CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

If you've not used it before, imgur is super easy to use (you can even paste in images).

This late reunion of you and your amulet is a nice capstone to the story of the contest. How serendipitous! Thanks for sharing.

You should know for sure because your alias is included in one of the early emails. Assuming you're cost cell I checked and I saw you on, for instance, the second page of the profit ratio leaderboards. Also, make sure to check out the profit graph that my bot generates: http://humbit.com/cmbot/index.php?alias=cost+cell

This is the million dollar question. We've discussed it a lot actually. It seems like people tend to find the concept interesting, but are very hesitant to pull the trigger and put real money in the game, either because they assume they'll lose or they don't trust the (somewhat intentionally) sketchy website. For people already into gambling games like poker, I'm guessing they just want to stick with their game. Jason actually went to Vegas several times and talked to some poker people trying make traction and apparently no one even wanted to write about it.

Cool, Nate. That should be a very interesting game and I think we would all love to see the commentary between the two highest rollers. Did you ever see the split screen video Cobblestone and I did?

Bold! Do you have a predetermined stopping point or are you just going to keep going?

TBH, if the problem is people don't want to spend money at all, I don't see how the solution is to get them to spend money repeatedly.

The only thing CM needs is more eyeballs. There are a lot of games out there these days and people are getting more and more accustomed to "free" games (which are the most profitable kind at the moment).

This has been discussed before, but a cashless version of CM on Steam might attract a lot of attention. It could be free or just cheap (so it could take advantage of sales). In fact, since the game is open source, it would be rather easy for any of the technical regulars on here to pursue such a project. If I were a better C programmer, I might do it myself. I do have a greenlight account... very tempting.

This seems like a revival of your ideas from your chain world talk in 2011. Also has a hint of Passage in that your life passes by so quickly and is just a blip. Can't wait!

A system where you have actual parents is something people have dreamed about before but never implemented to my knowledge, for whatever reason. Anyone remember Dawn? I remember seeing this in high school and quickly realizing it was all bunk: reproduction among players and monsters, constructible/destructible buildings, destructible terrain, a detailed astronomical system, etc. Looking back on it now, a lot of those features are not that far fetched. Minecraft has a lot of them (it was revolutionary though!). Part of it is just being willing to simulate the world at the proper level of simplicity (e.g. blocks).

Anyway, definitely sounds very gamey. The survival genre seems to be booming right now. I'm sure it will do well.

^Neat! I was exactly 2 points off also. Spoilers:

I guessed 21 and it was 19. I don't know if it's changing over time or anything. I really like the point about k-step thinking. I was thinking (2/3)^2 times 50 which is about 22.

Phew! The idea sounded really interesting, but I immediately was reminded by a common response to CM: "That's interesting, but...." when people are intrigued but don't like the idea of sticking their credit card into an unknown thing and potentially losing unbounded money (as far as they know).

I wonder if this means the game is unplayable if you're the only one online? A problem TCD and CM suffer for similar reasons, thought at least in TCD you work on your house by yourself. However, I suppose there'd naturally have to be some method of bootstrapping society into existence or the game couldn't begin.

I don't think so. The success of a new game is sort of independent of the success of a new one. I'm skeptical that a mass of new features would affect the growth of the player base.

Anyway, I'm rather excited to hear about the next game. The premise sounds really interesting. Maybe another MMO?

Reminds me very much of Tale of Tales and what they were trying to with Sunset. TCD felt pretty close to what the mainstream is after and the success of it is evidence.

An experiment we had talked about is somehow editing one board so it matched the other (rotation and/or color). Rotation is difficult to do without a custom client but I wanted to take a shot at color swapping.

Here's the results: https://youtu.be/hHDNFX-hVec

This is just a couple rounds, where I lose pretty badly in one, to demonstrate the idea. The color swapping didn't work perfectly, but that's about the best I know how to do in Premiere. I immediately feel like it makes more sense. Still, the thing I really want is an announcer narrating the match.

Thanks for the feedback ya'll.

I too have really enjoyed this game. Not only that, but through it I have met some VERY cool people.

As usual I have ideas for what could be done to generate interest (e.g. trying to appeal to people who might want to write bots). But I realize that no matter what campaign you come up with to generate interest you first have to generate interest in the campaign itself. It's a chicken and egg problem. I suppose all multiplayer games are doomed to fade out eventually and the lower your starting point, the sooner you hit zero.

I do want to try to record a couple more games, but after that I'll probably take out most of my balance. I guess I'll leave a few bucks in there under the assumption that the servers will be maintained for a while.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say that if Jason makes another game, we'll see each other again there.

^Something I have noticed about the trend of Jason's designs in that they seem to be increasingly reaching into the real world. Chain world where you pass the game onto another person and there's a physical object associated with it, the board game buried in the desert, TCD's time commitment and theme and emotional impact, and now real money with CM. Sometimes I wonder: how do you top that! An ARG would be a pretty good answer: fictional websites, twilio integration so the game calls you (I went to answer a pay phone for ilovebees in 2004), physical objects, etc. It's an interesting thought at least.

DANG. I am so jelly. Seems like ya'll are onto something....

Jason's next game should just be an ARG.