@goindeep reminded me of that time a year (?) ago there were discussions about how to distribute SafeCoin in the early adoption phase, and to make it really easy to join SAFE Network by viral methods, coin fawcets/fountains, sending Safecoin to a friend etc.
It made me wonder about doing this using a game as a context - a treasure hunt on the old web that leads one to discover a chest of Safecoin (with lots of smaller prizes available along the way), prizes for various achievements, such as signing up to SAFE Network, setting up a vault, farming a coin, sending someone an invitation etc etc.
What do you gamers think of this? Feel free to jump into this thread and suggest alternative game ideas or to flesh out this particular one.
Anyone want to have a go with this? Personally I’m going to be busy enough with SAFEpress and the forum, but I will help with ideas or feedback where I can, so its wide open if anyone likes this idea.
I like the general idea. I think what would be ideal is if we create games where SafeCoins are the in-game currency. It makes the gamer care about SafeCoins because they have value in their game. It also creates additional demand.
On a related note, yesterday I thought of designing a Central Banker simulator game, which would be both fun and eductional. The player would wield the power of a Central Bank in a fictional society and find out how they work (simplified of course) and what they can do, and how it’s privileges can be (ab)used for selfish and political ends. All kinds of “random events” in society pop up during gameplay to which the player can react with different central bank actions, all with their own consequences.
It would be a pretty good way I think to get people interested in what modern fiat money is and how it works, and thus make clear why the decentralized nature of crypto-currencies is desirable.
Games on SAFE would be great of course, but this has to function outside as well, in order to bring people to SAFE network - it could of course continue on the network. The idea is to give people something that has no friction in terms of joining in (ie no installation) but which leads people who want to, through the process of signing up and using the network. How much is off and how much is on, network, I don’t know.
Treasure hunt on the www, bridging into SAFE, perhaps.
In order to find the treasure on the www, you have to install a SAFE client and retrieve the clue to the www item from the SAFE network, at the same time, getting a SAFE faucet distribution that’s enough to activate your SAFE account. Then the game could run in parallel, back and forth across both networks, with clues to progress on one being found on the other.
A couple thoughts here. I like achievements and quests style idea. Also we discussed quite a bit of this earlier in the MMORPG thread so you might want to revisit that. You might want to add other achievements like creating avatars (and set goals at creating x amounts of them) and other graphic design goals (objects, clothes, environment settings, art, etc). In short use gamification to encourage content creation AND to promote what people do. Your achievements could, over time, become a resume of sorts. Someone wants to see what you can do they look at your achievements. “This person has set up 5 vaults, sent out 50 invites, set up 10 websites, regularly produces artwork of varying kinds, writes blogs and poetry, and has web development skills to x degree.” Compared to “This person has set up 50 vaults, can code in 10 programming languages, has put out no artwork but does have a blog and post regularly on a forum and also games regularly.” You know what I’m saying? A quick snapshot. Now you could keep your achievements private of course but it would be an easy and quick way to share who you were with people. Also you could set up educational achievements and so forth to prove you had various academic skills. And to follow the pattern you’d be paid to achieve said goals instead of paying to pass said tests in a traditional educational system. Why would we, as a group, pay people safecoin to achieve academically? Think about it. If academic information is readily available and you can educate yourself online for free. And the more educated people there are the more content there is being created. It then follows that it benefits people as a whole to reward people for achieving said goals. We’re not talking about whole institutions here, classrooms, teachers, equipment and all that, we’re just talking about passing a test of some kind or in some way passing an achievement goal. And those goals don’t have to be big. Your goal could be to draw a stick figure of a dog correctly. (Believe it or not I know people who are struggling with that. It’s sad.) Or do basic math or something. A “test” could be as simple as posting something and getting 100% - 90% possitive feedback or something. Or posting an answer and then having your peers mark it as “correct”, or if it’s wrong, correct it and then having them mark it as correct.
On the gaming side I think what will really drive people is collaborative co-creation. That is take me for example. I’m a writer, say I come up with a story. Now I’m also an artist but there are a lot of much better artists out there and there are also video creators and actors and voice actors and so forth. So say I wrote a story and then wanted to turn it into an audiobook. Well I could read it all myself OR I could hook up with several voice actors to do all the parts of the dialogue parts and I’ll just do the narrating, or I might just get a professional to do that as well. Or what happens if I want to turn my story into a graphic novel or a manga? Or turn it into an anime? Now why would all these people do all this? Because the more content they put out there the more safecoin they get. AND they associate their names with me and I with them which means more followers. AND they get more achievements because they’re producing more and greater stuff.
Now what I’m wondering after all this is who or what is funding this gamification project?
I’ve probably figured out a way to make distributed poker that doesn’t need any trusted/distributed computation. However, it’s not written, only exists in my head, I make money by freelancing, and I live in the US. So I have no interest/time to build this or being arrested for violating federal laws. I’m pretty sure it’s possible and that no rake (house fees) are needed. I’d recommend limiting it to 2-person (heads up) poker as it’s impossible to prevent collusion.
Explain it in detail and start a collaborative project so others can help out. You have the idea/vision but others might have the coding and art skills so everyone gets together and builds it. Is the engineer greater than the designer or architect?
A good first game for SAFE would be a turn based strategy game - something akin to civilization V. These games are really popular and have enormous staying power - they are played for a decade or more before something better comes along. If it’s going to be the ‘first’ great game of the SAFE network, it should have that kind of staying power.
Turn based strategy games don’t require so much horsepower either - especially if coded in a good language - so they can allow people with lesser hardware join in - not so exclusive to those with expensive graphics cards. One of my long term favorites is ‘Master of Orion 2’, which I still play occasionally via ‘dosbox’, uses hardly any resources and is still a joy (a challenge) to play.
In Daniel Suarez two book set (fiction) Daemon and Freedom he used gamification through a mmorpg that took on AR atributes to drive the development of a distributed automated cooperative riding on a dark net to take over the world and replace its political and economic systems. All the states and corporation become powerless, divested, displaced and irrelevant as the demon network takes over. They fight hard but they lose. I loved these books they were so incredibly fun. Also superb in audio format.
There are only two economic system; Keynesian (Pump n dump Whalers) or Austrian (Save and invest.) Karl Marx also has another solution, which is quite similar to Keynesian. It’s pipe dream that everything will be free, and controlled by the public. It is still an economic system because it offers a solution which is centralize everything. It had to deal with economic calculation problem, and finite resources. Austrian on the other hand, only handles at the right moment, the exchange. What determines an exchange is by between two parties, and nothing else. When parties exchange, in their end, it is a win=win. If it is not, then there would never been an exchange in the first place. (Fair trade ^tm. More like it’s only fair for us. Win = Lose(Force))
If we managed get into post-scarcity, then there would be no economic problems or solutions because it is a mutual exclusive from the economic problem. Create things out of nothingness. Therefore it is not a socialist nor capitalism society. It is called “post-scarcity.” No socialist nor capitalist can inflate this particular meaning into their favor.
To keep in mind that crypto-currencies are usually in Austrian favor. There are some exception for certain coins which includes inflationary cycle. Safecoin in particular ways, it does not violate regression theorem, is pure Austrian and 100 percent meets to the anarcho-capitalism economical views. This you cannot deny due to inherent nature of ownership. Socialism denies ownership, and therefore these crypto-currencies are against their favor.
So please stop with your nonsense on smash Capitalism!
HabitRPG is a step closer to what Daniel Suarez envisioned. It is true that we will emerge gaming and reality. But we are still living in an economic system. These are enchantments for capitalist society. Gaming wouldn’t exist without investments.
Even with crowd funding, these are investors who invest an idea into reality. You can never get rid of it.
This is way simplistic. At this point I associate Austrian with austerity. I don’t see the strong SAFE Austrian link. Hayek supported the safetynet. Socialist are not anti ownership. Ownership is a slogan a million miles from a magic bullet and its often the problem.
The issue is top down coercive systems. The issue is useless bosses, supervisors, managers and execs and all this nonsense about getting paid to control other people. Too often the rhetoric about capitalism simply describes systems of slavery.
Capitalism is dead, its just exploitationism by self appointed special people, its become in its ultimate expression a system of theft. There was only so far it could take us, its run its course, we’ve out grown it.
Notice the caption “facebook.com capitalists,” facebook is even dumber than AOL.
I wish I could like this post at least twice! Short and sweet. I’m shaking my right fist intensely with a sense of great happiness coursing through my CNS.
Real world gaming seems like a viable option. I remember seeing something about a QR code game wherein people would hunt for printed QR codes throughout their respective cities. I don’t remember exactly how it worked but I imagine that to prevent cheating, once the QR code was scanned by a player, the network would be updated to reflect it and associate a new reward to the QR code. In this way the QR code would reward every new player that scans it while also preventing code sharing. Our game could reward players or just the curious with safecoin/status symbols. It could for first time players provide them with a succinct description of SAFE with the option of a one click/touch installation procedure.
For those who want to trade their SAFE coin for money could be directed to an exchange. Maybe, the phone app could in it allow them to exchange their safecoin for bitcoin automatically by embedding a popular crypto exchange into the app. Expediting the process of reward. QR code vandalism could be mitigated by having local establishments agree to host the QR code somehow. This of course presents an obvious hurdle. Those of us who agree to spread the QR codes must bolster our charisma. In the end we potentially convince business owners not only to host a small QR code but to also use the SAFE network. We might even convince them to give away SAFE coin to incentivize consumption of their product/services. In this case I think we should create and refine a presentation (slightly adjusted for each area) for the sake of clarity and completeness. Because of the nature of SAFE, bad press is inevitable. We need to remind them that even popular services like drop box host crap content. It’s all a matter of how individuals choose to use it.
IMHO, the goal here is to bring awareness to those who would otherwise not come across SAFE and to those who see the name but have no real urge to look into it. The first step to achieve this is to simplify the terminology and other SAFE related concepts in parallel to the current technical breakdown. Basically a five year old should be able to understand how SAFE works on the surface and why it’s superior to the current scheme.
Come to think of it, the most avid consumers are young adults. Working with producers targeting that demographic could help to publicize SAFE. This could backfire though. Making a short comic book might be a good route. If enough people agree, we could start working on the details in a new thread. Let me know.
This is the purpose of the OP. I fully support having games on SAFE network, and I think if this can straddle real world / non-SAFE internet and SAFE network, all the better for reach and bringing people directly onto the network, but it definitely needs to include the former because the aim of my proposal is to make it easy for people to find and get started on SAFE, rather than to entertain those who are already using it.
The best game to do this would be something like this year’s steam monster summer game. Especially in the sense that the bounties of the game should be shared and it should be cooperative.
Maybe a game like SecondLife that can support a virtual economy with Safecoin as the currency. People could buy virtual items and buy virtual land. If it gets really popular, it will increase the value of Safecoin. A game engine would need to be installed on the user’s computer. Not sure how the backend would work.
