Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Brainstorm ideas of possible additions to the game. Read this before posting!

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Forum rules
Before posting a new idea, you must read the following:
Velensk
Multiplayer Contributor
Posts: 4002
Joined: January 24th, 2007, 12:56 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Velensk »

I know this topic is already kind of dead but I'd like to throw in a comment.

I'm going to ignore my dislike for getting any kind of real money involved in playing games for a moment and just comment on this as a player. Assuming you tie in an automated way to the server itself that would add a kind of commitment to each game that I'm not fond of as a player. Much as it causes annoyance when people are irresponsible with it, I like the fact that I don't actually have to worry about how the server perceives the game as having gone and I can evaluate it just as myself. This means that I can just leave a game against an opponent who is wasting my time in some way or another (whether it be trolling the fact that I didn't include a timer, or running a drake warrior leader around the map), leave when my opponent surrenders without having to wait for him to, or anything of that nature.

Aside from that, I still consider it gambling even if you do have some control. Poker is gambling but that doesn't mean that the players don't have some control over how it turns out. Wesnoth might give you a bit more control than poker but I don't think that would change the introduction of several unsavory elements to the community.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
User avatar
PizzaFromLastWeek
Posts: 17
Joined: December 17th, 2013, 11:17 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Dugi wrote:
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.

You have exactly 10 minutes to fool the whole Bitcoin network just for faking a transaction, which is being relabeled as invalid when these 10 minutes are over and the next block is generated by the network. I want to see -anyone- trying this with success or even profit. We are talking about small amounts that would have been made possible ingame. Not like $10k. Acquire something that has a higher computing power than the whole network has (which is one of the biggest in the world) and try to pull off a stunt like this. For a minimum of a profit (which you won't get). And even if you know how, would you really settle down at a game with small amounts to mess around with for 10 minutes without getting anything in the end? No. You would shoot for the stars. Which won't work either by the way.

Doesn't matter if you have 900 of some Radeon graphics cards or if you go on it with more massive farms (like the ones existing in china only for Bitcoin) - or whatever you like. You won't have any success at all.
This is not something that hasn't been tried. You may have a look at the basic concept (see the original btc whitepaper) and the original sourcecode.

I can't say quantum computing can break this or not sometimes. Maybe in 100 years things will look different. It may be possible or not. Computers are evolving pretty quick. But it is designed to work more than 100 years, so our and upcoming generations can be pretty save that nothing serious is going to happen.
There _are_ techniques for cracking high level encryptions locally like stored volumes - but applying these is not really possible for regular hackers.
(Would you break into someones house to place a phone next to his laptop to capture cpu / keyboard sounds to send these recorded things back to you? This is possible. You can also try it with built in microphones, but using newer gadgets like smartphones is a bit better. Always think about the time and work you need to put into this. You can't really apply this to the Bitcoin case. Catching private keys is another thing, many stupid users trash their digital money for not taking 5 minutes to secure their stuff.)

Remember: It's always you vs. the whole network. Which is massive. (The exact power of the network can be seen on various websites collected by pools and so on.)
Last edited by PizzaFromLastWeek on December 20th, 2013, 4:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
iceiceice
Posts: 1056
Joined: August 23rd, 2013, 2:10 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by iceiceice »

Pizza from last week: Just my two cents, I don't think your idea is bad, but I do think that next time you want to advocate a change like this, you should write about 5-10 times less text than you did, and just edit it until it says exactly what you want it to say, avoiding getting deep into minor details yourself except in reaction to others, even if you anticipate that certain points will be raised.
PizzaFromLastWeek wrote: 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.)
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.
Are you sure about this?

Wesnoth has had a successful ladder for years, which gained the trust of the players and became the dominant ranking system used, without being formally endorsed by the wesnoth devs, (except in that balance changes by mp devs have usually required gameplay evidence from top players, meaning highly ranked on ladder).

There's no reason that you can't have a third party betting website, provided you figure out the legal details. This would also be better as then wesnoth itself most likely could not be sued in any scenario.

Finally, why do these other games include the betting interface as built into the game? It makes it more popular because a large company like valve or blizzard is implicitly backing the betting feature so that users feel more safe. Wesnoth does not have a gigantic bank roll, customer service, in house lawyers, or anything like that. So any implied backing seems misleading.

*Final point* A basic issue with wesnoth is that the current mp-client is not really secure against cheating.
Spoiler:
Further, if the wesnoth devs themselves created a betting feature, that creates an implied warranty of suitability as a gambling item, so I believe that if they have not taken all basic industry standard steps to prevent cheating it could be considered fraudulent in the US. Yet another reason to make the gambling third party. If you really think the gambling would be profitable maybe you can write such anti-cheating mechanisms or promise to pay someone to do so or something. Even if the you can't convince the devs to pull in the patch, you could still just distribute a forked client, although this has obvious drawbacks.
Last edited by iceiceice on December 20th, 2013, 4:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
PizzaFromLastWeek
Posts: 17
Joined: December 17th, 2013, 11:17 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Don't get me wrong. Didn't want to mess around with anyone in here.
Sometimes it's just good to throw in new ideas, discuss possible issues and don't end discussions because person-xy says it might be a bad idea. Every idea / opinion can lead to something new.

I throwed in more than my 2 cents now. Maybe a bit much text. But this topic is pretty complicated. If I edit everything to the startpost without replying directly, it would be harder to catch up.
But better have more details posted. My English is not the best, I try what I can. ;) But anyway.

Edit: And I admit that I don't know that much of the game itself. I know a bit of it. For example: I didn't take a look at the code. I didn't even play around enough on multiplayer to say I know everything about it.
But I thought that fact doesn't keep me from posting my idea and have some sort of discussion on it.
Really not trying to "force accept" this idea to anyone. Just try to make you understand what I mean. The language is an important barrier for me right now.
Last edited by PizzaFromLastWeek on December 20th, 2013, 4:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
pyrophorus
Posts: 533
Joined: December 1st, 2010, 12:54 pm

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by pyrophorus »

Hi !
All what you said is based upon the assumption it's desirable to get a larger fanbase or number of players.

Is it so ?

Friendly,
User avatar
PizzaFromLastWeek
Posts: 17
Joined: December 17th, 2013, 11:17 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

pyrophorus wrote:Hi !
All what you said is based upon the assumption it's desirable to get a larger fanbase or number of players.

Is it so ?

Friendly,

- Give players the option to add some more fun/thrill to a match
- Yes, also attract more players that currently don't play it (many are fascinated on matches with bitcoin payouts from big player dev studios. Not that many games around with this concept. But I think that doesn't keep a smaller team away from trying the same.)
- Has a nice marketing effect. (Current fanbase may be nice. But why not more? Yes: Very sure about this.)
- Can lead to many other possibilities
- May inspire more non-mainstream dev teams like the really big ones to think about doing this. Which is a great thing I think.


For the time and work that would have been put into this: I am pretty sure that this can be crowdfunded pretty quick, since many in the Cryptocurrency community are giving away much of their digital money to new users and businesses to keep this thing growing.
User avatar
Dugi
Posts: 4961
Joined: July 22nd, 2010, 10:29 am
Location: Carpathian Mountains
Contact:

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Dugi »

@PizzaFromLastWeek
I think that you are neither being rude nor bad at English. The only problem in your ways of expressing yourself is that you write like if you were writing a book and not as if you were talking to somebody. This could make you a good campaign dialogue writer, I think. I would ask you to help me with some dialogues, but it seems to me you haven't shown any interest in user made content so far...

Anyway, your reply to my post was offtopic, nobody was talking about cheating in bitcoin mining or exploiting some bugs in some of the software handling it (I do not disagree with what you've said, but that is for a private chat or the Off-Topic forum). You didn't write why should it not promote cheating nor how would mastery at wesnoth with monetary bets differ from mastery at poker. You didn't reply to iceiceice's comments about the actual stability and resistance to hacks.

Your best chance to get your idea accepted is to be able to counter our arguments or persuade us. And you don't seem to be even trying to do that, you're just trying to forget them, conceal them or obfuscate them, it seems to me.

EDIT: Yes, it adds thrill, but the thrill poker gamblers know. That one would turn a lot of players away, will not attract them. Diablo III is much less gambling related than your vision of wesnoth in this idea, and still its Auction House was the thing that persuaded me never to try this game or thing deeper about trying it. It would really bring more money, but at high cost.
User avatar
iceiceice
Posts: 1056
Joined: August 23rd, 2013, 2:10 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by iceiceice »

pyrophorus wrote:Hi !
All what you said is based upon the assumption it's desirable to get a larger fanbase or number of players.

Is it so ?

Friendly,
I think it is clearly desirable to get a larger number of devs / artists / other contributors, and getting a larger number of players is an indirect way towards this.

Desirable in the sense that
(1) the project itself will grow
(2) it reduces the (small) chance that the project will be abandoned at some point in the future, which would make all those who had contributed feel a little sad

OTOH however, in a previous thread some devs argued that very few players actually become devs, and very few of the devs started as players. Still I think if the project is more widely known that attracts artists, and UMC content also helps to get people involved imo.
User avatar
PizzaFromLastWeek
Posts: 17
Joined: December 17th, 2013, 11:17 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by PizzaFromLastWeek »

Sorry for not being able to properly reply to everything from everyone. I was writing all this besides my work with the brain of a pizza from 2 months ago.
I know not everything about how to solve all problems. I know a bit. So I can't answer everything. In the end I'm just a player and a fan who is into this cryptothing. (Reading about it every day about legal news from various countries about gambling, taxing and what not.)
Maybe "betting" was the wrong word from the start on.

Was hoping that a few have some ideas in here. (I'm not a coder at all. More theoretical person and someone who does visual communication for a living. I'd never write a book :D)
Wanted to start a small thing rolling. :)
The idea sounded pretty nice to me. Taking care of security with the client of the game is another thing. (Where I think money and time is needed, which is why I mentioned the financial part)
I know a bit more about how to secure the currency itself from being stolen or basics about network attacks.

/Edit: pyrophorus: Nope.
Last edited by PizzaFromLastWeek on December 20th, 2013, 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
pyrophorus
Posts: 533
Joined: December 1st, 2010, 12:54 pm

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by pyrophorus »

In other words: "growing is good, growing is fine..." End of discussion ?

Friendly,
User avatar
iceiceice
Posts: 1056
Joined: August 23rd, 2013, 2:10 am

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by iceiceice »

Maybe "growing" is the wrong word, maybe the right word is development, i.e. what devs, artists, and contributors do.

I have a hard time taking seriously the position that further development is bad. I mean you can go through the changelog -- is there anything in there you think was a big mistake?

I guess its possible that you are opposed to the idea of growth in the abstract, and you don't want wesnoth to be "like a big game". But I think in practice everyone will agree that what the devs artists and contributors do is good, and if they had more time to get more things done, those things would be good as well... so more devs artists and contributors would be good for wesnoth / the wesnoth community / planet earth.

*At least in the foreseeable future, in this reality... please do not look on this as an invitation to make slippery slope arguments which completely miss my point.*
fabi
Inactive Developer
Posts: 1260
Joined: March 21st, 2004, 2:42 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by fabi »

I guess the majority of the community and all of the developers agree that money for successful playing is a concept not fitting our kind of project.

But that does not mean that your idea is not going to happen.
Wesnoth is open source.

PizzaFromLastWeek, take the source code and modify the MP Server so that it integrates some kind of micro payment.
Or pay someone with better coding skills for the job.
Then setup the modified mp server on a machine you pay for (not very expensive, for about 10$ a month you get a root server that should fit all needs).

You will need some advertising and some endurance to overcome the surely hard starting phase.
Also be prepared that you might need a lawyer sooner or later and that the project might cost you more than you get revenue from it.

The biggest problem I can see is that we are not really trying to prevent cheating at all costs.
At the moment when money is involved you will have cheating attempts.

Sorry, I did not read the whole thread in detail, so please excuse me if I only repeat what other said already.
User avatar
Gambit
Loose Screw
Posts: 3266
Joined: August 13th, 2008, 3:00 pm
Location: Dynamica
Contact:

Re: Betting with Cryptocurrencies

Post by Gambit »

Real money is enough of a hassle. Wesnoth doesn't need to get mixed up with Canadian Tire money, Monopoly Money, or Bitcoins.

Locked.
Locked