CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

My guess is you're reading all the game's static stuff (fonts/images/settings/etc) directly from the apk, and those files are all compressed.  It takes a long time to load because it takes a long time to calculate the offsets, seek, and extract each file individually.

I honestly have no idea. I don't think there is any legal precedent that covers whether wagering money on a skill based game and playing randomly would be a game of chance. I would be interested to know if someone could cite one though.

cullman wrote:

Again, if what you said was true, I could make for money fantasy football illegal by making a random bot that plays it.

Well, you said that creating a website that acts as a bot for playing Rock Paper Scissors randomly for money would be a game of chance, so yes? I don't know, I'm not intentionally trying to be difficult, but I really don't understand how the law works in this situation. Why is it that playing a game where you know the outcome is dictated by chance would be made illegal or not illegal based on the circumstances under which it is played? The law says that a game is a game of chance if "the character of the game rather than a particular player's skill or lack of it" determines the outcome of the game. So if the outcome of Rock Paper Scissors is really determined by the player and not the game, why is it that when you make the player a computer that picks randomly and not a human, all of a sudden the game is a game of chance, even if none of the game's rules were changed in any way? Aren't you just making an arbitrary distinction if you can make the game illegal or not depending on who or what is playing it? This just doesn't make any sense to me.

Hmm... so would you say then that that paragraph could be interpreted to mean the my example Rock Paper Scissors website would not be considered a game of chance?

cullman wrote:

I am certain that whether or not a game is a game of skill or chance is defined by the rules of the game rather than instances of its play. Your example could be applied to other existing real money skill games that have not had legal issues.

I'm not sure, I think it doesn't come up a lot because in most skill based games playing randomly wouldn't be effective, so no one would ever play randomly on purpose. In a game like Cordial Minuet where random play can be effective, though not necessarily more effective than deliberate play, it may actually cause legal issues. Say you were to start a website where you could Rock Paper Scissors for money against a computer programmed to play randomly. Rock Paper Scissors is technically classified as a skill based game, but in this case the implementation is practically the same as a website that let you bet on a coin flip for money. But a website where you bet on a coin flip would almost certainly be classified as a game of chance, so shouldn't the Rock Paper Scissors site be classified the same way?

But actually, if I were a lawyer, I would focus on Cordial Minuet's betting as the primary element of chance. Because betting involves valuing your current position at the point when you have to bet, and most of the time you don't know for certain how the strength of your position compares to that of the other player, you could argue that you are placing a wager based on an element that is controlled by chance. Because of the shared uncertainty both players have regarding how their column picks affect the score they will get, neither player is truly in control of the outcome of picking. And therefore, it would be fair in a sense to say, that there is an element of randomness in the score you get, even though the score was technically generated by a decision shared by both players. Can you honestly claim that there is no element of luck in the score you get when it is influenced by elements neither player controls completely? And what happens if one of the players uses a random number generator to pick their columns? Surely that would have to count as an element of chance, right? Even if you as the designer can't control how columns are picked, the mere fact that they can be picked randomly could be interpreted as an element of chance.

I have decided to announce that I am going to donate $1,666.66 of my winnings to Jason Rohrer. He's an amazing artist and I truly wish him and his family the best.
You can support his work here: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason … MyWork.php