Make $$$ playing Game

#1 Maybe it's considered gambling? I dunno.

#2 Interesting concept. It's essentially the same idea as a carnival game (from a legal standpoint). Many pay, one wins, which AFAIK is not gambling.

Personally I don't really see any legal issues other than having a business license & paying your taxes. That and you better actually pay people when they win. ;-)

Of course, I'm no lawyer. If you do actually go ahead with this, you'd better talk to one ASAP, but from what you're describing it's nothing illegal.

#3 Yeah, it probably would be. But i think legitimate gambling is also called "gaming"... which would be fitting :)

#4 There was a FPS based on this I tried a while ago. I wasnt a very good FPS, but the idea that you could win money by playing a game from home was very cool. I think it may have been called Arena or something similar. You might want to look into what happened to them.

Sounds cool, good luck with it.

#5 Josh, did you actually pay money to play a round? or... how did it work exactly?

#6 The laws for something like this would change from country to country and even from state to state. I would get a lawyer sooner than later to check on the viability of this idea.

Something like this would also require some incredible anti-cheat mechanisms.

#7 This thread title would make for perfect spam...lol I'd open it every time. D'oh!

J/k. I'm not sure how such a thing could be put out without getting in trouble. It really wouldn't be so different from buying bingo cards to play, or whatever.

#8 Lol, it does sound like a spam email subject line... I wasnt really serious about doing this, just wondering what u guys thought. :)

But really, I think it kinda makes sense to win something, just like in a big organised tournament where theres some big cheque for the winner. It would make it alot more fun to play and broaden your demographics to pretty much anyone (who's not interested in making money?)... You would have to have a very solid system to handle all the transactions and it would have to be secure and totally cheat-proof. The game itself would probably be a free download, you would only pay to enter into a match where there's money to be won.

#9 Hey you don't need all that... tell you what... I am thinking of a number between 1 and 10... if you guess it I will paypal you $50... if not, you paypal me $25... that's twice as much for you!!!!

Ok. Guess.

-Josh

#10 I would probably play something like that if it were say 50p but $5 dollars a game is pretty steep, technically you could just call it a tournament instead of gambling and the winner takes home the prize, maybe that might get you round some of the laws. Like Will said you would need a damn solid system to do it, if it did get popular it would be hacker heaven.

#11 Ok... i guess 7!!!

did i win? :p

#12 No, wait... it's 5!!!!

#13 There's actually a company which does this already. I had a look about a year or so ago and it seemed alive and well. I wouldn't feel safe though as I know first hand how infested with cheats FPS style games are.
www.ultimatearena.com/games/home.jsp

PS.
The number is 1.111111111223351253411
DS.

#14 In most of the western world the difference between gambling and competition is the degree of skill. If you can demonstrate the 'game' doesn't strongly hinge on luck you should be ok. This does vary a LOT between different countries, however due to the way the internet is 'policed' at the moment you just need to stick your servers in some 'interesting' locales and you're sorted.

It's how the vast majority of online casinos side step the legal minefield, and if they couldn't afford / be bothered with paying a lawyer i'd go with their idea ;)

#15 I was working for a company that was planning to give out cash prizes as part of a specific online game they were planning. You didn't have to wager anything, only pay the subscription fee. Still they spent a couple of months getting permission from the state attorney's office to do it. They had to demonstrate that the concept wasn't gambling, but instead skill based. In the end the game got canceled anyway.

#16 "If you can demonstrate the 'game' doesn't strongly hinge on luck you should be ok."

So guessing a number between 1 and 10 probably won't work then, huh? Shoot.

#17 $5 is way too much. At that rate, I could go through hundreds a day. $0.05 would be better. Also the game would have to be designed so that cheats werent really usefull. For example, in counter-strike, if you're clever, you can cheat and never be caught. All hitscan weapons make aimbots extremely effective and wall hacks can give you an huge advantage. But in a tribes spinfuser duel, both of those cheats are virtually useless.

On the gambling front, some states have ruled that poker is not gambling because it is not a game of chance. So there might be a chance it could work. If not, you can just base your company in another country. Thats what all the online casinos do. It doesnt even have to be a wierd country, my stepdad plays poker on a canadian based site.

#18 The problem is the same people will win every time. If you have a ranking system similar to warcraft 3 it might help, but those who are really good would just start new accounts to get low rankings... Plus you don't actually have a game idea here, and the money idea is not new.

#19 Well how about this? Hit them with a millon changing ingame ad's and make a tourney out of it? Prize to the best and only one tourney acct per computer?

#20 Eric: it doesnt have to be $5... but as I mentioned, "there would also be regular, non-paying matches where you just play for practice." So that means you're not paying *every* time you play -- only when you feel like playing for money. Plus, if you're good, you win your money back anyway... if you lose, well, keep practicing, and you'll win eventually. No one wants to spend hundreds of dollars a day just to play a game. Maybe pay once or twice a month, if you're a newb, and then more frequently as you get better. $5 is a completely arbitrary number, it could be $0.50, but then you would need alot more people to make the winnings worth playing for.

As far as cheating... is it possible to make a completely cheat-proof game?

Andrew: why not make it so you can only have one account? That way there is a permanent file on your stats.

btw, as Peter mentioned, this is already being done. So its not impossible.