Mastering the Pointer Pointer: Unraveling the Power of C's Double Pointer Keyword

Games and fun activities are a source of banishing boredom from your life. But what if you are tired and bored of playing the same old games over and over again? What if you are not finding any game that is too good to the level of addiction? And what if there is no fun activity that is coming to your mind for trying and utilizing your idle time? In this blog, we are going on a journey to find such a fun thing to do and that is “Pointer Pointer”. Stay connected to find what it is!

What is Pointer Pointer?

Pointer Pointer is a viral online game that allows the user to find the location of their pointer, in other words, the mouse cursor_which is primarily used to give commands to the PC on what to do. In this game, you go on the website and they ask you to hold still your pointer (cursor). After some loading time, a picture appears in which a person or different people are pointing toward the location where your pointer is. Due to the pointing action toward the pointer, this game is called “Pointer Pointer”. One pointer is the cursor and the other is the pointing finger.

Origin and History

Pointer Pointer became an internet sensation back in 2011 when Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey, and Roel Wouters launched it. They were designers working in their field and came up with this unique idea. The game soon got extremely popular on social media platforms such as X and Facebook; and on search engines. People used it a lot in 2012. It even got millions of visitors per day. However, due to some privacy issues, the website of the game was inactivated in 2014. However, some other versions have been launched that work in a slightly different way.

The Accidental Release of Pointer Pointer

Maurer, Wouters, and Puckey were working on Pointer Pointer for one of their design projects. It was a website Flitser.org which was designed to enable the users to create the animations from pictures. Puckey says that they had finished working on the project and they aimed to officially launch it on Wednesday. But on Monday evening, they saw that the internet was just teeming with posts about Pointer Pointer. About 300,000 people had visited the website by Monday evening and the idea had already got 4000 likes on Facebook.

Digging into the Technical Background of Pointer Pointer

For real-time communication between user and server, the website of the game used Web Sockets. The algorithm was primarily based on Bayesian statistics. It used a model that was a model of user behavior. The model predicted the cursor movements which were then analyzed and the final result was given in the form of a pointer. Despite all these basic working mechanisms, the original code behind the website was never disclosed. It added a mysterious charm to the website.

Difference between Original and Currently Existing Pointer Pointer

The working of both games is similar. However, there is a difference in the presentation of the result. In the native version, the second pointer used to be a disembodied hand that moved in whatever direction you moved the cursor. But in the current version, each time you move the cursor, loading occurs for some time and a picture appears in the background. This picture does not move. It loads again and again every time you move the cursor and a new picture appears.

The Unique Idea Behind Pointer Pointer

According to the pioneer himself, Pointer Pointer was quite a unique game. Puckey said that normally for doing something or allowing something to happen, we have to do work or we need to move. But in Pointer Pointer, we have to pause and do nothing for the magic to happen. Initially, the reaction time of Pointer Pointer was at the speed of lightning. But then the founders introduced a delay to make the users pause and wait. It somehow made sense of the unique idea behind the game: doing nothing to let something happen. It was indeed an innovative idea.

The Social Impact

Despite its extreme popularity, Pointer Pointer also raised some privacy concerns among users. It sparked the privacy debates about user tracking. Also, people started to question the nature of human-computer interaction. The project showed how powerful an online unexpected and simple tool can be to draw massive attention across the globe. It got so popular that even news articles were being written on it. People did TV shows and statistical studies were done for its social impact. 

Closing Remarks!

 

Pointer Pointer is a once extremely popular web game that was originally a part of another project. Although it is unique and simple, it is also addicting and people refer to it more as a ‘time waster’. While a lot of people still use it for fun, a lot of others avoid it for privacy concerns. On the contrary, some people do not even know about the existence of such a game. In a nutshell, people hold different stances about this web game. The popularity is not as much as it was at the time of release, but the game and idea themselves are still innovative with a mystique.