Getting back to work after the summer is rough, we know. To survive you need something stupid, fast and slightly cruel. That is why we have put Quanto te la rischi? (How much are you willing to risk?) online, the game we have used at Quinck for years to decide who has to make a fool of themselves.
It works like this: you dare someone, send them the room link, and a number decides whether the dare really happens. No app to download, no sign-up, forty seconds of tension. Under the hood it runs on Elixir, and we will get to why shortly: the honest answer is not the one you expect.
What is "Quanto te la rischi?"
It is a game for two people that does just one thing: decide whether someone really has to do the idiotic thing you have proposed.
Phone the pizzeria and order twenty pineapple pizzas. Send the boss a three-minute voice message, singing. Turn up to the daily stand-up in a Santa hat at the end of August. You choose the dare, a number decides the fate.
The original version is played out loud, in the office, with hands. This is exactly the same thing but via a link, so it also works with colleagues working from home and with friends who live four hundred kilometres away.
How to play: the rules in 5 steps
- Create a room. Write the dare and generate your link.
- Send the link. One idiot per room, two players at most.
- The challenged player sets the amount. A number from 2 to infinity, based on how much they do not want to do the dare. The higher the number, the lower the chance they will really have to do it.
- Bets are placed. You both secretly choose a number between 1 and the amount minus 1. The other player cannot see it until the end.
- The verdict. If the two numbers match, or if their sum is exactly the amount, the challenged player has to do the dare. Full stop.
It sounds simple. It is. The problem is that you choose the number, but the other player knows you are the one choosing it.
The maths nobody looks at (and that you should)
There is one detail almost everyone gets wrong on the first go: choosing a low amount is suicide.
If two perfectly random robots were playing, the chances of the challenged player having to do the dare would be these:
| Amount chosen | Probability of having to do it |
|---|---|
| 2 | 100% |
| 3 | 100% |
| 4 | ~56% |
| 5 | 50% |
| 10 | ~21% |
| 20 | ~10% |
| 100 | ~2% |
Yes, you read that right: with an amount of 2 or 3 the dare always happens, whatever numbers you pick. It is the quickest way to end up ordering twenty pineapple pizzas.
And then there is the fun part, the one the table does not capture: nobody plays at random. If you choose 1000 you are telling the world that dare terrifies you, and whoever challenged you reads it perfectly. If you choose 10 you are showing off. The number is not just probability, it is a statement. And that is where the game turns nasty.
Why we wrote it in Elixir
Here comes the technical part, and we will tell it the way it really happened.
Sam, our CTO, chose Elixir because he likes Elixir. There was no business requirement, no benchmark to beat. There was a desire to finally put something into production with a functional language, and the awareness that a side project is the right place to do it: if you get it wrong, the cost is one evening, not a client project.
That said, the technical fit is there, and it is clean.
Under Elixir runs the BEAM, the virtual machine born at Ericsson for telephony and still used today by systems like WhatsApp and Discord. The BEAM is built for one specific thing: keeping a huge number of isolated, lightweight processes alive at the same time, each with its own state and, if one dies, it takes no one else down with it.
Now look at what a game of "Quanto te la rischi?" is:
- a tiny state: a dare, an amount, two secret numbers;
- a duration of forty seconds;
- multiplied by all the rooms open at the same moment.
It is almost the textbook definition of the problem the BEAM solves well. Each room is a process of its own: it is born when you create the link, lives for the length of the game, dies without harming anyone. No sessions to manage by hand, no shared state to defend.
So yes: the choice came from a personal preference and a bit of curiosity about the functional paradigm. But it ended up being the right choice too. It happens when you experiment on real things instead of tutorials: the same reason we release open source software.
Why we make games at Quinck
One thing needs saying about Quinck, which you may already know: we are a company made of friends who knew each other before working together.
Some rituals survive growth. "Quanto te la rischi?" is one of them: it was born among us, between a stand-up and a deploy, and became the official way we hand out embarrassments.
Putting it online was not a strategic project. It was a way to experiment with a new language, take something of our internal culture outside the office and, above all, have an excuse to keep playing it. That is what side projects are for: keeping alive the urge to build things that don't have to justify themselves in a business plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to sign up or download an app? No. Open the site, create a room, send the link. You play from the browser, even on your phone.
How many people can play? Two per room: one dares, the other takes the risk. If you want to involve the whole team, open more rooms.
What number should I choose as the amount? The higher it is, the safer you are. But remember that a huge number tells everyone how much that dare scares you. Below 4 you are practically accepting.
Can the other player see my number? No, the choices stay secret until the final reveal.
Is the game free? Yes, completely. It is a side project, not a product.
What technology is behind it? Elixir, on the BEAM: the same virtual machine that runs systems like WhatsApp and Discord, designed to handle huge numbers of concurrent, independent sessions.
Now it's your turn
Pick the right colleague, invent the worst dare you can think of and let the numbers decide.
Play "Quanto te la rischi?" And if getting back to work is really rough, start with someone who deserves it.
