Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games Entertainment

Playing an FPS for Money? 162

Posted by CmdrTaco from the encouraging-some-sniping dept.
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!
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Playing an FPS for Money? More

Playing an FPS for Money?

Comments Filter:
  • 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...
  • Regarding gambling laws: I play poker online at Paradise Pooker [paradisepoker.com]. So do a lot of other people I know. It's a virtual cardroom, like the kind you would find in a casino and play is for real money (you can play for play money too if you prefer). I know someone who has made $8000 over the last weeks playing $20/$40 hold 'em there. Anyway, there is a lot of discussion within the poker community about the legality of this. I mention this, because it's status should be the same as that of urbanmercentary.

    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?

  • 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

  • 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.
  • 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?
  • 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. :)
    ---
  • Websters: The act of "blessing" a dead person, often a step towards canonization (making them a saint).
  • first step toward making that thing a saint, of course.

  • 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<--

  • Some safeguards... (Score:3)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum@ g m a i l . c om> on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:00PM (#506051) Homepage Journal
    GlobalRankings has a good safeguard mechanism in place to avoid cheating of stats-dependent games:

    http://www.globalrankings.com

  • 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...
  • I see a problem here...

    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?

  • The trick is whether or not they allow anonymous people those $10. (Then they'll be bankrupt with everyone wanting to play for free.)

    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.

  • Re:Gambling laws? (Score:3)

    by Tower ( 37395 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:01PM (#506055)
    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...
    --
  • Unwittingly scammed adults playing death match, not realising that out of the 12 playing 3 are 8 year old computer monkeys who have been holding back on the skill for the last few (low stake) rounds. Now they band together, tie down some key places on the map and wipe out all other life, no sooner has the last victums digital body hit the floor do the 8 year old computer monkeys execute each other leaving only one winner and nobody the wiser.

    Good luck, if you feel you need to gamble. ;-)

  • 1. It's times like these that I wish I was still a gamer. I used to kickass at Tribes, and I'm sure that if I had continued with any of a number of current games, I could have developed my skills well enough to ... make some cash ... once in a while ... maybe.

    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 :-)
  • hey, i swear the first response wasn't there when I submitted. must have beat me by seconds.
  • 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.
  • If anyone mods that up as anything other than funny I will scream.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • 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...
  • 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.
  • And you though you swear when you lag now..

    No.... I die.

  • I imagine they could press charges against cheaters. It could be considered theft. Cheaters playing outside the US might complicate things though.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • I can see it now... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Fucking Hell, if you had a nickel for every time you lag-killed me ... oh, nevermind, you DO."
    ;)

    --The Kid
    The Citadel [thecitadel.net]
  • 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).
    --
  • Assuming that you can ID a person fairly well, time delay the payouts, and put in a banning method, and it'll work fairly well. Of course, the cost is anonymity, but cheating probably greatly decreases as soon as anonymity is introduced.

    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.

  • ummm (Score:1)

    by joe52 ( 74496 )
    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...
    --
  • I beg to differ. 6 years ago, I was living and working in the Redmond, WA at a rather large software company that shall remain unnamed. You would not believe how much people were investing in this game. Friends and co-workers were dropping hundreds of dollars on card sets and boosters.

    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.

  • Say it with me people:
    "diable armeggadon"

    Times 10.

    It's waiting to happen when you mix cash and games.

  • 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 [jmpc.com]. (And here's me on the show [jmpc.com].)

    Scary, ain't it? :-)

    Schwab


  • People like to see the best play. Its as simple as that.

    See, the problem is, *watching* people play video games is mind numbingly boring. Either you're watching a demo/movie of the game itself, or you're watching a room with a pasty geek sitting, twitching infront of a console.

    Niether of those is entertaining. Football, basketball, hockey, etc. are entertaining becasue you actually get to see real people do really exciting things like ram into each other on ice at 70mph, and viceral, exciting acts like that.

    After 5 minutes of watching a quake demo, I'd rather go play quake myself. Try it and see.

    The only people who are generally interested in watching demos and analysis of video games are those who play seriously themselves, and want to improve thier game.

    Check out http://www.shoryuken.com/ [shoryuken.com] - it's a Street Fighter tournament site (I'd give a better link, but it looks down right now). There are tournament videos, and analysis of videos there. Would you really pay to see shit like that?


    --
  • ...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

  • I remember something akin to that actually happening with Age of Empires. If I recall correctly, it was a scripting contest of sorts. The scripter with the top AI being the winner, of course. A neat idea, really.

    -t0rren

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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

  • Texture based ads... (Score:5)

    by jasno ( 124830 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:14PM (#506091) Journal
    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.
  • This isn't really gambling in the traditional sense, where people bet on events they have no control over. This is like a game of golf where whomever loses buys the drinks at the end. I'd still like to see limits on the maximum stake (maybe $5 per player and $50 per week) to avoid people losing their non-virtual houses.

    There are several things that could be done to prevent cheaters prospering, such as human "umpires", reputation measures, statistical analysis, and the like.

  • 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!

  • what about honesty of the COMPANY? (Score:3)

    by OmegaDan ( 101255 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:21PM (#506094) Homepage
    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 ?

  • Obvious and Profitable (eventually) (Score:4)

    by thex23 ( 206256 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:23PM (#506095) Homepage
    I've been waiting for this for a while now (since 97). It seems the obvious next step, since most games these days are already community-oriented (ie: tribes, everquest, even the battle sims) and people are going to WANT to increase the level of risk.

    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

  • It's OK (Score:1)

    by qqaz ( 33114 )
    It appears that they have their own game, and therfore their own EULA.
  • Well, their web site is not navigable with Linux Netscape. One of the worst I've seen -- invisible links, no navigation links, fixed-size windows (well, Netscape deals with that OK, but it's not good design and things get chopped off). Wherever you got that Linux quote I can't reach.

    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.)

  • done that with Q3 already, funny to tweak bots
    to run around and kill one another, you learn
    what works and what doesn't, but seriously,
    anything goes.
  • There was a soft drink ad in Carmageddon 2 titled "URINE", and a "Golden Shower" slot machine in the vegas map in CounterStrike.
  • Sort of makes you wonder about the free market.
  • 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

  • A radio station here in LA - KROQ [kroq.com] did this for a while, they ran a Quake2 server, with custom levels based on their "studios". KROQ banners, sound effects, and ads abounded, but it was never intrusive anough to be annoying. I've always wondered why this never took off...
  • 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.
  • Hell it's been done for a long time. Check out some old car racing games for the Apple II where you'd drive by billboards for coke and stuff. I'm talking mid-80s.

    W
    -------------------
  • ok, I thought that looked familiar... It looks to me like they want to develop a whole "universe" of these sites with different games, etc. I imagine licensing issues would keep them chained to some open gaming engine though (might be a good thing for non-MS gaming if they get really popular!). Course they seem to just have the Windows client available---not that I think this is a bad thing... they are obviously in business to make money. But seeing as how they are not charging for the games clients I hope a Linux version (or whatever the reader is running!) pops up soon.

    --8<--
  • From the FAQ [bloodmoney.org]:

    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 [urbanmercenary.com], everything is secured with a "proprietary security system". What the heck does that mean?

  • 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.

  • Go for the triple-whammy! (Score:3)

    by dstone ( 191334 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @06:06PM (#506133) Homepage
    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 [dictionary.com] of my dangerous habits into one. Man, what a time-saver this will be!

    Sign me up!
  • Check out their membership page [bloodmoney.org]. Not only do they charge a membership fee for certain membership levels (Bronze, Silver are free; Gold, Platinum have a monthly fee), but they also charge a transaction fee per account transfer (5-10% per transaction).

    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.

  • I've never played any of these online games, but my roommate was showing me listings of these characters on ebay, and I just couldn't believe it.

    Check out this following illegal link to ebay [ebay.com], 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?

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Gambling laws? (Score:3)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum@ g m a i l . c om> on Monday January 15, 2001 @01:49PM (#506150) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • Where's the business model? (Score:3)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @01:49PM (#506151)
    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 [fuckedcompany.com] waiting to happen.
  • 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.

  • What about gang-style play? (Score:5)

    by Magus311X ( 5823 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @06:52PM (#506157)
    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.
    -----

  • Re:Texture based ads... (Score:4)

    by RobertFisher ( 21116 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @02:57PM (#506158) Journal
    Yeah, I can maybe see one small reason why this wouldn't work...

    Cut to Quake player 1, completely out of ammo, hawling ass around a tight corner, emerging into a chamber, when he turns to face the wall, looking up to see an ENORMOUS billboard of a bikini-clad woman advertising a radio station...

    [Quake Player 1] Whoaah... Dude!

    Cut to an over-the-shoulder shot of a manacing player, carrying a fully-loaded rocket launcher, slowly walking up behind Player 1...

    [Quake Player 2] Foolish hormone-laden homo sapiens adolescent...

    Quake Player 1 turns around, face an image of sheer terror...

    [Quake Player 1] Nooooo!

    BLAM! Gibblets are scattered throughout a hundred meter radius...

  • Just deal with cheaters like they did in the old West, shoot them under the table.

    Oh wait, that won't work...
  • Well, that's exactly how the situation is on Half-Life servers right now, so why bother :)

    --------------------------------------
  • Adding hi-res color logos to Half-Life was the funniest thing that ever happened to an FPS.

  • proprietary security system means... (Score:4)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @03:50PM (#506171) Homepage
    ...that it isn't secure. This is a running theme on comp.risks [ncl.ac.uk]
  • Same deal with the places in Vegas, no? The company doesn't want to get a reputation of screwing people over, so they don't set the odds too low, or the customers go to the casino across the street?
    --

  • Cheating (Score:5)

    by SeanCier ( 12804 ) <scier@PostHorizon.com> on Monday January 15, 2001 @01:50PM (#506175) Homepage

    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?

    -spc
  • I 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...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Cheaters playing outside the US might complicate things though.

    Is there anyplace outside the U.S. with small enough 'lag' to rally compete?

    P.S., Canada doesn't count until the have FPS-Hockey :)

  • 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?"

  • Re:Texture based ads... (Score:4)

    by Sludge ( 1234 ) <slashdot&tossed,org> on Monday January 15, 2001 @04:02PM (#506193) Homepage

    Id software's license agreement for the q3 sdk code including Radiant, the BSP/PVS generator and the light cooking tools do not allow you to commercially exploit the game in any way shape or form.

    There's also the marketers of big companies who are savvy to the media hype around video games being 'murder simulators'. Would you want your soft drink logo to get blood splattered on it, or a corpse lying next to it?

  • 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 :)

  • Bad idea... (Score:3)

    by Azza ( 35304 ) on Monday January 15, 2001 @01:54PM (#506198)
    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.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry" - An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11

Close