

A Mildly Satanic New Video Game That You Can Only Play Online with Money - jal278
http://kotaku.com/a-mildly-satanic-new-video-game-that-you-must-play-onli-1638083439/

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sytelus
This is a new trend starting in gaming industry. Apple has now started
approving skill-based "gambling" games. One such example is Dollar Candy
created by Ian Ippolito (who also created PlanetSourceCode.com and
rentacoder.com). These games are addictive, you play against real human and
there is money on the line in each game.

Gambling had been banned for a reason for long time in many cultures - it's
all too common for poorest people to blow up their earnings in the hope of a
jackpot. They do so not because they are less smart but because they are too
desperate and don't have any other opportunity to making it through. Now game
creators have found a loop hole in the law aka "skill-based" games. I can see
lot of people barely making ends burning their kids school money in these
stuff while standing in grocery lines.

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jal278
What I thought was compelling is that a well-known indie game developer had
the really smart idea to target the online-poker skilled-game competition
niche that's opened by short-sighted US laws

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rspeer
I set my expectations low when I saw the empty hype the beginning of the
article was building up, but this game actually sounds quite strategically
interesting.

I definitely see why this is the kind of game that isn't the same without
money, much like poker and backgammon. I hope there's some kind of
micropayment platform that it could eventually support to avoid the credit-
card fees and the check-mailing fees.

(No, not bitcoin. Most people can't use bitcoin.)

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flashman
The success of this game is partly predicated on player trust, i.e. how do I
know that it's not being rigged against me by the operator? It is a game of
skill, but gives the player imperfect information (unlike chess), leaving the
possibility of various forms of cheating and fraud.

I am interested to see how this could be addressed.

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jmcgough
Jason Rohrer's games are fantastic - I'd recommend his game Passage, which
only lasts for five minutes.

[http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/)

