Using Money As Incentive For Competition On Consoles? 40
MTV's Multiplayer blog reports on a company about to start offering a service that will allow players to compete in matches and tournaments over their PS2, PS3, or Xbox 360 with real money as a prize. Doing so will, of course, require entry fees, but the contests are set up and opted into by the players themselves. Quoting:
"To prevent cheating, the company has access to the game data and promises a knowledgeable in-house customer support team. There's also a reputation and feedback system, which Levy compared to eBay, that will allow gamers to make informed decisions about who they're playing against. ... [Company co-founder Billy Levy] ultimately thinks World Gaming will open up the field for gamers who want to make money from games but can't make it to live competitions due to the expense or having to take time off from work or school.
What's going to kill this first? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's going to kill this idea first? Laws on gambling? Tax revenue at the state or federal level?
Not a good idea. Stick to prizes.
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but some Laws have shut down games is some areas (Score:2)
but some Laws have shut down games is some areas I have hear of places with stern pinball tops that got shut down by law and that is Local only.
This will go across state lines and maybe even us borders.
Will you have to use western union to fund this like you do with on line sports books / poker sites?
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It's not gambling - unless they try to add gambling on outcomes by non participants, which I think would be very unlikely, and the article gave no mention of this.
Tax revenue could possibly do it, but given the steady flow of money into the events through players, they should be able to keep local taxes paid if needed.
Federal Revenue, possibly but also unlikely, see above.
If you ask me, what's going to kill this is getting people to play for real money.
Thnk abou
I can't see them stopping cheating. (Score:4, Insightful)
People have been trying to stop cheats for years. It's damn annoying on a MP game when you keep getting headshot through a mountain, by a pistol every few minutes.
And those cheats aren't even inspired by money - just their own motivation to be assholes.
So put real money into it and watch what happens... The cheating will go hightech no matter what they do.
Think "Dogfight" in William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" Anthology.
Someone will always find a way to cheat, and who want to put up cash to let the h4x0r2 screw up your game and take it?
GrpA.
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Yep, and some kind of cheating rely on packet sniffing, so there is nothing that they could get from the "system ram" to show that the person is cheating.
Imagine a second computer with a radar screen in a FPS, etc.
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It's really a losing situation, since in some cases, the problems can't be fixed in code. Aimbots, hacking range of view, etc, often can't be fixed simply by removing bugs, as they are not bugs. Some programs have attempted to stop this, with kinds of spyware and modified DRM, but most of them fail, and end up again targeting innocent playe
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It's really a catch 22. All that can be done is to accept cheating and hacking are going to happen some extent, and there is nothing we can do about it.
No... it isn't. Any multiplayer game worthy of its popularity KNOWS that server side checking is a MUST. All multiplayer games that use client side checking (in this case, shooting through mountains), to combat such trivial things as latency issues, are doomed to failure.
They try to alleviate burdens of latency times by doing such stupid tricks as client side checking (I shot you on my screen, but you weren't moving cause I have 5 second ping, who do you think SHOULD get the kill?).
Latency should affect
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Although that was several years ago and the game and anti-cheat programs have been updated many many times, the majority of my old cheats will still work while some of them would need a simple adjustment of two lines of code to make them work again. That's because I didn't even bother b
This story makes no sense. (Score:2)
ultimately thinks World Gaming will open up the field for gamers who want to make money from games but can't make it to live competitions due to the expense or having to take time off from work or school.
Here's a metric: If you can't make enough money from gaming to take the occasional vacation from work or school, then you're not good enough, and should not get a handout.
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No one is handing anything out, it just seems like an online poker alternative, except you get to play an fps instead of using cards.
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Yah, because only professionals should get to compete for cash, etc. For that matter, lets do away with all just lower level competition altogether. First to go, the Olympics.
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How will they handle lag / disconnect protection? (Score:2)
How will they handle lag / disconnect protection? So people with a good ping can't get a leg up on people with higher pings?
Will they have disconnect / time out protection?
Game / system crash protection?
Will you need to pay for live + per game fee + World Gaming fee + more?
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Gambling is illegal (Score:2)
Chances are that a contest that you must pay to enter and that gives out money as a prize will be considered as gambling by most countries.
That's going to get them in a lot of trouble.
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I mean look at WoW, they had a tournament (a few people I know couldn't shut up about it...) awhile ago, and there was an entry fee. Since that was world wide as well, am guessing this will sneak through one of those loop holes or technicalities that we all so love.
Either way, if they can't control cheating, then it will die. If they can (and I mean
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Odd. There are all kinds of sporting and recreational tournaments that require an entry fee and have prizes consisting of, or at least including, cash. I've never seen my local chess club being accused of organising gambling even though they hold several such tournaments a year...
Three words: (Score:3, Informative)
Trusted client problem.
Imagine the creativity that will be applied to hacking consoles with actual money - any actual money whatsoever - as an incentive. You thought bot runners were bad on PC games? Look at online poker.
"Service"? "Incentive to Competition"? get real! (Score:2)
"Company offering a service" ... "incentive to competition"? Oh please, get real....
It's a commercial company that wants to make money and has come up with a business model to make lots out of daft gamers. Does this company have charitable organisation or non-profit cooperative status? I'd guess not. I don't see "service" or "public good" as part of their agenda.
It's just a straight-down the line business model. People pay to compete, the company pays out a percentage of the entrance fees and keeps the rest
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Umm... it's not a public service, and they didn't say it was... you seem to have taken that leap all on your own...
It's just like any other gambling organization... they pay out some fraction of what they take in, the remaining fraction is their income... as a player you hope you're one of the small minority of who walks out with more money then they walked in with, and the ones who walk out with much less will console themselves by saying how it was fun to play, and they enjoyed the free buffet.
Sounds like
You know it's going to happen. (Score:1)
they all laughed at me... (Score:2)
...when I started work on my Halo playing robot... well who's laughing now???
No cheating? HAH (Score:1)
With the stuff going on with the on-line poker cheating (UltimateBet), best to stay away from this too.
PC Version (Score:1)