{"id":437,"date":"2005-11-22T11:05:04","date_gmt":"2005-11-22T16:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=437"},"modified":"2005-11-24T11:28:02","modified_gmt":"2005-11-24T16:28:02","slug":"the-virtual-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=437","title":{"rendered":"The Virtual Circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other night I caught an episode of &#8220;<em>60 Minutes<\/em>&#8221; that had a segment on internet gambling (net version <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2005\/11\/17\/60minutes\/main1052420.shtml\">here<\/a>). Well, having seen my share of gambling blogspam, I have no doubts that the numbers used are legit; it&#8217;s a huge&#8230; HUGE&#8230; business. Well, via a <a href=\"http:\/\/crystaltips.typepad.com\/wonderland\/2005\/11\/quake4cash.html\">Wonderland post<\/a> comes word of a mod for Quake 3 called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quake4cash.net\/\">Quake4Cash<\/a>. From the homepage: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Welcome to Quake 4 Cash\u00e2\u201e\u00a2  where you can prove your skills and earn some money. We&#8217;ve designed a mod for id Software&#8217;s venerable and recently GPL&#8217;d Quake III Arena to bring you the ultimate competitve environment.<\/p>\n<p>Are you good with the railgun? 70%+ headshot ratio? You&#8217;ve come to the right place then!<\/p>\n<p>Register, download the mod, login to our servers and put your money where your BFG is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although I&#8217;m unaware of any other games that do this, I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to learn that there are many already out there; though probably most are still 2D. In contrast, Quake 3 is both a 3D game and a wildly popular one at that. It&#8217;s tailor-made for this kind of immersive, competitive gaming&#8230; and the betting it could spawn.<\/p>\n<p>Something like this reminds me of boxing. I could see Spectator micro-betting (everything nowadays is &#8220;micro&#8221;) becoming really popular. Don&#8217;t just bet and stay in the bleachers&#8230; get into the game. Follow your horse up close. Watch as your pick vanquishes the opposition (or turns into a pile of gibs). All up close and personal in a way you don&#8217;t even get with real world betting; watching a two-dimension television screen isn&#8217;t as immersive as being on a simulated 3D racetrack or in a virtual ring if the resolution is decent.<\/p>\n<p>Assuming they can keep the cheats out and this does take off, I&#8217;ll venture we also see some content creators getting into the game doing custom skins and weapons; perhaps spawning a niche industry in the process. It&#8217;ll be a whole new kind of circuit.<\/p>\n<p>Going to have to keep an eye on this. Always fun to see how money flows through the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other night I caught an episode of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that had a segment on internet gambling (net version here). Well, having seen my share of gambling blogspam, I have no doubts that the numbers used are legit; it&#8217;s a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=437\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}