a happy new Turf year! May all of you find new challenges and new zones in 2013, I know I will! And dont forget to make that little detour for that extra zone :-)

//Blabert, Sweden

P.S. The pre alpha version of Turf for iPhone is live since early December, this is great news and probably one of the most exciting things to follow during 2013 :-) D.S