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.
I always thought this should exist for philanthropy. If you get a critical mass, it becomes self perpetuating. I am not sure the value of doing it just because, but taking a standard percentage of funds raised and passing the rest through to charities would probably really get people spending.
>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.
I think it's a bold, fun idea, with good aesthetics. Now, I'm not going to pay anything, but maybe someone will?
After all, this is mostly advertisement space. Humble Bundle leaderboards have served as de-facto advertisement space for some time. And if we go a lot back, The Million Dollar Homepage is still up, isn't it?
Yep, exactly. I've seen similar concepts be successful in the past. Of course we only get to see the successful ones (survivorship bias) and for every successful 'experiment' there are a 1,000 failed ones, but I figured why not give it a try.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 :)
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.