Paid Killer Generation in Online Community
22nd November, 2007
In the last year there has been a significant growth of over 18s servers, which pay players per every kill they make. It works on a basis of the interactive video game, but with the cash issue involved.
Will this new concept convert online gamblers to become paid videogamers? This new way of attracting people to play for cash seems more exciting for the user and more importantly for the operator, as it avoids all the gambling laws and restrictions, being categorised as a skill-based game, rather than a chance game. So while online gambling operators are struggling with the decreasing revenues, because of the 2005 Gambling Act, videogaming operators, it seems are finding new ways of offering gambling through “skilled” gaming activity.
Nevertheless, this has raised suspicion between the PC gamers, as they start believing that their opponents are using third party programs. Now, those who become very skilled and good at playing the game are instantly accused of hacking, rather than admired on their abilities.
One of the players on tournament.com stopped using the operator because he believed his opponents were not playing fairly.
"It would take more than a month before they actually caught a cheater who ended up raking thousands of dollars from other gamblers," he explained.
After the claims employees of tournament.com were all made redundant.
Kwari.com decided to avoid similar issues by developing their own first person shooter, as being the original creator of the game makes the possibility of the game being hacked significantly smaller. The company stated that they do not want to attract extreme professionals, as the concept of such games is fairly young and most people have not got a skill and experience to compete against pros. This would help screen out the pros and therefore eliminate the possibility of cheating.
The site is trying to target the typical online poker playersinstead of videogaming pros. The site is also planning on setting up a time restriction for playing the game, as the company’s management said they don’t want users to spend more than an hour twice a week. They will put a cup on how much time a user spends playing and unless the specific tournament has been in place which takes more time, their time will be restricted.
The games are designed so you don’t know who you are playing against and so that the elite teams don’t have an advantage, games are also randomly generated. This means that any player can win a hell of a lot of money without having much skill.
This is a second attempt in this field, so it is expected from the other companies to watch closely on the progress of kwari.com and see whether it will achieve the desired success or leave to the same place tournament.com deserted to. It is expected that if everything goes smoothly EA games and other big fish in the gaming aquarium will be quick to follow and develop the idea further. This is indeed a huge step that is more likely to cause transformation of online gaming industry forever.
