Questions
FacadeFight is a game for people who have opinions about buildings. Two buildings from your city appear side by side, you tap the one you like more, and everyone's votes build a live ranking of the city's most-loved and most-hated buildings.
Playing
- Is voting free?
- Yes. Voting and the top 10 loved and hated in every city are free forever.
- Which cities can I play?
- Boston, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Seattle are ready for everyone, and so is every city a Pro member has added. Pro members can add any city or neighborhood that has buildings with photos on Wikidata.
- What is the taste card?
- After 20 votes you get a card you can download and post. It shows how often your picks agree with your city's crowd and whether you lean traditional or modern, worked out from each building's architectural style and the year it was built on Wikidata.
- Who is it for?
- City and architecture fans in the US, the people who argue about their city's ugliest building on Reddit, TikTok and X. Under-18s need a parent to pay for Pro on their card.
The ranking
- How is the ranking worked out?
- Each head-to-head vote updates an Elo score, like chess ratings. Beating a building that's ranked high moves the winner more. Every building starts at 1500; the most loved are the highest, the most hated the lowest.
- How do you pick the pairs?
- Buildings with few votes come up more often, and they meet buildings close to them in the ranking, so each vote tells the ranking something new. You won't get the same pair twice in a row.
- Can people rig it?
- We limit votes per person and per network, spot sudden vote bursts for one building and discount them automatically. When a burst is found, the ranking is worked out again from every vote with the burst counting less.
- What do the arrows on the ranking mean?
- How many places a building moved since a week ago. We take a snapshot of every city's ranking each day.
Buildings and photos
- Where do the buildings and photos come from?
- From Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, the free knowledge bases behind Wikipedia. Wikidata says which notable buildings stand in a city (the better known ones first), and Commons holds their photos. Every photo shows its author and license, and links to its page on Commons.
- Which photos do you show?
- Only freely licensed ones (CC0, public domain, CC BY and CC BY-SA) with a clear credit. We skip files without a clear license, and we try to show the outside of each building rather than an interior or a plaque.
- My favorite building is missing
- Pro members can add any city or neighborhood; its buildings with a Wikidata entry and a free photo join the fight within minutes. If a building has no photo on Wikidata yet, adding one there brings it into the game at the next weekly refresh.
- Is the information always right?
- It's as good as Wikidata, which anyone can improve. City lists and photo credits are refreshed every week.
Pro
- What does Pro add?
- For $2.99 a month after a 7-day free trial: add any city or neighborhood on demand, private fight rooms for your friends or class, the full ranking with history, your detailed taste profile and cards, and a weekly email of your city's biggest movers.
- How do private fight rooms work?
- A Pro member makes a room for one city and shares its link. Everyone who opens the link (they need a free account) votes in the room, and the room keeps its own ranking, separate from the city's.
- How do I cancel?
- From your account page, any time. You keep Pro until the end of the period you paid for.