.CONF & SPLUNKLIVE!

Buttercup Games – Level 1: The Premise

If you saw the .conf2016 keynote you might be wondering “What is Buttercup Games? Is it for real?” Well, yes and no. It’s not a real company, but it is a real game.

Screen Shot 2016-09-28 at 12.43.49 PMSo why Buttercup Games? Years ago a few Splunkers decided to build some training material around a fictitious company and make it fun. They chose to take our mascot (Buttercup) and something fun (games) and combine them. Buttercup Games was born. Logos were designed, data was generated, classes were created. Maybe you’ve even taken one – if you haven’t you should. Especially if you attended .conf this year and got $5,000 in education credit for free.

A couple of weeks ago some Splunk employees decided to make it real and create a web based game people could play. The result was Buttercup Go.

Splunk’s history goes back to “spelunking” through logs like people would spelunk through caves. Which is why Buttercup flies through a cave dodging stalactites and stalagmites.

Are you ready to give it a go? Simply go to https://buttercup.rocks and you can play, right now. If you do it during this week your name could be on scoreboards around the conference. Here is a screenshot of the top scores during the keynote. These users will go down in history as the first to play and the first to lead the scoreboard. Bonus, click on the speaker icon in the top right after logging in to enable sound!

I was amazed to see over 3,000 people log in during the keynote.

Screen Shot 2016-09-27 at 5.47.54 PM

Below is a table of some of the scores during the keynote. There were definitely some naturals during the keynote.

Screen Shot 2016-09-27 at 3.48.16 PM

I wonder how many total games, flaps, etc there will be by the end of the week. By the end of the keynote 13,399 games were played with more 305,521 flaps! Amazing!

Look for another update on scoring soon. Depending on what you do and how high of a score you get, you might be mentioned in one of the blog posts.

Thanks!
Nate

Nate McKervey
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Nate McKervey

As Head of Blockchain and DLT at Splunk, Nate leads the product strategy and development of distributed ledger technologies. Previously he ran Technical Marketing to help drive the value Splunk creates by creating compelling product demos and narratives, influencing industry analysts and media, presenting on stage at events and creating technical thought leadership content. He obtained his first Splunk license as a customer in 2006 and in his own words "was instantly hooked!". Nate joined the Splunk Professional Services team in 2012 where he deployed and optimized some of the largest Splunk deployments. In his spare time, he Splunks everything in his home from lights to sprinklers, real-time energy consumption and even his golf swing. Nate has a bachelor’s degree in Physics and a Masters in Computer Information Systems from Florida Institute of Technology.