[Freeciv-Dev] Re: the scope of games

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> > Thus for example if ten players all
> > "put up" ten dollars as deposit to play a game, the resulting
> > one hundred
> > dollars of capital can very reasonably and reproducibly be
> > expected to be
> > able to grow by one dollar per day, resulting in and average of
> > approximately one dollar per day available for divvying up among the
> > players without reducing the capital thus allowing the
> > players to receive
> > their entire deposit back at the end of the game over and above any
> > earnings accrued by play.
> 
> Interesting concept.  But is it enough money compared to people's time?

No, but before asking people to "put up" hundreds of dollars I suspect it 
is necessary to establish a track-record of actually making the payouts 
actually not running off with everyone's money and stuff like that. If you 
add in lawyers and banks and insurance companies and registered securities 
and registered security traders the percentages of earnings seem likely to 
devolve to the kinds of levels you get with mainstream mutual funds, and 
even with them recent news indicates that they might not really be much 
safer than just taking a chance on someone you met on the net.

So far at least a year of credibility has been built among various "High 
Yield Investment Programme" crowds, but unfortunately they do not seem 
interested in gaming, while meanwhile I haven't come across any crowds of 
gamers who are interested in HYIPs. Maybe I do need to check out those MUD 
folk though eh?

Of course a problem with too close a conjunction between the crowds is if 
the gamers knew directly of the HYIPs they might say hey why bother to 
play a game to get my percentages when I can just directly invest instead. 
Things such as the sale of advertising and the sale of in-game resources 
could help overcome that once a given game-setup gets a large enough 
customer-base, but initially it might be best to have the HYIPers and the 
gamers separate. But then the problem of how to convince the gamers that 
it is OK to put up a lot of money to play a game arises. I figured maybe 
start small, plus also meanwhile be building a fund independently out of 
"free money" that keeps coming my way via my existing HYIP activities. It 
could be just a matter of time - albeit maybe several years - before a 
large enough amount of capital is available to be able to make a game 
interesting even without requiring the players to put up any money of 
their own.

Right now I do know people who put up thousands for HYIPs - one chap used 
a credit card to buy a big enough position in a 1.43%/day HYIP as to be 
making $250/day from its daily payouts. But to such people the game idea 
is not of interest. To me, the whole HYIP arena is extremely similar in 
actual play to Civ games. Instead of building cities and marketplaces and 
such that I might happen to lose due to "enemy action" I buy units in 
various HYIPs that might happen to fly by night due to "being a Ponzi" or 
"being a scam" or "failing to do good trades in the Forex market" or 
"being shut down by the SEC". It is very much the same "excitement" or 
"experience", similar kinds of decision-making, the main bigger thrill is 
its real money coming in whereas at present playing Civ games doesn't 
bring in any money it just helps me to kill time while waiting for 
GMT-Midnite to hit so that next day's daily payouts are in my accounts...

-MarkM-

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