So let me preface this with a brief disclaimer. I think Bitcoins are awesome and every time I come back to take a look at what's going on I'm amazed by all the cool new stuff happening in the community, but I don't spend nearly as much time here as the many you that are really dedicated to Bitcoins. So if it seems like I'm missing something, feel free to clue me in. That being said whenever I'm working on a project I try to look at ways to incorporate Bitcoins, and I found a way to incorporate them into my latest project.
The project is an online social game where a you lead your character, Robit, through a custom maze to find Bitcoins and reach the end point. Also players are able to make custom mazes to share with their friends. For all you hard core gamers, prepare to be very underwhelmed. The game play isn't very sophisticated and the demo graphics that are in the game right now make 8 bit look good. That being said it's a social game so the entertainment is more challenging your friends than burning up your graphics card.
You can check out the demo of the game at
http://socialrosity.com/robit_demo/. Your Beta testing, comments, questions, etc. are appreciated. Also anyone that has some recommendations on graphics, I'm very open to suggestions. I can follow a Photoshop tutorial like it's cool, but character and setting design aren't necessarily one of my strengths.
For anyone interested in promoting Bitcoins, and I assume most of you are, you'd probably agree that putting the Bitcoin image in a game is nice and all but when they have no real correlation to the way actual Bitcoins work the promotional benefit is weak at best. I agree. This is where Phase 3 comes in.
Phase 3 of development for Robit Coin Raiser involves creating real world missions that players complete to gain upgrades in the game. For example when going through a maze you must find all the Bitcoins before the end point appears and you can complete the mission. The default number of Bitcoins a player can put into a maze they design is 2, but by completing missions they can get upgrades that would allow them to increase that number up to say 5 Bitcoins per maze.
These real world missions could be things like watching a YouTube video, liking something on Facebook, or putting a tweet on Twitter. Or in the case of Bitcoins, setting up a wallet, getting some free Bitcoins, and sending them to the game. The end result is easily trackable. Send .0001 BTC or whatever to the game and get the upgrade. There are already services that offer free Bitcoins to get people started. For the mission we'd just direct people to one of these sites, and then donate back the BTCs we get so it creates a continual loop. Obviously some people will just complete the mission and never think about Bitcoins again. But if the mission before it is watching a video about Bitcoins, a certain percentage of people will get interested and get involved.
This is still in the development phase, but I full expect to be able to have Phase 2 (see the demo site) completed before Thanksgiving and maybe have a couple of missions completed before the end of the year. So I'm interested in what those of you much more involved with Bitcoins think and any suggestions you might have. Thanks.
