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CT Lottery to Offer PC Game
nstrom writes "The Connecticut State Lottery is giving out a PC game (for Windows, presumably) with their new scratch-off lottery tickets which offer a chance of winning $25,000 by playing. This news article from the Hartford Courant mentions that the game might be targeted at children, but there's no mention of any problems involving software cracking, which is what I immediately thought of. I'm sure there are some bored crackers out there who'd tackle this for a chance at some cash. What do you think?"
Actually it's the way the state gets it's welfare money back.
The store I work at got in one of the demos for this game, and since I'm the "resident computer geek", they had me test it out. The CD part of the game is just a complete gimmick. You buy a ticket, which has some long number you type into the program. You watch it go through some corny animation sequences, where you click on every damn thing on the screen, then afterwards, it shows if you won anything. The CD itself doesn't do anything, you need the $4 ticket to claim the prize.
Personally, I think it's going to flop. A lot of the people that I see who buy lotto tickets either go immediately scratch them, then return five minutes later to cash them and buy more, or they just purchase occasionally. This won't appeal to either group; the occasional buyer won't want to drop $25 for the "starter kit" with CD, and the addicts want their money right away, and won't buy it.