We’ve added a new high score option today. It’s the checkbox at the bottom of the high score table that reads “Show a player’s first score, not their best.” The high score table shows only one score for other players (though it always shows all of your own scores) and this option allows you to set which score of theirs you want to see—the best or the first.

Before we added this option, the high score tables showed the first game for other players. Along with adding the option, we’ve changed it so that is no longer the default.

Why did we do this?

Because of the way the high score tables used to work, certain people were “gaming” the system—they’d play a game over and over anonymously (or with different alternate user accounts) and then log into their main user account and play it one last time to get a ridiculously fast run time. Jim and I talked about different ways to combat this but in the end we decided to cater to that style of play instead of trying to ban it outright. With the new default high score settings, there’s no need to log out, play, log in, play again. Just play a game repeatedly while logged in and your score will move up the ranks.

We’ve left the option to show the first score there for people who just want to see how well they can do against a level playing field.