Tournaments & Contests & Promotions

Gambling is Easy, Skill is Hard. Proving that a game is a gambling game is pretty straightforward, but how do you prove that a game is NOT a gambling game, that it is a game of skill? This is an increasingly important question as traditional computer game companies, such as Virgin Gaming, try to take familiar computer games into the play for cash and prizes world and slot machine manufacturers look to skill games as a way to reach new audiences.

Such is the case with Pace-O-Matic's "Moxie Mania Empire Edition" game licensed by Moxie Metro in New York. The basic game is (perhaps) a skill game using a variant of Tic-Tac-Toe where a player finds the best cell to score of the 9 available. After a long and winding series of legal battles, the game was declared a gambling game because the court determined that the prize which could be won was determined by chance.

Thus, though the game would be considered to have a "positive expected value" for any skillful player, the prize amount was chance driven, thus the game was gambling.

To review, there are three elements to determine whether a game is a gambling game:

1. A payment or consideration to be able to play.
2. A prize or reward of actual value based on the game's outcome.
3. An element of chance in determining the game's outcome.

In this case, the chance solely drives the size of the prize, even with perfect play, thus, the game has an element of chance and is gambling.

It was an interesting move by Moxie Metro and Pace-O-Matic as perfect skill play will always have a positive outcome (so, no risk of losing funds), but the court ruled that this was not sufficient.

Solo skill games for money are, I think, at high legal risk for being determined a game of chance, or having no players, or losing money. In order to be popular, players need to think they can win (my "illusion of skill" argument), operators need to know that players aren't going to win (more than they spend), and all of this needs to be done with no element of chance to get into legal trouble.

VERY HARD, if not impossible from a game design perspective.

Conversely, I think the real potential is with multi-player games. Core mechanics such as Rock-Paper-Scissors, Battleship, checkers, etc. lend themselves to rapid play with no element of chance (RPS raises some problems for another day).

M. Webb (2010), "Court Ruling Says Moxie Mania Empire Edition Is Illegal", http://www.vendingtimes.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=EB79A487112B48A296B38C81345C8C7F&nm=Vending+Features&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=90CB95AF28D8497A8B64067285D7171D

Moxie Metro web site, http://moxiemetro.com/index.php

Pace-O-Matic web site, http://www.paceomatic.com/index.html

Richard Branson has re-entered the game industry with a tournament game site, Virgin Gaming. The site is supposed to award $1 Million in prizes over the next 12 months and will use existing console games.

(If you've been to PlayNoEvil before, you'll know what's coming next)

First of all, I am a huge fan and fascinated by the potential of skill games as an online business. I think skill games and more advanced gambling games could be the drivers of a new industry.

However, you've got to design for the medium.

Without basic changes, I suspect Virgin Gaming will rapidly join the ranks of failed tournament services.

Pool of Players

Customers are key to a business and a tournament service relies on having many, many players so that the entry fees far outweigh the cost to operate and the prize pool. Most console games are HEAVILY SKILL driven. There are great players and then there are the rest of us. They know it. We know it. In pretty much any sports or FPS or other twitchy game, I know I've lost in the first couple of minutes. Ranking systems somewhat compensate for this, but as seen with Team Fortress 2 and most other online shooters, the best players dominate the game and everyone else quits.

The Illusion of Skill

A 'great' skill game is one where everyone thinks that they are above average. Poker has achieved this. The game is designed so that for virtually every hand there is a way to see to have won when you've lost. Poker is a study in brilliant player choice and information disclosure. The game is strategic, but simple and, because of chance,a player is likely to not go too long without a victory.

Game Duration / Game Sessions

A good tournament service needs to have lots of short game sessions so that players who've lost have a chance to re-enter the tournament or enter another event. If a game takes a long time to lose, players will abandon it rather than try again. Learning opportunities and feedback needs to be fast.

The Dark Side

While Virgin Gaming is using the Xbox Live and Playstation service, there is no strong identity in the system (both services now support pre-paid debit card players), so there is only a weak linkage between an account number and a person. Once a game is played for money, even if there was strong "account identity", there is very weak "player identity" - after all, I could bring in my "ringer" buddy to play on my behalf when real money is on the line.

... and then there is cheating (a problem even on console games).

... and then there is tournament abuse (manipulation of ranking and reputation systems).

... and, of course, the complicated legal issues for these games (skill games are not legal in all US states).

I discuss tournament and ranking abuse, cheating, and identity problems at some length in my book Protecting Games.



I'm looking forward to the day someone gets this right. It will be a true revolution in gaming.

"Virgin Gaming FairPlay Guarantee", http://virgingaming.com/fairplay.html?f=FTR_1F_001

O. Chiang (2010), "Richard Branson Launches Virgin Gaming, An Online Game Tournament Service", http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/06/15/richard-branson-launches-virgin-gaming-an-online-game-tournament-service/

There are substantial rumors that Virgin / Virgin Gaming is getting into the the skill / tournament games business for money & prizes.

If so, this will be the most serious move by a larger company into the skill games business.

It looks like the early games being considered are conventional console games. While this may be good for yielding a larger number of games, these games were not designed for this environment. Cheating is a much bigger issue, of course, and the bigger the prizes and cash, the larger the incentives for abuse... and the very fact that the games are being played over a network also increases the risks.

J. Fletcher (2010), "Virgin Gaming to offer online game tournaments", http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/01/virgin-gaming-to-offer-online-game-tournaments/

"Virgin Gaming - ModNation Racers - Tournament Details", http://virgingaming.com/modnation/details

Take Two's MLB 2K10 console baseball simulation launched this year with a bit of an unusual promotion: The first player to pitch a perfect game (and record it), would win $1 Million.

The game launched on 2 March 2010 and a 23-year old, Wade McGilberry of Alabama, won the day the game launched.

He did it the 5th or 6th game that he played, in just an hour and a half.

Not surprising.

Historically, there has been 1 perfect game per decade - about 1 per 25,000 games.

Unless the product was going to totally bomb, there was no way it wasn't going to sell 25,000 copies pretty fast and those folks were probably going to play at least one game each.

There have been a number of subsequent perfect games.

I hope Take Two wasn't surprised.

It sure was a good promotion... according to Wade McGilberry:

"I think it's really good publicity," he said. "I wouldn't have bought the game if not for that."

B. Ortutay (2010), "23-year-old wins $1M playing baseball video game", http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100505/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_video_game_baseball_perfection

"ONE MILLION DOLLARS - MLB 2K10's Perfect? Game Promotion", http://playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/2833-ONE-MILLION-DOLLARS-MLB-2K10s-Perfect-Game-Promotion.html

A Perfect Game.. its a rare thing in professional baseball. Its been done 18 times since 1880... in the pros.

2K Sports has decided to turn a Perfect Game into a big promotion for its professional baseball game, MLB 2K10.

Get the first perfect game, win $1,000,000.

An exciting promotion - $1 Million is sure to sell some boxes, but it leads to some interesting questions:

1. As Bill Harris of Dubious Quality notes, there are around 2500 games a year, 25,000 games a decade... not too many games...and, to grossly simplify, in the last (2010 -1880 = 130 years) there has been at least 1 perfect game per decade amongst real professional baseball games. How long will it take to get 25,000 MLB 2K10 games played?

If the game is rigged, there is a problem with fraud, if not, 2K Games had better have that truck o'loot handy.

2. Is this a game of skill or illegal lottery? What about jurisdiction? Contests and promotions have widely varying laws between different states (It looks like the game is banned where skill games for money are totally banned).

3. Oh and then there's CHEATING. Not that anyone would consider CHEATING the game to win $1 Million. At least it is on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but there are some exploits that might be of interest on both platforms... especially combined with problems other games have had (see the recent stories about Modern Warfare 2, among others).

This should certainly sell some more games and give MLB 2K10 more visibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

It would seem to make more sense to have players enter a tournament (or achieve some milestone) to be entered into a tournament where a $1 Million prize can be won as there would be more extended publicity and interest (state by state contests, etc.).

(Thanks for the lead BD)

D. Terdiman (2010), "$1 million for first perfecto in MLB 2K10", http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10443496-52.html

B. Harris (2010), "Gaming Notes", http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2010/01/gaming-notes_28.html

"2K Sports to Award One Million Dollars to First Person to Throw a Perfect Game in Major League Baseball® 2K10", http://2ksports.com/news/mlb2k10/377

Valve's Team Fortress 2 First Person Shooter (FPS) has a persistent game element through, among other things, the random dropping of permanent items for player's inventories. Because some of these items are "dropped" quite rarely, as is also seen in many MMOs, players try to find ways to acquire the items. In Team Fortress 2, this is done via "idling" programs... third party applications that script basic game play repetitively until high value items are dropped.

Players have also set up servers to facilitate getting items, but the idling program has become very popular since it doesn't require the player to be online or even run the game application.



Valve has struck against these idle programs by removing the items that players have earned and will be removing all items from players who get caught in the future. In addition, the company is giving an "angle" hat items to players who've been playing but not using these programs.

Valve claims that the punishment affects only 4.5% of TF2 players, but there is some question as to whether this includes all people who've purchased the game or the active player base.

It is kind of interesting that a lot of game bans seem to hover around 5 % of the game population. It is probably the largest "safe" number that can be removed without causing real problems for the game as a service.

There is a very lively debate of this issue. Many players have resorted to idling since they have great difficulty getting the rare items that are associated with their preferred characters in the game... there are some real design questions about the whole random drop process in Team Fortress 2. It looks a lot like a mechanism that can be used fairly well in the richer environment of an MMO doesn't work so well in the stripped down environment of a game like TF2.

T. McDonald (2009), "Community Uproar Over TF2 Item Removal", http://www.incgamers.com/News/18390/community-uproar-over-tf2-item-removal

E. Johnson (2009), "Incoming! ", http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2787

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N. Breckon (2009), "Valve Punishes Team Fortress 2 Idlers, Rewards Legit Players with Free Hat", http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60303

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B. Nicholson (2009), "Valve plans to punish Team Fortress 2 cheaters ", http://www.destructoid.com/valve-plans-to-punish-team-fortress-2-cheaters-147357.phtml

Square Enix's MMO Final Fantasy XI just announced the results of its in-game lottery, Mog Bonanza. I was first going to write about the lottery as a money sink in the game as a good way to fight the problem of MUDflation (the growing accumulation of virtual currency in games which have an "amusement park" style economy).

But the game pays out all of the currency purchased.

AND pays out prizes.

Which seemed odd.

However, the lottery radically redistributed currency for most players putting a huge amount of currency into a relatively small number of players' hands. So, it may have the effect of reducing overall currency levels as these players have little reason to do anything with their currency but buy very high value items from the game itself.

However, from taking a quick look at prices for FFXI's Gil currency over at MMObux, it looks like prices have been steadily falling this month (around 20% in the past 6 weeks with the decline starting in earnest around the time that the lottery started).

Interesting... can in-game lotteries reduce gold farming?

The lottery might drive down demand as players do not want to risk banning or other penalties with the carrot of a big prize available.

By the way, the top winners look like they received the equivalent of around $780 in Gil (85,738,149 Gil for each of the 74 top winners).

Also, the way the lottery was constructed is a bit odd with separate drawings for each prize level.

Square Enix (2009), "Mog Bonanza", http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/guide/mogbon/index.html

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C. Brennan (2009), "Mog Bonanza numbers revealed, grand prize totals over 85 million gil", http://www.massively.com/2009/06/17/mog-bonanza-numbers-revealed-grand-prize-totals-over-85-million/#continued

Valve Software's multi-player shooter game, Team Fortress 2, has been a huge success. Valve has maintained interest in the game by continuing to release new items and abilities for the game's various character types, usually unlocked by earning various in-game achievements.

Unfortunately, as noted previously, players have taken to achievement farming and other forms of abuse in order to unlock the achievements.

To battle these problems, Valve has instituted a new, randomized "drop" process for achievements. This technique, similar to the random loot drops in MMOs, has not been well received by the player community.

In order to reduce abuse and player dissatisfaction, one approach would be for players to "earn" TF2 coins (perhaps tied to each in-game character type) based on playing that character for at least one game a day or some minimum duration (the total coins earn-able each day would be limited)... something fairly close to the model used by CCP Games' Eve Online. This would reduce incentives to achievement farm, encourage players to play, and allow them to purchase the achievements they want in the order they want them.

Randomized loot drops are not really well liked even in MMOs. Achievements should be designed to reward players for doing things that help the game's community... and that are not themselves game-able.

X. de Matos (2009), "Valve updates Team Fortress 2 for fairness, community responds", http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/25/valve-updates-team-fortress-2-for-fairness-community-responds/#continued

Xbox Live is apparently launching a new program where players caught cheating at games will have their Gamercard public identity marked as a Cheater "The Scarlet C", I guess. Previously, Microsoft would reset players Gamerscore ranking to zero and remove any achievements.

Why?

The purpose of a game service is to keep customers engaged in your games, buying more products, etc.

Rankings mean little (especially aggregated, multi-game rankings), Achievements nothing at all except for tools to boost sales.

"It's been statistically shown that games that have achievements and implement them well sell better," states Stephen Toulouse, the head of Xbox LIVE policy at Microsoft's Live Services Group, when appearing on Major Nelson's podcast recently.

Backing up his claims is a study conducted in 2007 by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), which focuses on the Xbox 360 Achievement system and its impact on review scores, sales, and profitability. It states "the results showed a strong connection between a game title's diversity of accomplishment types with that game's profitability – pointing to the idea that the more diverse the accomplishments available to the user, the more enjoyable the game, higher review scores, more units sold."

In addition, EEDAR found that 50 percent more money was generated by titles which implement online elements into their Achievements, rather than those which do not.

Gamercards are an affinity marketing tool.

There is no reason to penalize paying customers in this manner.

If I am branded a cheater on Xbox Live, how many more games am I going to buy? How much am I going to use the service?

I would suspect that people who cheat to earn extra achievements and such are probably people who buy a heck of a lot of games.

(Question to Microsoft: What is the average "Attach Rate" for Achievement Cheaters?)

Punishment or Invisibility or Segregation?

Do I think that there should be no consequences for cheating? Well, Achievement cheating "cheapens" achievements for other players (kind of sort of), if you accept the argument. Yes, you could ban or punish such individuals or you could simply segregate them or make them invisible to non-cheating players. Hey, this is Web 2.0: A world of personalization. Ranking systems can show whatever I want them to. I can show one player different rankings than another. I can satisfy the cheater's ego at the same time as I hide him from legitimate players.

A bit more difficult is the case of "functional achievements". When players unlock additional abilities or items based on achievements, you have a different situation. In this case, I really think creating a "Cheater's Reservation" where cheaters can cheat together and not bother other players is more sensible.

Functional achievements actually INSPIRE CHEATING, so it is also a question as to whether they should really be included in any persistent, online game. (see previous article about Achievement Farming in Valve Software's Team Fortress 2).

"Decorative achievements" are much safer and can be handled via the "Invisibility" option.
decorative achievements vs. functional ones

How about just making the games more "cheat resistant"?

Of course the real question is - why don't you get rid of the cheats (not the cheaters)? If these features are so valuable and drive so many sales, clearly it is advantageous financially to build games that are not vulnerable to cheating but still include these features.

This is even more important when game developers move towards tournaments and competition.

At the end of the day, all of these online services that support ranking systems and achievements are business about growing sales and user base, not about competition... understanding this should make one reconsider the whole idea of banning or otherwise punishing paying customers.


A. Chalk (2009), "Microsoft Brings the Shame to Xbox Live Cheaters", http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91781-Microsoft-Brings-the-Shame-to-Xbox-Live-Cheaters

L. Guttridge (2009), "Xbox Live to brand cheaters", http://play.tm/news/24671/xbox-live-to-brand-cheaters/

T. Ivan (2009), "Achievements Driving Game Sales - Microsoft", http://www.edge-online.com/news/achievements-driving-game-sales-microsoft

Over the past several weeks, many gay and lesbian themed books disappeared from Amazon's sales ranking system... and this cost their authors and publishers (reverse that, publishers and authors ) a good number of sales and revenue.

The problem was apparently widespread:

Amazon said it was not just gay-themed books that were affected but "57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search," according to Smith's e-mail.

While Amazon has asserted that this was the result of a "ham-fisted cataloging error", it seems that a hacker used a cross-site scripting attack to flag the books as "inappropriate" and got them removed from both sales rankings AND general product searches:

Mark Probst, author of the gay-themed novel "Filly," said he received an e-mail from an Amazon member services employee, which he posted on his blog, that read: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."

Apparently, this was not difficult to do:

On Monday, just after outrage on the blogosphere reached a boil, a prominent hacker known as Weev claimed on his blog that he had harnessed the power of thousands of inadvertent computer users to flag books with gay descriptions as inappropriate, resulting in their sales rankings getting automatically removed.

On his blog, Weev wrote that by clicking the "report as inappropriate" button at the bottom of each page he was able to get rankings removed "with an insignificant number of votes."

First, he said he wrote a short code that would find books the site had tagged "gay" and "lesbian."

"From here, it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books," he blogged. Weev claimed he was helped by a friend at a high-traffic site who created an "invisible frame," which allowed users to inadvertently flag books when they were really visiting other unrelated sites. Weev said he "also hired third worlders [sic] to register accounts for me en masse" to target the site.

Lending credence to the claim, Amazon has removed the "Report as inappropriate" feature.

Anonymity is the enemy, here.

The now disabled "inappropriate" reputation system does not seem to require any identity information. One would think Amazon could have largely solved this problem by forcing a person to have a valid, secure session with Amazon to report a book as inappropriate (after all, Amazon has a rather large, rather credible pool of good user identities).

However, given the world we live in, a motivated individual or group could probably create a network of anti-gay / anti-lesbian folk to simply take this on as a bit of "direct social action".

Amazon could strengthen this further based upon an algorithm based on the number of purchases or total dollar value of purchases... an option that is not available for many online reputation services.

Reputation is only as good as the credibility of the identity of the "reputation scorers".

This is applicable to games. Reputation systems, ladders, ranking systems and tournaments can all be attacked via similar means.

Of course, I do discuss these issues in Chapter 20 - Competition, Tournaments, and Ranking Systems (and Their Abuse) in my book "Protecting Games".

R. Goldman (2009), "'Glitch' or Hacker? Gay Titles Deep-Sixed at Amazon", http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7327241&page=1