CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I play a lot of Netrunner tournaments at local game shops. The way they work is people pay a small entry fee, usually $5. We play swiss rounds and there are participation prizes for everyone. That way nobody feels like they wasted their time and entry fee if they don't win. The winners get better prizes. Some stores even turn the entry fee into store credit and distribute it. So if 10 people show up and pay $5 each, that's $50 in store credit that gets distributed among the top players something like $20, $15, $10, $5 to the top 4 finishers respectively.

There are currently no competitive online multiplayer games offering this kind of tournament format that I know of. I would love to be able to sit down at my computer at any time, pay $5, play 3 to 5 rounds of a skill-based game, get a prize no matter what, but have the chance of a big prize if I win.

CM has the problem that the tournaments can't be spontaneous since there isn't enough player base. I live in NYC, and the timing of every event that has been had so far has been inconvenient for me. Also, there's no prize that can be offered besides money. In other games you can offer participation prizes like skins and whatnot.

In the segment they are suggesting a single player skill based game. That I think is a very very bad idea. They are underestimating the capacity of gamers to practice and come clean them out. They think they can adjust the payout so they always profit, but I don't see that happening.

Say for example, they offered Tetris, a very addictive and popular game. People are already willing to pay 25 cents to play a Tetris arcade machine and not get anything back even if they win. Now imagine a Tetris machine that paid out to winners. Even assuming that a lot of people play, few will sit there for long. The reason to play Tetris on the machine instead of their phone is the chance of winning. They will test their skill a few times to see if they are capable of winning. If they aren't, they'll stop playing since they can just play on their phone for free.

Meanwhile, the grandmasters will descend. When they find out their is a game they can reliably win, and get paid to do so, they will play Tetris all day. To profit off them, they will have to make the payouts so low for winners, or the difficulty so high, that nobody will even want to play in the first place.

It has to be a CM-like game where the casino takes Jason's role. But will people really be interested? If they're already in the same room together in a casino, and they want to bet against each other. Why let the casino take a cut? Just bet with each other at a table in your hotel room. What is the casino providing that you're going to let them take your money? Jason is providing software and technology services.

What you say about order theory isn't wrong. Yet, I think you are too close to the problem, and are missing the big picture. The lack of excitement and drama in CM stems from something much more fundamental. Drama comes from uncertainty. Uncertainty comes from luck. Luck has been entirely, or almost entirely, removed from CM. If you want drama, you have to add in luck, which is pretty much contrary to the core principle of the game. Legally it also means removing the real money.

I was thinking about doing a stream, but there are some issues with that. I'd want to put in an extensive delay so any potential opponent watching the stream couldn't cheat me. Also, to make the stream interesting for viewers I would have to discuss my line of thinking. Any opponent watching the stream, could figure me out, and then beat me in a subsequent round. Also, there isn't a critical enough mass of players to make it so people wouldn't know they are playing against me.

That said, I'll give it a go anyway.

Great idea! I think I will do something similar.

I was at work with headphones on. I must have missed it.

Why can't we just have a good old fashioned tournament? It's not exciting or unique, but it works. It could be swiss, single elimination, or any of the other tried and true tournament formats. It's easier to find a way for people to schedule 5-10 minutes to play a game against each other than it is to try to beat collusion. There could be an entry fee to get into the tournament, so if someone wants to enter a whole bunch of accounts, so be it. All the entry fees would combine into a prize pool that would be distributed amongst the top few players.

I do agree that aspects such as thoughtfulness and strategy should be encouraged over tactics like bullying. Someone who makes better decisions should always win over someone who decides poorly. However, I still feel that speed should be a greater factor than it is today.

The closest example I can think of in another game is the hurry up offense in NFL football. They have rules in place such that you can't go so fast as to unfairly deceive the other team. Opponents always have an opportunity to see your formation and arrange their defense accordingly. Despite this, you can still speed things up such that you gain a significant advantage over an opponent that is too slow.

Playing quickly shouldn't confer enough of an advantage to make up for bad decision making, but making good choices quickly should win out over taking a full minute to make equally good decisions.

Yeah, I forgot about that. I tend to assume that if someone best a large amount right away that they are not bluffing. But if they wait a bunch before bidding, it's more likely that they had to consider it more and it was a harder decision.

Yeah, not only does it force you to reveal, it forces you to keep clicking on BET 0 for the rest of the game. A lot of time can be saved by cutting that out as well.

If indeed my opponents are slow, that's just annoying. I have this same problem with board games also. I take my turn quickly, and it's frustrating to play against people who do not. Perhaps after one player sends their input, the other player could be forced to input within 5-10 seconds or face a penalty? One minute is an absurdly long amount of time to make one small decision.