Betting with Cryptocurrencies

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PizzaFromLastWeek
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Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Hey there,

just had an idea for Battle of Wesnoth which is also possible with League of Legends at the moment. (I don't think it's native built into LoL but somewhere on the net I've stumpled upon a way to really do this, people confirmed it works great.)

So what if there was a way to play a game against some players and bet with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, BottlecapsCoin and so on. The interests on cryptocurrencies is skyrocketing and more and more businesses are adapting them. Gaming industries are jumping on that train too, which is why I wanted to make this post. Giving the devs the option to make a wise early choice - or not.

StarCraft 2 matches also appear to be paid out in Bitcoin from now on more and more - it's evolving great.
So why no not give the players a way to place a bet on a game? (Spectators and players)
This would greatly increase the number of players and fans - if it's directly built into Battle of Wesnoth. (Which isn't -that- hard, really. Edit: Okay, I admit maybe it takes some work. :D)
I'm sure it could be built by 3rd party websites that automatically fetch match data, but they won't gain any trust at all and the idea would be dead from the start on. So it would need to be built by the official side of developers.
The more different currencies would be accepted for betting, the more new players will start playing this and join the fanbase. (Only driving with 1 currency isn't a real solution. Alt Coins are here to stay, see current market volumes for example - you won't believe it until you've seen it yourself.)

I say: Dear developers, do it. Make this happen. You will see massive worldwide news on the net on this, many new happy players, new ways to battle and maybe a new way to make financial gains from fees that realistic. (Not like 5% of a fee. I'm talking about like 0.1% or something like that. That would gain pretty fast to a huge pot for the developers to keep on working on the game - or even divide it by 2 and set up a public pot for special matches on which the winning team get's it all. The rest can be easily spend for servers without even converting to USD/EUR and not need to spend everything on it.)
The first developers doing this step for their game services are the first to get massive traffic of new players. The ones that say "Okay, maybe in 2-3 years" won't be able to grow their fanbase instantly when it's already mainstream on 90% of all online games. So maybe you should act wise and fast on this. I am not joking with this information.

So, I've posted my 2 cents and hope I started to keep something new rolling.

(Answers like "Cryptocurrencies will die very soon", "Prices go up and down too much" and so on don't belong to this thread since I don't see these things making problems to the concept. So please stick to the idea itself and make constructive posts.)

/Edit: For your information: If you might want to setup a testserver for the currencies, don't worry. These won't produce much traffic at all if you build it good and don't duplicate the blockchain multiple times. Also there are alt coins out there that are produced for energy saving (smallest blockchain size possible.) Every transaction is trackable to the public which makes this much more safe than real money bets. If a user says "I didn't get my coins." you just take a look at the blockchain, see that it has been sent out and confirmed and can safely say that it's not the game service fault, a user might have entered a wrong wallet address or something like that. ---> You don't have to get stressed out by some users stupidity.
Last edited by PizzaFromLastWeek on December 20th, 2013, 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Turuk
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Turuk »

I almost thought this was spam at first.

This concept is loosely related to FPI #31. It would move towards creating the same sort of environment. Also, Wesnoth is supposed to be for all ages, and I'm pretty sure no parent wants to see their kid using a game that allows betting.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:I say: Dear developers, do it. Make this happen. You will see massive worldwide news on the net on this, many new happy players, new ways to battle and maybe a new way to make financial gains from fees that realistic. (Not like 5% of a fee. I'm talking about like 0.1% or something like that. That would gain pretty fast to a huge pot for the developers to keep on working on the game - or even divide it by 2 and set up a public pot for special matches on which the winning team get's it all. The rest can be easily spend for servers without even converting to USD/EUR and not need to spend everything on it.)
No one who works on this project has ever been in it for the money.
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PizzaFromLastWeek
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Turuk wrote:I almost thought this was spam at first.

This concept is loosely related to FPI #31. It would move towards creating the same sort of environment. Also, Wesnoth is supposed to be for all ages, and I'm pretty sure no parent wants to see their kid using a game that allows betting.
Yes, this might be a formal issue.
I am aware of underage players. Take a look how others solved this, for example League of Legends. (Nobody can tell me, that there are only mature players around.)
You might also want to think about the fact that: You somehow have to be mature or you only can buy with your parents crypto currencies. Otherwise you can only mine them, which is mostly impossible on the main cryptos. For that you need expensive mining equipment which leads to the fact that no 13 year old can mine the minimum amount, thats usually accepted by trades and such. So the main problem solves itself by default. ;) The age of the players can't be the problem of the game developers.
Very simple not to mess this up and get sued all over by parents.


Turuk wrote:I almost thought this was spam at first.

This concept is loosely related to FPI #31. It would move towards creating the same sort of environment. Also, Wesnoth is supposed to be for all ages, and I'm pretty sure no parent wants to see their kid using a game that allows betting.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:I say: Dear developers, do it. Make this happen. You will see massive worldwide news on the net on this, many new happy players, new ways to battle and maybe a new way to make financial gains from fees that realistic. (Not like 5% of a fee. I'm talking about like 0.1% or something like that. That would gain pretty fast to a huge pot for the developers to keep on working on the game - or even divide it by 2 and set up a public pot for special matches on which the winning team get's it all. The rest can be easily spend for servers without even converting to USD/EUR and not need to spend everything on it.)
No one who works on this project has ever been in it for the money.

I didn't say that.
I just that the the service can easily finance itself + generate some money for developing things that maybe haven't been possible in the first place.
Offering a great service |= being greedy for getting money. You didn't understand what I was trying to say.
Last edited by PizzaFromLastWeek on December 20th, 2013, 5:18 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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PizzaFromLastWeek
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Turuk wrote:I almost thought this was spam at first.

This concept is loosely related to FPI #31.

For public bets there should be a ranking system, right.
But for bets that players do, which are only playing on that match (spectators cant bet) you won't need a ranking system. Simple as that.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Turuk »

PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:The age of the players can't be the problem of the game developers.
I am not talking about BfW having to worry about underage players making bets. I am talking about the whole concept of adding betting to a game that is supposed to be for all ages, and why that would be a cause of concern.

I completely understood what you were trying to say. However, this project does have ways to generate revenue to support itself, but it has never been about actively trying to make a profit. You made the jump and equated my statement with greed.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:
Turuk wrote:I almost thought this was spam at first.

This concept is loosely related to FPI #31.

For public bets there should be a ranking system, right.
But for bets that players do, which are only playing on that match (spectators cant bet) you won't need a ranking system. Simple as that.
You have conveniently cut off the remainder of that line of thought, in which I indicated that I was referencing FPI #31 to the sort of environment Wesnoth is trying to avoid creating in multiplayer. The ranking system debate is irrelevant.
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PizzaFromLastWeek
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

I know that this project generates the funds for keeping it up. Otherwise it wouldn't be up and running, or it has donations.
But again: It's not about making pure profits for putting money into the private pockets of the developers and other team members. It's just for keeping a new service like this up and running, for which this is needed.


About the betting concerns: I really don't see a problem there. Every good game has players from all ages - and players which are "newbies" and pros.
Adding a feature like this would still keep the game up for all ages. The players that are not allowed or don't want to bet with cryptos on matches don't have to do it - just join another lobby or have that option deactivated with a checkbox.


When games with lots of blood sprites etc. came out - the devs always had options to still make this game playable for people that didn't fit the age.

My point is: You don't need to communicate "From now on only playable with cryptocurrency bets" to the fanbase. It's just another feature. Nothing more nothing less.
And again: A ranking system is not needed.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Turuk »

PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:I know that this project generates the funds for keeping it up. Otherwise it wouldn't be up and running, or it has donations.
But again: It's not about making pure profits for putting money into the private pockets of the developers and other team members. It's just for keeping a new service like this up and running, for which this is needed.
If the project is currently generating the funds to keep it up and running, then why is it necessary for keeping a new service like this up and running? That point makes no sense.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:About the betting concerns: I really don't see a problem there. Every good game has players from all ages - and players which are "newbies" and pros.
Adding a feature like this would still keep the game up for all ages. The players that are not allowed or don't want to bet with cryptos on matches don't have to do it - just join another lobby or have that option deactivated with a checkbox.
It has nothing to do with new versus pro players, and I am aware that it could be set up so that those who don't want to don't have to bet. You are missing the fundamental issue around betting, and the implications that would result.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Dugi »

You want playing wesnoth to change from innocent gaming into infernal gambling? Think a bit what money brings into games. In MMORPGs, it is the real money trading, with a lot of cheating included and resulting in a degradation of item farming usefulness. In some other games, it brings various professional gamers who don't enjoy the game, play it as their work and ruin all pleasure for other players.

Think what would happen to Wesnoth. Now, idiotic cheaters cause OoS in many game with random people, hoping that it will let them win. Good players don't cheat, because if they cheated, the reverence many victories would bring would not bring them no satisfaction because they would know deep within that it is a lie. But if they were motivated by money, they would not try to win for pleasure or reverence, but for money. In that case, nobody cares if cheating was or wasn't incorporated, money is money, you can pay your electricity bill for it. And cheaters would appear. More sophisticated cheaters.

Wesnoth is an open source game, and everyone can change its source code and recompile it. If changed carefully not to cause OoS, you can learn the outcome of every possible luck-based combat in advance, knowing which unit will be lucky at attacking which unit, see through fog, maybe even bring luck upon yourself. Do you want players with game clients like this to populate the server? I certainly don't.

Another problem is that because wesnoth is luck-based and can be like poker when you get a straight flush, perfectly hide it, see another guy smiling and happy, you expect he just got a full house, so you raise bets like crazy, and when the cards are shown, you see that he got a royal flush - you are better, but happen to have bad luck in a game with a high bet and lose despite your better skill. Gambling is forbidden in many countries. Do you want wesnoth to be forbidden in many countries? I don't.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Dugi wrote:You want playing wesnoth to change from innocent gaming into infernal gambling? Think a bit what money brings into games. In MMORPGs, it is the real money trading, with a lot of cheating included and resulting in a degradation of item farming usefulness. In some other games, it brings various professional gamers who don't enjoy the game, play it as their work and ruin all pleasure for other players.

Think what would happen to Wesnoth. Now, idiotic cheaters cause OoS in many game with random people, hoping that it will let them win. Good players don't cheat, because if they cheated, the reverence many victories would bring would not bring them no satisfaction because they would know deep within that it is a lie. But if they were motivated by money, they would not try to win for pleasure or reverence, but for money. In that case, nobody cares if cheating was or wasn't incorporated, money is money, you can pay your electricity bill for it. And cheaters would appear. More sophisticated cheaters.

Wesnoth is an open source game, and everyone can change its source code and recompile it. If changed carefully not to cause OoS, you can learn the outcome of every possible luck-based combat in advance, knowing which unit will be lucky at attacking which unit, see through fog, maybe even bring luck upon yourself. Do you want players with game clients like this to populate the server? I certainly don't.

Another problem is that because wesnoth is luck-based and can be like poker when you get a straight flush, perfectly hide it, see another guy smiling and happy, you expect he just got a full house, so you raise bets like crazy, and when the cards are shown, you see that he got a royal flush - you are better, but happen to have bad luck in a game with a high bet and lose despite your better skill. Gambling is forbidden in many countries. Do you want wesnoth to be forbidden in many countries? I don't.

I don't see my concept as gambling. You are betting on your skills to chose the right units, take the right routes - the hits and dodged hits are random, sure. But that doesn't bring this whole thing into the gambling category by far. It's up to the player. Randomness is not the factor that decides if someone wins or loses. It is a factor, but not one that can be taken like "have a lucky day and you might win. have a bad day and you lose." If you mess up your basic strategy, you can bet on the random factor in the end. But players that play like that, could easily do real gambling in an online casino to skip the part of thinking.

To your argument about more cheaters: Cheaters, hackers and scammers are everywhere, not because of money that may be involved. It's because security made by humans can be broken by humans too. This rule can be applied always at everything.
Sure you can attract a percentage of cheaters with a new concept to the game. But do you really think all great ideas with several positive effects would bring zero negative effects? Come on. That's natural - there is nothing perfect out there.
I thought about that too but didn't mention it in my start post because my above written reasons. To be more specific: There are big groups that ruin the fun of players for months or even years straight with "professional" harrasments. Even if there is no money involved, this game still could attract one of these groups one day and everyone would cry out loud and the fanbase can be shrink to a minimum. Really no need for having crypto currencies involved, really.
Sure there would be a need to even invest a small amount of time to make it a bit more secure against cheaters, but I guess you know what I am trying to say a few sentences above this.

Edit: To keep one thing out of discussion: Fooling a crypto currency network is impossible. You would need 3 digit million dollar hardware for that. (And it's getting more expensive to do so every month. Years ago you would have success with that. Now you can't. Organisations with big farms like the NSA for example who can break heavily crypted volumes could be able to do so. Or organisations that have access to quantum computing. But for what? For winning a game with a maximum pot that's not even worth it thinking about it? I don't think so.)
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Dixie »

*shrug* I know it's not a real argument, but an MP game with any sort of betting or gambling involved would be a sure-fire way to drive me as far as possible from it. I would never, ever, under any foreseeable circumstance, partake into any sort of game with betting or gambling. I hate it with a passion, I think it's dumb and stupid.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Dixie wrote:*shrug* I know it's not a real argument, but an MP game with any sort of betting or gambling involved would be a sure-fire way to drive me as far as possible from it. I would never, ever, under any foreseeable circumstance, partake into any sort of game with betting or gambling. I hate it with a passion, I think it's dumb and stupid.

You are right, it's not a real argument. It's your opinion, which is okay! And I respect it, no problem.
But you wouldn't have to. And (again *sigh*) : It's not gambling.

You may ask the community with games that have bigger fanbases than Wesnoth what they think about it. Some don't like it. But you can be sure that a big mass of a fanbase will be very happy about something like this.
But that doesn't keep a player away from playing it. If you don't support specific decisions of developers, you don't have to. But that doesn't have to do anything with the mechanisms in the game, you are defending an opinion against a feature (which you don't even have to use).
This takes place in many gaming categories, for sure (*cough* VALVe *cough* WON Servers -> Steam) and ended up better than expected in the end. I'm not only talking about crypto currencies, I mean general changes with many new possibilities.
New things always get people worried until they see it works. Especially for things (I repeat myself) that you are not forced to use if you don't want to.

So, I don't really see a problem.
If someone is against crypto currencies, well that's okay too. I don't have to mention trends and positive aspects right now I think.
But I think taking a game with a style like this to a level where you give players to option to use a new feature of using a crypto currency, which is a whole new thing for the world, is more worth than worrying about something and not having tried how it may work out.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Turuk »

PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:You are right, it's not a real argument. It's your opinion, which is okay!
But you wouldn't have to. And (again *sigh*) : It's not gambling.
Let's be clear, betting with cryptocurrencies is gambling under US federal law (Wesnoth's country of incorporation).

As Dugi mentioned, there are some countries that ban gambling, limiting the use of Wesnoth.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Turuk wrote:
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:You are right, it's not a real argument. It's your opinion, which is okay!
But you wouldn't have to. And (again *sigh*) : It's not gambling.
Let's be clear, betting with cryptocurrencies is gambling under US federal law (Wesnoth's country of incorporation).

Let's be more clear: Betting on something you don't really have the power of changing how it turns out _is gambling_. Right.
I don't see this takes place in this case.
You play a dice game with BTC -> it's gambling. You don't have the power of winning, you win or lose by the random factor.
Change the whole gaming concept to /roll 1-100 when the match starts and remove everything else -> you have something that's based on gambling with your own luck. Other parts of the game are the ones that are important.


I see this topic is getting locked anyway very soon. But that's okay for me
I am aware that not everyone knows the legal situations and the difference between gambling and playing with cryptos. Maybe on this forums are some people that are against cryptos in the first place which is a sad thing, but that's okay too.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Turuk »

PizzaFromLastWeek wrote: Let's be more clear: Betting on something you don't really have the power of changing how it turns out _is gambling_. Right.
I don't see this takes place in this case.
You play a dice game with BTC -> it's gambling. You don't have the power of winning, you win or lose by the random factor.
Change the whole gaming concept to /roll 1-100 when the match starts and remove everything else -> you have something that's based on gambling with your own luck. Other parts of the game are the ones that are important.


I see this topic is getting locked anyway very soon. But that's okay for me
I am aware that not everyone knows the legal situations and the difference between gambling and playing with cryptos. Maybe on this forums are some people that are against cryptos in the first place which is a sad thing, but that's okay too.
You are not willing to acknowledge that anyone else may have knowledge of any of this outside of yourself, which is the sad part. Instead of a debate on feasibility or practicality of a proposed solution, you provided a general concept and expected buy-in from the readers.
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A person engages in gambling if he stakes or risks something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under his control or influence, upon an agreement or understanding that he or someone else will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome.

The other player is outside of his/her control.
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Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Dugi »

PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:Randomness is not the factor that decides if someone wins or loses. It is a factor, but not one that can be taken like "have a lucky day and you might win. have a bad day and you lose."
Just like Poker Texas Hold'em. You can be a pro at hiding your emotions, studying small traces of emotions on the faces of others, really good at estimating the chances what can be the outcomes with the cards on table and what is the chance who has them. You will win most games. But still a noob can come, get lucky, and win. This is just the same as in wesnoth, when most of your hits miss, your opponent does unexpectable moves under the fog that ruin your plan, or you start near unfavourable terrains.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:Cheaters, hackers and scammers are everywhere, not because of money that may be involved.
There is a difference between cheating for perverted pleasure and cheating to get money. The twisted satisfaction from cheating will not motivate a person to keep cheating for too long or to create sophisticated cheating methods. In MMORPGs, people cheat because they need to beat other cheaters or because it will make their characters stronger with less effort. In FPS games, cheaters are usually the lowest scum that besides obvious cheating uses n00bsp3ak and is banned from many servers, and their cheating is primitive and easy to recognise. In this, competitive wesnoth gaming is not like MMORPGs, but rather like in FPS games, no long-term advantages or faster progression, you compete to feel good and maybe to be revered by others. All cheaters I have seen in wesnoth were ill-mannered children. The thing you are suggesting would add a big motivation for cheating, a motivation that would work also on mature players with relatively good manners.

If you still don't believe me, then tell me why there are no hacked clients available that let you see through shroud or let you know the outcomes in advance? I can assure you it is possible. So the cause is obviously that nobody ever bothered with it. But if they were motivated by money...
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote:Fooling a crypto currency network is impossible. You would need 3 digit million dollar hardware for that.
Do you think that an aggregate of specialised video cards worth a billion of dollars would break through a modern encryption? Hardly. Some obsolete encryptions can be broken like that, even without such a machine, like the encryption used to encrypt DVD films or zip archives, but not a modern one. If there is a flaw in the encryption and that flaw is found and used to break the encryption, it would work. But it might need an army of genius specialists to find that, and it might not exist at all. Many encryptions can't be even broken by quantum computing that is being developed.
Last edited by Dugi on December 20th, 2013, 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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