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Gamifying web optimization
Type in any real website. The game scouts it, turns what it finds into a kingdom on a hex map, and gives you twenty turns to make ChatGPT, Claude, and Google say its name. Every hex can be verified against the live site, so the map doubles as your real to-do list.
The scout only reads public files (robots.txt, sitemap, homepage). Finished games can be posted to the weekly league board; nothing else is stored. A Soulcraft game.
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One entry per domain per league per week; replaying keeps your best. Resets Monday 00:00 UTC. Scores are self-reported by the game client, so treat this as a friendly board, not an audit.
Your website is a kingdom. The AI answer engines are the map. Three rival kingdoms already hold most of it. You have twenty turns to make the engines talk about you more than about them.
The gold hex in the middle is your homepage. Around it are three rings. Code: six things about how the site is built that decide whether crawlers can read it at all. Content: twelve kinds of pages worth quoting. Citations: eighteen places other people talk about you, from LinkedIn to Wikipedia. Dark hexes are in the fog until you build next to them. Hexes with a 🦁 🦊 or 🐺 belong to a rival.
You get three actions a turn (more as you grow). Click any hex to see what it is in real SEO terms, what the scout found, and what it costs. Rebuild a ruined Code hex, build or rewrite a Content district, claim a neutral Citation, or contest one a rival holds (a dice roll, better odds with more authority). When you are out of actions, end the turn. The rivals move, sometimes an event hits, and you get a fresh set.
Content is locked until three Code hexes stand. Citations are locked until three Content districts are built. Block AI crawlers and everything you own counts at a third. That is not a game rule we invented; it is how the engines work.
Spending actions builds a hex in the simulation: a plan. Every hex also has a Verify button. For Code hexes the scout re-reads the real site. For Content and Citations you paste the URL of the real page (your pricing page, your Wikidata item, the Reddit thread) and the scout fetches it and checks it does what the hex claims. Verified hexes get a ✓ and are built for free; simulated ones stay dashed. Proof URLs are remembered per domain, so next week you press Verify all and see what has actually shipped.
Share of voice is your visibility divided by everyone's. Finish at 50% or more and you are Sovereign. 35% is Citadel, 20% is Outpost, below that you are Lost in the Fog. Two numbers are tracked: the planned share of voice from everything you built, and the verified share of voice from only what is proven live. The verified one is the one worth bragging about. You get a field report of what is actually broken on the domain, a share card, and a spot on this week's league board.