The Problem We Were Actually Solving Our primary concern was to create a system that could efficiently process a large volume of user interactions, which included clicking on clues, solving puzzles, and submitting answers. We knew that these interactions would trigger a cascade of events, requiring our system to respond in real-time. Our task was to architect the system to handle the surge in events without bogging down. What We Tried First (And Why It Failed) Initially, we took a naive approach by creating a monolithic event handler that would catch and process all events in a linear fashion. Our reasoning was that this would provide a simple and efficient way to manage events, with minimal overhead. However, as the user base grew, our system began to experience performance issues, with event processing times slowing down dramatically. We were receiving a steady stream of complaints from users who were getting stuck in the game due to delays in event processing.…