
Show HN: Highscore.money – Pay your way into the highscore - keesj
https://highscore.money
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keesj
A while ago I was thinking about how people spend a lot of their money on
impressing others. Fancy clothes and jewellery, the red sports car, etc.
Really all it is, is showing off how much money you've got to waste.

I like to make things more efficient, so I came up HIGHSCORE.MONEY – A public
scoreboard you can participate in by simply paying. The more you pay, the
higher you're place in the scoreboard.

Of course, it's a bit silly, but people can be silly at times so I figured I'd
give it a shot and see what happens.

Curious to hear what the HN community thinks.

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ryanlol
>A while ago I was thinking about how people spend a lot of their money on
impressing others. Fancy clothes and jewellery, the red sports car, etc.
Really all it is, is showing off how much money you've got to waste.

Except often "fancy" clothes simply fit better, are better made. Sports cars
can be fun to drive. Those are certainly not a "waste" of money, assuming you
have the money to spend, of course.

It's really not all that black and white.

I love the site though, clever.

~~~
keesj
Valid points for sure. I should have worded it less strongly.

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laurencei
Good work on setting this up.

I think I've heard of a similar concept before, but using t-shirts. Setup an
"exclusive" t-shirt range, of nice cotton white t-shirts.

The t-shirt would include a picture/logo/design, which was $X - where $X was
whatever amount you wanted to pay for the t-shirt.

So you could walk around with a t-shirt that said $100 - or you could walk
around with a t-shirt that said $1,000,000 - and people would you know you
spent $1m on that t-shirt...

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keesj
Haha yes I've had similar ideas before. The problem with that though is that
they can be easily faked (e.g. anyone could design/print a $1,000 t-shirt). –
It's also less like to go viral than something online. That said, I like how
it brings the idea to the physical world.

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laurencei
Yeah - that's what I thought when I heard the idea as well - someone just
prints the same t-shirt with $1b - and the concept it gone.

But your idea keeps it exclusive...

Good luck! :)

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colinbartlett
Reminds me a bit of the old Million Dollar Homepage:
[http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)

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keesj
Yep. That was a great concept and one I wish I thought of myself. I've seen
many copies, but they never take off because it's not original anymore and
it's hard to get press coverage.

I hope HIGHSCORE.MONEY is different enough. We'll find out in the next 24
hours I guess.

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logicallee
The problem with this as gamification is that there is zero ability to play
for less than the current high-score. That is a real problem: suppose 500
people were wiling to pay close to, but not over, $10, but hardly anyone was
willing to pay over $10. If 15 people have paid $10 it now prices anyone
wanting to pay up to $10 completely out of visibility. Since we said there
were 500 such people, you lose $5,000 while making 15 * 10 = $150. That's a
real design problem. Pay-to-play should give everyone something.

~~~
keesj
Interesting perspective. Right now you can still get 'value' out of it by
paying less than the #1 spot, since the first few spots are still highly
visible too. That said, your logical reasoning still applies. I'm not sure
what a better solution would be though. A leaderboard works because it's
exclusive.

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phoobot
You could lower the current score by one cent every x seconds

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sharemywin
that's a really cool idea.

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aparadja
The idea of a permanent score is what inspired me to pay, though. A steadily
declining score doomed to fail wouldn't have felt nearly as cool.

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Artoemius
This is basically a pay-to-win game simplified down to the leaderboard.

I hate pay-to-win games. They do have an uncomfortable similarity to the real
life though.

~~~
keesj
Exactly. Thanks for putting it this way. I couldn't find the right words, but
it's indeed the most stripped down version of pay-to-win.

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_Marak_
I kind of hate this, but I still paid you $22 because it's actually awesome.

Nice one! Maybe donate the funds to charity?

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keesj
Haha thanks :)

I specifically chose not to donate the funds to charity, since I don't want to
provide any value in addition to be being featured in the highscore list.
Otherwise it would become about who's most charitable. An interesting too, but
a different concept altogether and I'm not sure it's one that would work.
(it's not ridiculous enough)

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_Marak_
Seems like scores are not cumulative based on email.

:-(

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keesj
That's true. Is there anything on the site that indicates this? If it's
unclear I want to make sure to clarify that.

The reason it's not cumulative, is 1) to keep things simple, and 2) I feel
it's morally objectionable to add such a strong game mechanic as I imagine
people would keep 'upping' their score in order not to lose their spot.

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aparadja
Just paid $30 to get Radio Silence to the top, out of pure interest in how
much traffic that'd bring. Well played!

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aparadja
Aww, the link automatically points to the http version instead of https. No
referral data in analytics.

Can we get a <meta name="referrer" content="always"> or maybe a way to edit
the link?

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keesj
Thanks for the suggestion!

I added the meta tag and updated your link to HTTPS.

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aparadja
Thanks!

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rvschuilenburg
Reminds me of the $500,- BlackBerry clock app:
[http://crackberry.com/500-desktop-clock-app-blackberry-i-
was...](http://crackberry.com/500-desktop-clock-app-blackberry-i-was-dumb-
enough-buy)

~~~
dagw
Anybody else remember the I Am Rich app for the iPhone?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich)

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gourou
I love this idea, it would probably look better if it was for charity though.

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oskarth
This could be the new
[http://milliondollarhomepage.com](http://milliondollarhomepage.com) of this
decade.

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vinchuco
Or social network for hi net worth individuals

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klaustopher
I wanted to pay $0.01 to stay at the bottom of the list, but the minimum is $1
... Sad :(

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keesj
Actually the minimum is $5. Because of the credit card fees and associated
accounting work anything lower than that doesn't make much sense.

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klaustopher
Got that ;) Was just looking for ways to "trick the system"™

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keesj
Haha love the creativity

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mnx
I've paid a cent, and it threw an error in my face, and didn't show up :(

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keesj
When you enter an amount below $5 you'll get an error message telling you the
amount is too low. You won't be able to enter your credit card details and
thus won't be charged.

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mnx
Unless, as I did, you mess with the JS a bit. I don't know if stripe allows
you to set a minimum on their side, so perhaps there isn't anything you can do
to prevent that. Anyway, enjoy my 1 cent :)

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603
I hope that the internet will meltdown once enough has been collected

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trahn
have you thought about adding a visits count? would give an indication of what
you are buying...

