TypeRacer

TypeRacer is a multiplayer online browser-based typing game. You complete typing tests of various texts as fast as possible in the form of a competition against other people. It was launched in March 2008 and it has been one of the most prominent typing sites ever since. It claims to be the first multiplayer typing game on the web.[2]

TypeRacer
Type of site
Multiplayer online game
Founder(s)Alex Epshteyn
URLplay.typeracer.com
Alexa rank 13,060 (March 2020)[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationFree
LaunchedMarch 2008
Current statusOnline

History

TypeRacer was launched by programmer Alex Ephsteyn, working on his own, using the OpenSocial API and the Google Web Toolkit.[3] Alex was inspired by teaching himself to touch type with a shareware Windows program that lacked a multiplayer mode. He describes himself as not a hardcore gamer, and had never played other multiplayer typing games such as The Typing of the Dead. Ahmed was contacted by a former Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing engineer, who expressed approval of TypeRacer.[4] Ahmed holds a master's degree in Computer Science from UMass Amherst and was an intern at Google in 2005.[5]

TypeRacer was listed among PC Magazine's "Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites of 2008".[6]

Overview

Players compete by racing miniature cars that advance as the users type various passages ranging in lengths from just above 20 characters to around 930. For racing, there is the regular "maintrack" option, where you race against whoever is online at that time who has a similar last 10 average with you on randomly selected quotes. Practice racing, or "ghosting" is another way of competing. You can use any text on demand, and save up to five of your races. In addition, there are separate competitions and private tracks. In competitions, whoever has the most points by a certain time period wins. In private tracks, you need a link to access the track.[7] [8] [9] When typing texts, Accuracy is required; any typing errors in words have to be fixed before continuing with the race.[10] The typing passages come from popular songs, films, television shows, video games and books, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, A Clockwork Orange, and Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!),[11][12] and can be contributed by users.[13] Some users that achieve typing speeds over 200 wpm have been suspected of being robots, or otherwise cheating, which TypeRacer has taken repeated measures to restrict.[14] The protection is requiring users that get over 100 wpm in a race to do a CAPTCHA. If they pass, then they have to perform a score that is 25% higher than the attained CAPTCHA speed to activate the CAPTCHA test once more. When racing, the amount of wpm you achieve is compiled and put into several averages, such as your all-time average, and your last ten average. Additionally, there are six different ranks you get on your profile if you pass a certain speed. The beginner rank is 0-24 wpm, the intermediate rank is 25-30 wpm, the average rank is 31-41 wpm, the pro rank is 42-54 wpm, the typemaster rank is 55-70 wpm, and the megaracer rank is 80 wpm and above. After you finish a race, there are 5 main results that come with it to show your performance. They are registered wpm, unlagged wpm, accuracy, points, and rank. Your registered wpm is how fast the website calculated your speed average throughout the text was. It is measured in a way to prevent cheaters from manually sending scores to the website, which means there is often lag that lowers your wpm count. Your unlagged wpm is your actual speed. You can view it by watching the replay of your race. Your accuracy is the percentage of the characters that you entered correctly in the text. Your points is an alternate way of measuring how well you did in your race. The better you perform, the more points you get. They are also used in competitions, where whoever has the most points wins. Your rank is your place in the race. Whoever completed it fastest takes first. There are also many "universes" in typeracer. These are branches of the main site that are often dedicated to a specific thing in typing. For example, there is a numbers universe where the texts are exclusively numbers,[15] and there is a marathon universe, where all of the texts are extremely long.[16]

Community

To this day, Typeracer has quite an ample community. One communication hub is the Typeracer discord server, which is home to over 4500 users. This the biggest and most active place for users to converse. A good description of it would be active and tight-knit. Most of the greatest modern typists have used typeracer at one point or another, such as people like Sean Wrona and Chak being active users. Some typists also have YouTube channels where they share videos of typeracer content, or Twitch channels where they stream themselves typing competitively.


Ghosting

It is common among the community to utilize premium subscriptions to ghost short quotes. The reason behind this is short quotes contain less text, hence they take less time to type and you can go abnormally fast on them. There are a plethora of short quotes that you can ghost, some of the most widely used ones being "They don't know that we know they know we know.", "Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane.", and "You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that". Some typists are even able to type these types of quotes so fast that they can go over 300 words per minute on them. There is a group of typists, albeit small, that have gotten scores 300 wpm or higher on a race. This group is put on a list known as the "300 club". There are currently 16 people in the 300 club, listed below.

1. taran127 - 406.780 WPM - 6/7/2020 2. erniechiew - 383.866 WPM - 12/8/2018 3. l___l - 383.600 WPM - 5/20/2020 4. keegant - 377.049 - 5/6/2020 5. volhosis - 368.059 WPM - 2/15/2019 6. hospitalforsouls2 - 366.777 WPM - 4/8/2020 7. sharoop - 365.805 WPM - 9/20/2018 8. atthetop - 357.745 WPM - 12/16/2019 9. chakk - 339.181 WPM - 7/8/2020 10. vinniwooh - 329.078 WPM - 12/14/2018 11. florentine - 323.007 WPM - 9/8/2017 12. shazman - 318.156 WPM - 5/8/2020 13. mispelled - 312.950 WPM - 2/15/2019 14. modest_ked - 308.063 WPM - 9/8/2018 15. martingarrix - 303.532 WPM - 1/2/2020 16. joshua728 - 303.132 WPM - 7/31/2020

Typeracer Premium

In August of 2010, Typeracer Premium was introduced.It is a subscription available to all typeracer users for 12 dollars a year which allows you to get certain perks such as having a profile picture, a vast collection of premium-only cars, and most importantly, the ability to save practice races up to five times. This allows for premium users to ghost quotes and only save their best races.

gollark: C is a horrible language and C++ is a horribler language.
gollark: Just the C bit.
gollark: But not with JS being excellent.
gollark: I agree completely.
gollark: I would make something if I had a working image editor.

References
  1. "TypeRacer Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
  2. About TypeRacer, official site. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  3. "Featured Projects on Google Code: TypeRacer", July 08, 2008. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  4. "The Story Behind The Addictive Web-Game 'TypeRacer,' A Competitive Mavis Beacon" Archived 2011-01-01 at the Wayback Machine, by Patrick Klepek, MTV, May 8, 2008. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  5. "Making Polls Social" Archived 2010-12-02 at the Wayback Machine, Alex Epshteyn, Google Social Web blog post for Google Friend Connect, April 21, 2009. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  6. "The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites", by Kyle Monson and Eric Griffith, November 11, 2008, PC Magazine. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  7. https://data.typeracer.com/pit/profile?user=taran127
  8. https://data.typeracer.com/pit/profile?user=sharoop
  9. http://typeracerdata.com/texts?sort=length
  10. "TypeRacer tests your typing skills, patience", by Josh Lowensohn, April 25, 2008, CNET News. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  11. "How sharp are your typing skills?", by Whitney Matheson, Pop Candy, USAToday, May 12, 2008. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  12. "Forget ‘Speed Racer’: The Sport of the Future Is TypeRacing", by Nick Confalone, New York Magazine, May 8, 2008. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  13. "Contribute a Quote to TypeRacer", official form. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  14. "Encouraging Honest Competition", February 7, 2009; "New Speedometer And Improved Cheat Protection", May 19, 2008; "No More Cheating", May 18, 2008: all from The TypeRacer Blog, Ahmed Asif. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  15. https://play.typeracer.com/?universe=numbers
  16. https://play.typeracer.com/?universe=marathon
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