Turn Your FPS Skills Into Cash

Game|Life is posting about a new agreement between Valve and an outfit called Tournament.com that will allow for an official Counter-Strike/Half-Life 2 Multiplayer game competition service. It sounds a lot like online poker tournaments, where players ante into a pot and the winner walks away with the results. "Another option is a perpetual, ongoing game that players can drop into at any time. If you get killed, you lose $1. If you kill another player, you get $1. When your virtual 'wallet' is out of money, you're done playing. Until you add some more funds with a credit card or PayPal, that is. For now, Tournament.com is strictly small stakes. Entry fees for the example tournaments were $3.60 for each of six players, with an $18 pot split between first, second, and third place. Company representatives said they're considering high-roller tournaments, but want to make sure the service has been fully field-tested, and potential cheating methods blocked off, before big money starts getting thrown around." One of the findings of the SOE White Paper was that some people are perfectly happy making money off of their gaming hobby. How long before we see similar livelihoods via this service?

Comments

Great idea.

[Spazntwich]

Let's give people financial incentive to create bigger, better, and less detectable aimbots with the purpose of scamming people.

This has the very real potential to ruin public servers.

Re:Great idea.

[MeanMF]

Let's give people financial incentive to create bigger, better, and less detectable aimbots with the purpose of scamming people.

It doesn't seem like people need any incentive to do that now...Although yeah this will just make it 100x worse. This is a problem on the poker sites too - and only the really greedy and/or stupid ones get caught.

Lawmakers get their pens ready

[wiz31337]

I foresee this going in the same direction as online poker for US residents. It will soon be illegal for players to fun their multiplayer accounts with cash using a US bank account.

Stand by for an amendment to the current port security bill

Re:Lawmakers get their pens ready

[twistedsymphony]

yup, I used to work in an arcade. the "points" distributed by the redemption machines were worth approximately .5 cents (that's half a cent for those of you who work at Verizon). The machines were programmed to dispense an average of 2.5 cents for every quarter deposited and then the "prices" in the point currency were marked up 100% such that if you paid $10 (2000 points) the arcade was making another $5 on your "purchase".

This is why redemption machines are so prominent in what's left of the arcades. Some kid who can play Tekken for 5 hours on two quarters because he spends his off-time practicing at home doesn't make arcade operators much money. I suspect applying the redemption methodology to online gaming could be a big money winner for companies if they implement it right.

Bunch of FPS haters...

[FingerDemon]

Okay the three posts I see here so far are all negative. As a person who enjoys Half-Life FPS mods (particularly DOD, not so much CS) I love this idea. I don't see how it will ruin any public servers unless they are the servers that are running the contests. And even then, its not terribly expensive and could be fun. The sites that run servers where I play (when I have time) regularly have just for fun tournaments and they are pretty cool.

I'll admit I don't know what the guy is talking about with the port security post, so I can't comment there. But in general I see this as being pretty cool. Like a football pool only for gaming. Nothing to take too seriously.

Actually, this is not gambling

[Opportunist]

Gambling is defined as a game where chance and luck plays an important role. Now, find me one FPS enthusiast who will admit that his headshots are purely lucky.

Better idea:

[zyl0x]

Enter some paintball tourneys. You like playing an FPS? Paintball is the ultimate FPS thrill. They pay out lots of money and you can actually use it for REAL equipment that you keep from game to game. Not to mention actual, physical exercise. Good times. :)

Old concept

[Krommenaas]

This concept has been tried many times before by various companies, e.g. mplayer.com back in 2000, UltimateArena.com in 2003, PaycheckArena.com just last year. It never worked and it never will, for the simple reason that FPS games are highly skill-dependent - the random factor is very low and the better player wins 95% of the time. Some people try it, but the below average players soon realise they don't have any chance to win money and quit, thus raising the average difficulty until noone is left. This as opposed to poker, where the outcome of any single tournament is highly random and anyone with half a clue can win sometimes, leaving everyone convinced that they too have a chance of winning.

Re:Old concept

[MMaestro]

1. A ranked system is pointless. Sooner or later, all the "skilled" players will form their own groups (read: clans) and move onto bigger leagues with better prizes. The non-skilled players will eventually go back to public servers when they realize they're barely/if at all breaking even. Griefers (or people who join lower ranked games for fun) will quit as well. You can do the same thing on public servers right now.

2. Players who are on a streak are often times dependent on whos on the server and how the teams are setup. I've played on servers where a single player could get 4~7 kills per round only to drop down to 2~3 when auto-balance kicked in. And don't forget about snipers/campers, who can sometimes have up to 10+ kills streaks simply because they hide behind their team.

3. Little to no profit, and even less fun. Pros will go to private/clan/pro servers or move on to bigger leagues with better prizes and amateurs will go to public/commercial/newbie servers and play for free.

The only way you can create a ranking system in video games is if the game is arcadish like Halo 2. In Halo 2 a good player can dominate a match, but even the best player can't fend off sword or rocket launcher campers, certain weapons are flat-out worthless against vehicles and a lucky (plasma) grenade can mean certain death. Ranks are slow to obtain and unless you REALLY spend some time deranking yourself, you'll eventually be pushed out of newbie matches.

Great idea actually

[roskakori]

Let's give people financial incentive to create bigger, better, and less detectable aimbots with the purpose of scamming people.

This has the very real potential to ruin public servers.

On the contrary. All cheaters will go to money servers, ruining their day competing with other cheaters while us honest gamers can hang out on now cheater free public servers. We won't get rich, but we'll have a good time. Hooah!

Peer review stops cheating. But it's not perfect.

[The Living Fractal]

Ask anybody. If you're playing a game like CS the best way to tell if someone is cheating is to get in their head. That means getting into a first person camera view of what they're doing -- how they move, their aim, their reaction times, etc.

99% of the time you'll be able to tell if someone is a cheater. Usually that's because they have a tell-tale sign. Maybe they seemed to just know someone was coming around a blind spot every time. Maybe you aren't totally sure they're cheating but then you see that they have a reaction time that seems instant. No human has an instant reaction time. In fact, it's usually measured in hundreds of milliseconds, and certainly not tens.

Often you can tell because the person has absolutely amazing aim and yet their normal mouse movements when there's nobody or nothing to aim at are erratic and disorganized. And on top of that these people usually have trouble navigating the tougher terrain and jumps in an FPS... which is weird because they have incredible hand-eye for aim but not so for jumps. This is almost NEVER the case for a truly skilled player. Their jumps and other forms of acrobatics are usually spot on.

The thing is, it's usually not just one sign. It's a bunch of them together that tell you to watch somebody with a lot more scrutiny. Often you'll reach a consensus amongst the other players and then the suspected cheater will be booted or banned.

And of course on the other side of this coin is the fact that most players can recognize real skill.

Does this stop 100% of cheaters? No... but it really does stop the majority. Sometimes it hurts non-cheaters who are really just very skilled. I'm not bragging, but I've been booted for cheating several times when I wasn't cheating. But that's usually when I go to a new server and nobody knows who I am. Which is where reputation comes into play. Once a server community gets to know you they remember you and know you're skilled. Of course, even then sometimes they boot you. But then we're not talking about cheating anymore, we're talking about jealousy and envy, and that's a different thing entirely.

TLF