For those of you that can, think back to the good old NES days. Just remember the many games back then that had these interesting easter eggs that have now become legendary. You can find all sorts of secret messages and strange areas in tons of old NES games that everyone seems to know about.

I hear plenty of people talking about secrets in games and how that is a really important thing to keep people looking around, but what about Easter Eggs? I just don't see things like Easter Eggs in enough places on BYOND. Before I get into this, though, let's talk about what an Easter Egg is. I found this definition upon my search:

"An Easter Egg is a term that refers to an un documented feature or novelty that is in a program that the makers of that program placed in the program for additional fun and credits. Easter Eggs are in no way destructive to any software or hardware within the computer and are usually meant for something unique and fun."

This can be a very important thing. So many of the legendary and unique games in the past get the foundation for how well known they are from both their fun and the crazy secret easter eggs that you can find. My personal opinion is that it would be excellent to see more of this in BYOND.

My biggest concern with how things are going right now in terms of the community and site, is that people are taking things too seriously. Very few people are actually successful in the various projects that they pursue. I believe that the number one factor in this problem is that the people trying to make this certain game are going at it from a far too professional point of view.

Not much that happens here is actually professional, when we are truly honest with ourselves. When we try too hard to make something, we lose interest very fast. This is why I think that easter eggs can be a very important thing to both keep the programmer interested and to let him have fun.

Now think about this. You put an easter egg in your game and don't tell anyone else. Someone finds the easter eggs and is simply amazed. At that, they end up telling more people and the community begins to grow closer as they work together trying to find out if there are any other easter eggs. This is when the myths are born. You will be amazed at how fast the community will begin coming up with these crazy myths and legends. It's happened to me.

I remember playing the original Pokemon games. The very first ones that came out. There was this strange "virus" pokemon. If you were to swim up and down the side of the gym on that one island, you would eventually fight this strange virus pokemon. Well, of course, just about everybody I knew that played pokemon started coming up with these crazy myths. I heared one myth where if you were to press A on top of every tile in every town where the ground was all dirt, a drill would come out of the ground and team rocket would attack you. It was completely obsurd, but people believed it. I can remember the feeling I got when I would try to make these myths come true. That feeling in my stomach that just maybe this is true.

Therefore, I think easter eggs are a very good thing to include in your games. Leave your own mark on the game in multiple places. It will keep you interested and having fun. It will also keep your community wanting more. Another thing that can keep you having fun programming is my "Stupid Game" concept which I will talk about some time later on.

Please comment on the matter.