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Givling's financial meta-game seems very unique to say the least...
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What’s more, the $0.50 per game is a hefty price-tag, and it comes with $0.30 “transaction fee,” which Givling say is levied by service providers (although players can buy games in bulk, with the fee remaining the same). But it’s a well-designed web app—and crucially, it’s addictive, which could be the real key to its success.
Bizarre and confusing (just read the number breakdown). Sounds very much like a lottery. Even though there is skill, the money being paid out is only 50% of what is being paid in. And $0.50 seems pretty steep. I could see someone, over the course of a couple months, losing as much money as you have won at CM, Nate. The nice thing about CM is it's orders of magnitude cheaper even if one sucks.
I suppose there's no reason it couldn't work. In my state, the lottery is tied to education funding. But at the end of the day, it's also a corporation taking home 10% of everything by exploiting people's charity and addiction.
Also, this seems like it's partially owned by PayPal. That $.50 per round with a $.30 transaction fee is ludicrous; it's like they've engineered the whole thing around that. Barf.
Last edited by jere (2015-06-30 17:49:59)
Canto Delirium: a Twitter bot for CM. Also check out my strategy guide!
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Yeah, what does gambling on a trivia game have to do with student debt? It's like they've got their crires wossed.
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Alan Collinge is an activist who runs StudentLoanJustice.org, an organization devoted to tackling student loan legislation. He’s spent plenty of time fighting to repay his own student debt, which shot from $38,000 to $100,000 after he defaulted. “The cost of college in the United States is just out of hand,” he says. “The attendant debt is absolutely ridiculous at this point, and there’s no statute of limitations, so they can get you for the rest of your life.”
Collinge says that while he hasn’t tried Givling himself, he thinks it faces an uphill battle. “If I’m being honest, I’d say it strikes me as a bit of a non-starter,” he says. “Stepping back and taking a larger view, it does nothing to address the problem of student loan debt generally, and deal with the predatory dynamics that have wreaked havoc on people. I give it an A+ for creativity though.”
This is pretty much what I was thinking as I read the first part of the article. As Nate has pointed out, the meta-game is intriguing and attention-grabbing. At its best, Givling could be pointing out some of the absurdity around insane student debt in the US. At its worst... well, just re-read jere's post.
Just the other day, I saw the 2014 documentary Ivory Tower on TV. It tackles not only the insanity around American student debt, but also the evolution of universities into businesses that value expansion over academics and see students as consumers (dorms with swimming pools and hot tubs, anyone?).
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