What is the best way to invest money for people you don't know?
I was thinking how it would be cool to develop mobile games that uses the same hooks the pay-to-play ones use. But instead of it being revenue, that money is invested for the player and they get it back later when they're more lucid and less gambly.
So people who have addictions can scratch that itch like they normally would but it wouldn't wreck their finances. Most investing needs a lot of personal information which is too much to ask for I think. Storing their money like a bank is too much responsibility as well, when they buy credits or upgrades I'd want those funds going directly to the investment package. It could be too complicated of a problem to solve but I would have no qualms copying the popular loot box games and taking their customers away if the reward side could be easily set up.
You could probably replicate a lot of Skinner box psychology that game devs use to feed on gambling addictions, but then just replace the instant value of any prizes with time value of money. For example, you could make a slot machine game where if somebody wins, the game just buys a 5 year bond for them with equivalent return to what a slot machine would normally pay out instantly.
I really just want it to be as similar as possible. They can purchase the $5 loot box just like in a normal game. Get that excitement of opening it and getting rare items. But instead of throwing their money in an insatiable black hole it is wisely invested. Win/win
So you want a game dev to be paid by a player in exchange for some in-game reward, but then the game dev basically gifts the money back to the player? Because it's their money at that point in the transaction.
How would it be tricking them? It's not like I would hide it. It's sole purpose would be to reduce the current scams already prevalent on apple and Google app stores. People will still spend their money anyway they wish but this would be an alternative to the current biz model to nickel and dime the users to death.
It sounds like taking the gambling out of gambling, by making loss impossible.
I guess as long as you’re open about it, like “instead of gambling you can do this other thing”.
But if returning the money is a surprise thing, that’s bad. It means they didn’t consent to the actual game they were playing.
I’ve been an addict and I used the harm of my own addiction as part of my own wake-up process. Anyone reducing harm would have just been giving my inner addict justification for continuing.
I was in a dance with my subconscious, trying to avoid pain but also trying to wake up, and I repeatedly steered myself down, in aikido with my addict self, to steer toward moments of clarity.
But maybe I read the post wrong. If you’re totally up front about “The money will be returned to you later”, it’s cool. Like non-alcoholic beer is cool so long as it’s labeled as such.
I have another business that makes money. This would be just to mess with greedy bastards. I would just change the graphics to the most popular/insidious ones. It's just so much easier if the funds didn't have to route thru the game company. Crypto is obvious but not the financial lesson I want to teach. Just seeing if anyone has a creative solution but the easiest method would be to require them to setup an investment account first and have those moneys directly deposited (without fees hopefully)
The margins on even the most successful mobile games are surprisingly small. Once you take into account the cost of running the servers, code maintenance, customer service, platform fees and advertising the roi will typically be less than 10%... if you're lucky.