There is a real simple way to get more people to buy more games, it’s been done before and I really don’t know why it isn’t done more often, especially since it is also a great marketing technique and works for both gamers and gaming companies alike.

Offering a substantial amount of prize money isn’t something new as i’ve said, it is a way of enticing more players to buy a specific game, it even gives gamers more of a reason to give more hours to a game, also gives them the perfect excuse as to why they play games so much, not just enjoyment but a chance to get hold of some serious cash.

This wouldn’t even be something the game developers (or marketers) would have to dig in their own pockets for either. A $50 game could quite easily add $15 or even $25 more for one that offered say 1 million in prize money, and that would be like a drop in the ocean compared to the huge profits it would generate.

Let’s take a game, any game, white knight chronicles for instance, this could be any game but just as an example, they could hide extra treasure boxes that actually contained cash rewards, or even extremely hard to find harvest points. You could quite easily incorporate something like this into a game so that even several hundred players had a real chance of winning say $100 up to $500, not a great amount but for those that did win, wow, what a great feeling, how cool would that be.

It’s been done before? When? Many years ago actually when the commodore 64 was the “in” thing, a computer keyboard which took games by way of a slot in the side or back of the keyboard. A game called Eureka offered 25,000 british pounds to the first person to solve the game, it was won by a 15yr old, man how must he have felt, like the richest kid in the world, but no loss to the game makers, that prize money generated millions in extra sales.

How much more satisfying and enjoying would a game be if it offered prize money for solving certain quests?

Any thoughts on this? With game sales at record lows and in the biggest recession ever how better to draw those players back?

Tony:)