Slashdot Mirror
Playing an FPS for Money?
IronChef writes "Ran across a web site where someone is attempting to combine online games and cash. The difference here is it looks like it's not some big tournament where everyone gathers and the top 3 out of a field of hundreds get paid, but a small group jumps into a server for a buck or two per head, and the winner cashes out on the spot." And you thought you swear a lot when you lag now!
d00d, I 0wnZ j00 glV3 M3 da m00l@ I can just see it now. Death by d00d and now I got to pay for the right to get gibbed. Go figure. What's next? :)
I had a feeling about that, but I wasn't 100% positive. Thank you for clearing that up for both of us. Now, can we get back to the topic? Thanks...
Recently, a bill was introduced in congress outlawing gambling in any form over the internet. It died in congress. Laws saying the same thing exist in a few states. If you live in one these, urbanmercenary is clearly illegal, even though it is a game of skill (like poker and sports betting). Otherwise, it is very unclear. There is a law prohibitting placing bets over a phone line from somewhere where gambling is illegal and those *may* apply here. Also, I hope urbanmercenary is based overseas like all online poker rooms are.
The main issue with legality as far as these things go is not the gambling itself; you will not be tracked down for gambling online and arrested, Janet Reno's comments this week on 20/20 not withstanding. The issues are that the site may be shut down if it is based in the US (especially since there may be a lot of people playing who are minors) and, more importantly, that if you make a living on it you may have some big tax problems. Casino gambling is different because you can do everything in cash, but here everything you win will get deposited into your bank account, which will be hard to explain to the IRS.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Started as games too. People like to see the best play. Its as simple as that. When computer games take off and have as much respect as pro Basketball/Baseball/Football, and as much entertainment value, people will hire you to play on their team, to play in their online stadium, simply because you are the best. Why do people pay to see grown men play with a little ball? Same reason gamers will eventually pay to see the BEST play the game.
Whooot
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
If the company was like 5 people making card
game over the net, but this is 40 programmers
sweating away at the code to make sure that
you don't loose a fraction of the penny and
when you win, is when you used your skills
to steal coins frags, etc. Moderator should
look on the site and read thru it before +3 ing
the post.
Well I dont know about FPS but surely RTS games are primed for gambling. After all, these games deal directly with money/gold/energy. So instead of sending your little peon to collect gold or whatever, you just plug in your credit card and deposit a few dollars into your account. Maybe there's different levels of game play, where you can battle it out for $5 = 5000 credits or your can play a high roller game where $5 = 5 credits. Winner takes all. Maybe it costs 100 credits to create a tank and when the enemy kills the tank he gets 99 credits and the bank takes 1 or maybe you dont even need to take a cut because for every game that is played there will always be units on the winning side that are paid for but you dont get a refund for.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well since there's no feasible way to ensure a fair match, why not just let the bots go wild? Bring your best pet bot and fight it out with whatever the other guy's decided to bring along.
There are a lot of console games that do this, usually racing and sports games where actual sponsors buy "billboards" by the side of the track.
Interesting I didn't know they collect info and submit it to the IRS. So will I be able to deduct these losses against other gambling winnings?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
In SubSpace, they have the ability to display ads, but don't. I wouldn't mind if we could get less lag and spikes from the server. :)
---
Sig Return: 204 No Content
Websters: The act of "blessing" a dead person, often a step towards canonization (making them a saint).
--- What
first step toward making that thing a saint, of course.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
It's ideas like this that will get online accounts, micropayments, and stuff like that into the mainstream. It is looking like people won't pay too much to play games online, but throwing money into a pot with a chance to double it! OH YEAH! That will add spice to a game and make a great revenue model. Wish I had thought of this... So much better than on-line gambling, etc. Please note that these guys are Canadian, eh? Or at least the company is... :)
Looking at the screenshots I though maybe I saw some Quake-like images there... I am not a gamer so I don't keep up on these things (OBVIOUSLY) but have they done something with the Quake code or is this a new from-scratch product they developed?
--8<--
--8<--
GlobalRankings has a good safeguard mechanism in place to avoid cheating of stats-dependent games:
http://www.globalrankings.com
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This might be a great way to support my ultra-low latency internet connection... Just play a few games a night and I've got it paid for for the month...
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
What happens with cheaters? You know, user A ping-floods user B, user C looks through walls, etc. This happens enough in regular play; what will happen when money gets involved? Is there some way to protect against this?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
But if they require a credit card number...there's a natural resistance of people wanting to put their CC out there. Once they've 'bought' into the game, a certain percentage will be hooked (and be back), but the initial hook-in is difficult.
(Can you imagine them offering $30 worth of credits and a boxed version in CompUSA... "Look dear, a new game for Jimmy!")
But look at it this way...10 people pay $5 to play. Winner get's (I don't know) $25 for winning. (They keep $25). Not a bad deal for them...not bad for the winner.
Well, as they mentioned on the site, this counts as a game of skill rather than a game of chance, so it is not a form of gambling. Think of it as a laser-tag tournament - definitely more of a skill than chance game...
as most, IANAL...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Good luck, if you feel you need to gamble. ;-)
M0571y H@rml355.
2. Um, the site this article links to can't handle the /. effect ... it's lagged quite badly. :\ I guess I'll read the particulars about all this later...
I always wondered why noone has exploited the possibility of selling ad-space in the game... I think it would be about as effective as real world advertising.
:-)
Sure, remember the Playstation version of Wipeout 2097? All the tracks were littered with Red Bull banners. Also there was a cute Genesis platformer a few years back called Cool Spot, sponsored by 7-UP. Your character was the red spot from the middle of the 7-UP logo with arms, legs and shades, and the bonus levels were set inside bottles of 7-UP where you had to ride up to the top on bubbles. Also, there was Zool, another cutesy platformer where you had to pick up Chupa Chups lollies for bonuses. I think in all cases, the advertiser's money resulted in a much better game (or maybe I never played any sponsored games that sucked); it's a shame it doesn't happen more often, to be honest, since I can't see that games developers wouldn't mind funding from somebody whose interest isn't solely in meeting the next milestone or publishing deadline. But as somebody else pointed out, I can't see many advertisers wanting to have their ads in games where their shiny logo could be splattered with gore
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
hey, i swear the first response wasn't there when I submitted. must have beat me by seconds.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
ok, so I make the check out to l33t-killer-d00d ...
While not texture based, there is one game I know of that offers free play in exchange for looking at ads in-game. ARC (arc.won.net) has a system where it drops you in the game, and it displays a banner in the bottom left corner. In exchange for clicking on said banner, it gets removed while you're playing, though it redisplays in the pause between getting killed and getting respawned.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
From the manual:
1.0 - Minimum System Requirements - (aka take care of the tech)
1) Windows 9x, ME or NT (Windows 2000 is not currently supported)
2) nVidia (TNT2, GeForce...), Voodoo (3 or above) chipset or S3 Mobile chipset
3) 64M Ram
4) 200+ M in Windows partition
5) 16 bit sound
A more detailed Graphics Card requirement list is available in the readme file included in the game download.
* All current ATI and Matrox drivers are currently incompatible
Wow what a crock! My beloved Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO is worthless.
Of course, I have ways of making you work...
------------------------ LordLobo - Because I can
Just a random guess, but I'll bet it never took off because the levels sucked. In my experience, the majority of custom level makers suck, and when they try to base a level on a real-life location, the result is even higher suck quotient.
No.... I die.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"Fucking Hell, if you had a nickel for every time you lag-killed me ... oh, nevermind, you DO."
;)
--The Kid
The Citadel
Slashdot. Where anything bashing Apple, beatifying Linux, and involving FPS's is news.
-------------------------------------------------
Just have a partner. You both pay your buck, along with maybe 10-20 other people. They all run around like monkeys, and you just kill your friend, and camp his respawn point. Rack up the kills, split the money of all the other people. Yeah, it's a great idea. Do it, do it!
Did you just read what you wrote?
1 cent for 5 minutes, not 1 dollar.
320 credits = $3.20 = $.01/credit.
Cheap(ish).
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Alternatively, create a section for various levels of bot-dom (aim-bot to complete computer controlled), and it may become a non-issue.
Great, so know if I can't pay my bet on here some geeky Guido is going to come smash my knee caps?
Or is some computer AI going to break my Quake guy's arm so he can't use the rocket launcher?
Anyways, this could be interesting. However, I think it's going to cause to end up pissing alot of people off and cause more problems then it's worth.
Ok, so the game is called Urban Mercenary and you play for Bloodmoney credits?
While I understand the need to appeal to teenage boys by using cool names, but do they really think that if they are even moderately succesful that they won't have some marketing problems with those names?
I do think that this is an interesting idea, but I think that they're shooting themselves in the foot with those names.
It's 10pm, do you know where your children are?
Little Johnny is locked in his room earning Bloodmoney as a high-tech mercenary with the new computer we bought him for Christmas. He's such a little angel.
_my mind is DYING_!!!!
mod both of my posts down appropriately...
it has been a long day.
That's what happens when you try to do simple math while debugging code...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
There is a reason that us non-believers started calling Magic "Cardboard Crack" since it is expensive, addictive, and serves no real purpose.
I'm not sure if it was because Wizards of the Coast® is a local company or these people had more money than they knew what to do with.
"diable armeggadon"
Times 10.
It's waiting to happen when you mix cash and games.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
This has possibiliities . . . I've never played one of these, but if you place it in a "New Country" radio station, and I get to blow up the records (err, CD's), shoot the crew for the "Morning Moron" show, and maybe a couple of those purported "artists" who wouldn't recognize Hank Williams if he haunted them, and I'd be all over it.
Hawk, who prefers western, but also listens to real country.
"And if you don't like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my MLK%$)Y*(^)&*
what if your good and come in as a new user ? People will think your new and thing your not good. Hmm.. kinda like bluffing?
err, not quite. Casino's take a cut of every pot.
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in Nevada, the point of those players isn't to take you, but rather to provide enough players to have a game.
It's been a while, but I believe that casinos are required to identify which players work for them on request.
hawk, a displaced Nevadan
Um FPS? Craps? What's the difference?
.).
:)
Well the difference is that is some skill [or so they say] involved in FPS.
This is more like the pool tournaments bars have - small entry fee, and a pot split with the winners (and I assume the site, couldn't realy find details on that . .
IANAL and all that BS, for all I know, the pool tournaments I play in each week are illegal
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
Wouldn't it suck if everytime you walked by a game room you got the urge to throw your money on the table and whip out your drug supply?
You pretty much just described modern arcades.
--
Every casino considers using skills that give you an advantage over the house to be cheating. You will be hassled by security and then banned from the casino if they merely suspect it.
Yes, I remember Starcade. I was on the show.
Here's the Starcade Web site. (And here's me on the show.)
Scary, ain't it? :-)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
...reduce cheating? I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen to you if you get caught cheating now? You get kicked, then it's off to the next server to prove how 1337 j00 4r3. But in the future, getting caught cheating could cost you a buck or two! Not much, no, but it does sort of rule out hopping from one server to another when each one is costing you a couple of dollars...
Any thoughts?
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
That's why crypto-geeks insist on having the source code to any encryption algorithm they use. If there was a hole in Blowfish or DES, it would probably have been found by now. Do you want to trust you SS#, credit card #, and personal information to software put together by one or more random strangers whose qualifications you don't know?
Cheating for money = fraud
Fraud is a crime. You can prosecute it. You can sue cheaters in civil court. You can seize their computers. You can take lots of money away from them. You can make the lives of a few cheaters miserable and scare off a bunch more.
It's like professional sports, but without all that exhausting exercise and all that other bad stuff!
Disclaimer: IANALBIPOOTV - (but i play one on tv)
I don't think this is a problem, since it actually involves competition, with the winner getting a prize. Sort of like a basketball tournament with a five dollar fee with the winner taking the pot. Actually, exactly like that. Also, I know that "pools" are legal (at least in Ohio) so long as the person in charge does not skim any money off of the top. One example of this would be a pool for the NCAA basketball tournament (fill out the brackets, the person who does best wins).
and remember...IANAL
---- Yay! I have a sig!
I always wondered why noone has exploited the possibility of selling ad-space in the game... I think it would be about as effective as real world advertising.
Maybe you could even get advertiser sponsored game servers. I don't think I'd mind an occasional coke ad on the wall (or even product placements!!! Just like the movies.. ) in exchange for a nice, fast server to play on.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
There are several things that could be done to prevent cheaters prospering, such as human "umpires", reputation measures, statistical analysis, and the like.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Look for me in Quake 3 Team Arena, that annoying SOB railing everybody in mpterra1.bsp...wait a second, that's what I do now!
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
How can you ensure that the company itself isn't cheating? couldn't they put their own bot in to kill the winner thus winning themselves the money ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
The question isn't *if* these guys are going to get rich (they might, they might not), but who is going to be the first to do it right.
Forget about "legality". There are ways around that, and to start off with, nobody will notice this shit building in the background. Not until there is a huge splash in the press about some mum who thinks her kid is becoming obsessed (...blah blah blah: you should all know the pattern by now). By the time that there is a move control it through special legislation, it will have become too popular to stop by fiat. Besides, with servers in Antigua, who gives a fsck what the Americans think?
So the issues to be addressed are: what business models to use, what kind of games are most "immersive"/addictive, and can you turn this kind of thing into (virtual) reality TV? I mean, once you have "star" players and teams, will people be interested enough to either lurk and watch the pros at work, or sit back and watch it on cable with some popcorn. The potential for drama and soap-opera appeal should NOT be underestimated here.
Personally, I want the Mechwarrior universe online, with battles on Solaris and House feuds, etc. Any genre is open for exploitation here, with its own audience. Gamblers and cheaters will just add spice. (besides, if you're a smart game service, you HIRE the cheaters to work FOR you).
Give it time. It'll happen. And don't worry about all the naysayers. They don't understand what's happening here.
I mean, people putting a couple bucks in a pot and one person gets it all happens all the time. In card games, office pools, charity runs, etc. I mean, yeah, its new to Gaming, but Gaming Is New. There was even a pot going on about guessing when the linux 2.4 kernel would come out...i forget the link off hand.
Now yeah ok some of the things i mentioned are people betting on other things, where as in gaming its people betting on themselves... But i'm not sure anyone can Really act suprised... Teens and geeks in my city used to Play Mortal Kombat in arcades at 5 dollars a win, 5 years ago? Were we pioneers? or really just fulfilling the human need to bet?
That was part of the intended pun. Obviously the moderators disagree.
------------
Casinos are legally obligated to provide information about winnings to the IRS, provided you win over a certain amount, I believe it is $2000US. This is why you will sometimes see slot machines or other games marketed as the "IRS Special" that pay out jackpots of $1999.99.
Enigma
Enigma
It appears that they have their own game, and therfore their own EULA.
sup
Not a good sign of their Linux compatibility.
Wow. This is a true moment of '80s nostalgia. I get to see a slashdot poster who actually WAS on Starcade. That show DID rule! WOw, this is like when I met Peter Davison at that Sci FI convention. (no, im not being sarcastic with this post)
I don't know if Magic might just be trend, but FPS gaming is definitely not "just a trend", so I doubt it will die completely, and I'm sure you will see people eventually making a living off of it. FPS is tending toward "sport" status, which means you'll be seeing more and more competitions etc, much like games like pool. You can play pool informally for smallish bets in bars etc - a bit like what this article is about. At the next level you can play in small local competitions as a hobby, aside from your real job. Finally, a tiny minority of really talented people will make a living off of doing only this - the FPS equivalent of people like Jimmy White and Steve Davis of pool/snooker. This is the direction FPS gaming is going. I doubt it will ever become one of the primary spectator sports though (e.g. like baseball in the states, rugby/football/cricket etc.)
I may be wrong, but I believe that you would have to earn at least seven or eight hundred dollars in order to have to report it as income (in the US anyways). As always, I'm leary of giving out my SS# to companies I know relatively little about, especially if they shouldn't need it. They shouldn't request it unless you earn enough for it to matter.
Do people do credit card fraud? Hell yeah. Well,
CC companies do damage control, they do their best
in preventing this from happening, but it is
impossible to prevent cheating. Once cheater
is discovered, his credit card is invalid across
the net, for the rest of the times. It is fairly
inconvinient to get cards for each game...
It's all about controlling, not eliminating
the possibility...
C'mon people, I still like DooM!! I ain't givin' my CCard out so I can waste more $ not only on buying games but from playing them!?!?! Hey why don't we get a T-3 backbone installed and just ping-flood everyone (couldn't do that in DooM or Duke3d)!! Ahhh well, while we're at it put casinos in Ultime Online 3 and put slots into all servers running Q3 and UT to decide the arena, gravity, etc. Oh well, I sit here and play DooM now. Kleed
Sure we wang, can.
Every game of Counterstrike I play has someone bitching about cheating. Imagine if money was thrown into the picture.
As any security expert has already explained -- not to mention Carmack the Magnificent on numerous occasions -- cheating can never be prevented in the "trusted client" model. There is no way you can reliably verify the integrity of the client on a machine not in your physical control. Period. Thus, all the work has to be performed on an electronically and physically secure server.
As for making textures transparent, that serves cheating purposes only because it's a side-effect of over-reliance on Z-buffers. Z-buffers are the most popular method of hidden surface elimination in CG rendering. However, Z-buffers don't eliminate hidden surfaces, they obscure them. Making polygons translucent helps un-obscure otherwise invisible geometry.
Back in the days of wireframe-only displays and pen plotters, a lot of research went into hidden line elimination, which is a variant of hidden surface elimination. Curiously, hidden line elimination is vastly harder to do, since you can't "erase" anything after you've drawn it. You must eliminate all unseen components from the object geometry before passing them on to the renderer. That's seriously icky math, since you have polygons slicing other polygons, thereby creating even more polygons. Add in the fact that you'd like to avoid drawing the same edge multiple times, or cutting a straight segment into a zillion tiny pieces, and the problem becomes even messier. Research into hidden line elimination was largely abandoned when raster displays became fast and cheap enough such that erasing/overdrawing previously-drawn imagery became viable.
So now it seems we come full circle: The only way you can thwart the translucent polygon hack is to perform the full geometric clipping (as hidden line elimination tried to do) such that invisible geometry is simply not passed to the renderer. Perhaps gaming sites such as this will stimulate renewed research into the area.
As for aim bots: Carmack the Magnificent has previously opined that a very talented player will be detected by advanced anti-cheating heuristics as a subtle aim bot. If you happen to be that talented player booted off the server, you will not be at all happy. (OTOH, Vegas casinos routinely eject card counters playing the Blackjack tables. So if you're hyper-good, they likely don't want you in their place, anyway.)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
If you watch the video, they state that they take 9.9% when you buy bloodmoney credits. So every time you buy $10 worth, you pay ~$1.00. That's where the money is.
Brett
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
We used to do the same kind of thing for our Engineering week. Since I was heading up the ACM group, I had to come up with an idea for an event to take place during that week. We did a tournament, starting with Quake the first year, Quake 2 the next, and winners would get $100 in cash. It ALWAYS attracted a lot of people, and not all of them left the room talking as much trash when they entered. :) (That was one of the reasons why I liked it.)
We had a local LAN in a reserved lab with all identical computers, and no Bots. (they also used headphones)
If it was setup just like that, it would be fair.
"Q: Does it cost to play games on the Bloodmoney Universe?
A: You can get a Bronze or Silver membership for free. However, when you enter into a tournament you will be charged 50 Bloodmoney Credits as a network maintenance fee. When you choose to enter a tournament for Pay however, each game has an entry fee that is collected in a pool and split between the top 5 winners of the tournament. Gold memberships cost $5 US per month and Platinum memberships are $25 US per month. With all of our membership levels you get additional services."
As if there isn't enough cheating in on-line FPS gaming already....
now there is a better reason than just bragging rights!
In the words of Charlie Brow- Good Grief
-Acdntlpoet
Something really witty should be here...
Q: Why do you require my social security # or social insurance # when I withdraw money from my account?
A: If you live within Canada or the U.S. You are required to submit your winning as income.
Q: Should I be worried about hackers?
A: No, we have many many security features installed to make sure you are safe.
Arg! Since I can earn winnings (Taxable income) from these guys, they want my Name, Address, CCard Number, date of birth and Social Security Number. How do I know this information is safe?
According to the video, everything is secured with a "proprietary security system". What the heck does that mean?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I am a NASCAR Racing 3 player and there is one server which hosts money races. The top 5 spots get payouts, and the entry fee is $10 each.
There is actually an ongoing case about a sports betting place in Antiqua, a sovereign nation in the Bahamas, where these Americans opened a sports betting house, an Internet bookie of sorts. They are all now fugitives of the US even though they are completely legal on the island nation where the offices and servers are located. The US does not give two shits about other country's laws if you break a US one- in this case interstate gambling. Lucky for these blokes they are on an island paradise raking in the cash.
http://www.dash4cash-racing.com/
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Is there anyplace outside the U.S. with small enough 'lag' to rally compete?
I regurarely get a ping
/Mikael Jacobson
"But surely we won't be still stuck with Linux in 25 years!?"
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I guess I should learn to preview...
What I meant to say was that I regularely get a ping below 50ms when playing CS, and I'm in Sweden.
/Mikael Jacobson
"But surely we won't be still stuck with Linux in 25 years!?"
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
219 freaking Megabytes for a demo movie? Shouldn't it be a rule that the preview movie should be smaller than the actual game? Ever hear of compression?
Never trust a guy who has his IP address tattoed to his arm, especially if DHCP.
Now I can actually gamble at the same time, combining 2 dangerous habits.
Hey, now you're on to something! If they'd pay my earnings out in heroin, I could combine all 3 of my dangerous habits into one. Man, what a time-saver this will be!
Sign me up!
IAAL, but this isn't legal advice and should not be taken as such. I've done some research on this for a client and it is not as easy as "is it a game of skill or not". For example, it is illegal, in New York, to play penny a point bridge or bet with a friend on a round of golf (computer or otherwise). It is also illegal to play games that involve both chance and skill (such as poker) for money in New York and is it illegal knowingly to host such games.
I'm not sure how this company thinks it is going to escape liabilty for violating these laws (which are even tougher in Virginia, for example, than in New York) unless they are located offshore and thus consider themselves immune to prosecution. This raises a number of issues. Many states don't care where your servers are located and will deem the transaction to have taken place at the point of origination of the client as well as at the server. Also, of course, the clients are violating state laws (in some states) by betting on the games even if the "host" is not.
I've tried to find out more about this company and how they address these issues, but the site is a bit evasive. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." - George Washington
I'd assume they would allow payment the same way every other e-commerce site does, credit card, checking account banking numbers,etc. By allowing things like credit cards then it allows you to buy more points at a time and would also allow for an 'auto-buy' feature so that if you were playing a game it would allow for you to already have credits waiting for the next match or heck, even a "buying on margin" type system with established credit. I think if structured well enough tihs would be a REALLY easy sell to hook people and knowing human nature and how addicting gambling and online gaming is I think the concept, if marketed properly, will be an easy sell and will net in very large revenues in the next few years.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
They also provide services like Domain Registration ($15-25), Web Hosting ($2.50 - 10/month), secure servers ($50-100), etc. Basically, the higher your monthly membership fee, the lower your OTHER fees.
I notice that alot of gaming & clan websitessites have trouble staying with one provider, so perhaps Bloodmoney is trying to bank off of that opportunity.
Other then the gaming membership, I don't really see anything unique about their web services. I notice that they do NOT provide any dialup or DSL/cable access, which is pretty smart. The Access business is pretty darn volitile.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Bloodmoney specifically mentions this in one of their faqs - that new games would be authored by participants using open source, and that they would in turn sell those games. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the whole thing, really. In this case you would be escaping any EULA because you wouldn't be using any commercial games with an EULA.
From their somewhat ambitious plans of transacting banking, web services, travel and real estate, it's clear that they want to develope a community around bloodmoney.org
Their implementation is flawed in a couple of respects:
1) Their name "bloodmoney doesn't sound all that welcoming. I live in a very religious/conservative region that takes those TV/Movie ratings seriously, and thinks that violence is something to be avoided. Also, it may be hard for some people to trust their money to someone called "bloodmoney."
2) They wan't to sell webservices. However, the average person is not going to need/want this. Also. the average programmer is not going to need/want this either as they already know who they want to do business with in this area.
3)The quantity of programmers from which they want to draw business from is going to be small. And the ones that think that this is cool are going to be too young to have a credit card.
This is just off the top of my head. They are going to have to make this more mainline or its going to wither. Even though the concept behind bloodmoney is interesting, just "interesting" isn't enough to hack it on the internet these days.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Check out this following illegal link to ebay, for example.
$1500 for a game character?!! Holy shit, my roommate should just quit his job and start developing these characters. Question is, how long does it take to create something that someone will shell out this kind of money for?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I know thresh, ask him about the fragfests put on by racine and dave allison, anyways..
I doubt many hi-end fps champs are really gonna go on this thing, heck they all make tons of money doing product endorsements and such. I've also heard stuff like the hi-enders don't go online as themselves anymore because of too many people playing "smear the queer" Where as soon as they enter a server, everyone and his brother wants to say "I killed thresh!!"
As much as I would like to see this game have success I have to give it the kiss of death allready for several reasons.
1. Most FPS gamers do not believe in the pay for play system.
2. What is the liability for cheating?
3. Its sports gambling, all sorts of stuff can and will be rigged.
I'll give it $20 bucks before I say, "ok this sucks"
--toq
Pathetic. As many have pointed out...this is like betting money on golf with friends, or playing poker with buddies or bball or whatever. And as some idiots have said "But there are guys playing Q3 and making 100,000$!". Yes, and there is Tiger Woods making millions playing golf. But, most are not Tiger Woods. This could eventually, and I do see it, become a sort of sideshow thing...like casinos. But I highly doubt anybody is going to become a fulltime game player out of their basement. A few, yes. But the rest will continue on the way they do now...and a few may pretend to be big time..and bet amongst themselves. But that would be that.
:) And dream of becomeing a pro quaker! And, much like fat joe at the local bball court. It will never happen ;)
Im sorry. You will still have to get up and flip your burgers in order to afford your acne medication folks.
to put all those hours of FPSing to use.
796F75206D75737420626520626F726564
This just reminded me of an old gameshow from the 80s called Starcade (IIRC). My memory of it is fuzzy now, but I believe the contestants would have to answer game-related questions and play arcade games for points. Was interesting at the time, but I've never seen anything like it since.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What about the option of not playing for money? I don't think the kiks pay for the risks on this one.
besides... it would change the whole focus of the game. Right now people *play*, do stupid things because it's just what it is - fun. In that game people would be afraid to be hit with a bullet, 'cause it costs money! Games are just games, they are not designed to generate revenue for players. They aren't supposed to be real, or treated as such after all.
- -
-----------------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
As if I already didn't have a bad enough social life between Counterstrike and Diablo sessions. Now I can actually gamble at the same time, combining 2 dangerous habits.
This sounds like fun actually, using micropayments or something to have a little more stake in the game. But yes I can see the emotions/reactions getting stronger during playing if there's real money involved. The incentive to cheat using scripts or other hacks would be much greater..
Brett
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
I remember seeing Red Bull drink plastered all over Wipeout XL for the Playstation. Even on loading screens. The whole idea seems plausible, and with loading screens taking longer rather than shorter as time progresses, we'll only be seeing more of it. I guess there ain't no way to get away from that little dimple-faced Pepsi tramp.
>:^D
How does this tie with gambling laws, any /.-lawyers know?
Also, this concept of gaming-for-something is similar to what is generally perceived as "The Next Big Thing" in the gaming industry - free forms of economic reward/punishment among multiplayer gamers. A lot of online RPG's followed this formula - it makes sense that FPS's are following suit (FPS's generally take RPG concepts, and 3d-ize them... the former follows the latter)
Trade, if you will, for a newly formed society. The "Everquest" effect...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Okay, they give your 10$ worth of 'credits' to start playing. One would assume that you actually have to wager this to start getting money. Where do the prizes come from? Who funds this? Ads? Gamblers?
Jezus, this is a bankruptcy waiting to happen.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Or for more excitement, combine both. Take advantage of those bear market days by shooting digital ones!
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
That would be sweet,
I'd actually able to make some money from my Quake3 addiction.
I wonder if they will put out games which you can only play on their network,
or regular games cheaper that you can only play on their.
But I'm sure lots of smaller products with little to lose would go for it.
I know I would!
Blar.
What's to prevent me and three friends from creating 6 player games all the time and coordinate ourselves over a party line (or on a LAN in the same room) to gang up on two players and rape them of their money, and let the next two victims come in.
If a ganger runs low on cash, he kills his teamie for money, so the team is always with a few bucks, and can continue to take everyone else for granted.
I've used these tactics with TFC, Infiltration, etc before... nothing to prevent me to apply it this way and make a few bucks every night. Curious as to what measures are in place to prevent this kind of abuse.
-----
Just deal with cheaters like they did in the old West, shoot them under the table.
Oh wait, that won't work...
I haven't seen much of this model but becuase it relys on the games being played over the internet it is destined to fail because of cheating. There are too many varibles. And there ARE people making a living off Quake3 these days and now Counterstike is getting big. Thanks to companies like CPL and Battletop. CPL is making a nice profit and has even helped jump start companies (such as Razer). For instance. John Wendel also know as cK-Fatlity (thats Fatality of Clan Kapitol) who made over a $100,000 in 2000 playing Quake3. And this year there is even more prize money to be had with a CPL $250,000 Q3 1v1 tourney. The Quake3 Team DM World Championship (Yes thats right teams from every country) Frag 4 was last year. Gamers.com (run by the ever famous Denis "Thresh" Fong) just bought the defunct PGL (Profesional Gamers League) from AMD recently. This is NOT a hobby to a fair but small amount of people. It's an international event with Gaming becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries celebrities will begin to pop up and it won't be the designers it will be the players.
It's better to look at Professional Gaming like the X-Games extreme sports that people never thought would make it big but are now respected and show on ESPN. Also ESPN just announced they will be covering a Tournament for a snowboarding game of thiers.
This is not a fad. It is not a hobby. This is life and it's growing fast. Now when you dream of playing games for money it doesn't have to mean being a play tester for some console gaming developer.
For those of you with greater interest heres some links:
CPL
Shack E-Sports
I can attest that the game is alive and doing better than ever. One box of cards is around $70, and a new set gets released three times a year. Factor in a few other random costs and you're looking at a $300/year hobby to stay seriously connected with a local scene. Now compare that to the cost of a Golf hobby!
There are a few people who make enough money from Magic: The Gathering to make it their only source of income, but those are few and far between. Most people just play local tournaments for maybe $5 entry, $50 prize. All things considered, the game is excellently designed and fairly cheap to keep up with.
-Ted
... and then, when you are just about to frag your opponent, he DoS'es you... and you gotta pay :( Not good.- ------
------------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
I can't wait until I bet a large amount of money...
"I'm gonna win!.. and be rich.. im so good"
game starts.
"OH SHIT." you get killed by a respawn camper.. and auto-aim bots kill you
sounds like a lot of fun to lose money with
a good programmer could get rich off this
I looked at the screen shots and it's not all that great. I wouldn't play it.
PRIME - Indivisible by anything but ME!
it's ok as long as there won't be more ads than other textures, I guess. Right now they are trying to promote a game that truly sucks (compared to Q3A, at least), while they could have explored the new revenue model.- -------
-----------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
...that it isn't secure. This is a running theme on comp.risks
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
This gaming model is beautiful, but it's also the optimal model to encourage cheating; small enough for cheaters to be relatively anonymous, but still a real incentive for unscrupulous cheating -- and many players won't even know they were robbed. So, I wonder what safegaurds they'll put in place? Nothing is provably perfect, of course, but if they're careful, smart, and very diligent, it's possible to make it arbitrarily difficult for cheaters (e.g., requiring positive identification at registration, an auto-updating client that incorporates a challenge/response system that changes daily, etc)... I wonder if they'll expend the effort neccessary to do this right?
-spcI can see this starting a new group of people, who think they're good enough to make a living off of this. It wouldn't be a big surprise, seeing the way that people did the same with Magic cards when they were really hot, and try to do the same with other hobbies. However, I think after the initial few months of excitement, we'll end up with the same sort of group... Unemployed folks, who didn't see a trend dying before it was too late...
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
Great idea! Now when we get a bad ping or lost frames and we die, we can lose money, too! What a brilliant idea...
note the date, from www.cyberathlete.com, the cyberathlete professional league.. "Founded on June 26, 1997 the CPL has become the leading computer gamer's league in the world, and is transforming computer game competitions into a professional sport.."
I can't *play* the game, but I can sure host it. It's great to run the (perceived) server os - linux geeks hate games anyway, right?
Diesel has been doing this for some time, as has Tommy Hilfiger, and numerous other companies. Maybe when you saw those 'Diesel' signs lying around you thought it was related to the fuel? No, it's related to the clothes. I think I first noticed it in about 96 or 97. Not sure how much it was done before then, but it's been done to death since then.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
In fact, just like poker, there will be born whole demographics of people who play. Notably:
1) Casual players who do not expect to make money
2) "Professional Players" who think they can make it, but are convinced that their losses are just the results of luck, cheating, etc. (Most often this is self-delusion)
3) The very small handful of players who can actually consistently make money and do - the sharks. They have no self-delusions about luck or third-parties. This group is so small it almost doesn't even exist, despite the fact that you could throw a rock in a poker room and hit a person who thinks they are a member or the elite.
The only people who make money are the real sharks and the casino.
Bravo to the dot-com business model, but beware if you think you can make it as a professional game-player.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Yeah but what do you do about Campers ? You know, those guys who live on the bridge in Q3DM7 ?
I get paid to play quake already!
I did post this anonymously, right? Oh crap...
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
They're also paying server operators to host tournaments. You get paid for each player connecting.
Read more about it here.
Download the server binaries for Redhat 5-7 here.
playing for money sounds like it could bring the bots out of the wood work.
:)
Although it could be interesting to see a bot war in a FPS
Copied from http://www.bloodmoney.net/revenue.htm
GAME LENGTH:5 minute heats
ENTRANCE FEE:100 Bloodmoney Credits
1 Bloodmoney credit is = $.01 US (from somewhere else)
1 dollar for 5 minutes???
Sounded cool at 1st, but go find another sheep, preferably one with more money to waste on such things.
oh the MILLIONS i will make!!!! now to firgure out how to get this thing to shoot.
597qd83Xb
A couple of problems I see:
They're really going to need a good skill-matching service. I mean, if I played UT on some of the highly-trafficed US servers when I was learning, and it was costing me $1.00 per time, I'd be massively in debt now.
What about cheaters? Someone tell me how you can detect or foil an aim-bot? It's bad enough now. When there's monetary incentive for the cheaters, this is going to be a HUGE problem.
Penguins play for keeps. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--