By Stevie Smith Dec 12, 2007, 13:55 GMT
Modern multiplayer action is hugely popular and allows gamers all around the world to face off against one another for ultimate bragging rights. Then there’s professional league gaming, where the very cream of the world’s talent battles for ultimate bragging rights… and some extremely sizeable winners’ cheques.
Online gaming service Kwari tempts (male) FPS fans with the prospect of masses of cash and naken women. Credit: Kwari.
But what about that un-trodden middle ground, that misty grey area of ability and belief that longs for more than friend-based multiplayer but probably won’t make the cut at a professional level? Enter Kwari.com, an online service that allows players (any players) to exercise their skills while also grabbing the opportunity to make some money in the process.
Here’s how the service's "Cash for Kills" and "Living It" ethos works:
Every time you hit another player in Kwari you make money. Every time you are hit by another player it costs you. Every shot counts. How much is down to the stake level you play in. But this is not the only way to win.Doing damage to yourself, breaking crates, use of certain map features or picking up additional weapons, pickups and health packs may have a fractional cost attached. This cost is transferred between a series of jackpots, prizes and awards available in the game, all of which can be won by any player, regardless of the skill or stake level of game they prefer to play.
Claiming that: "even an average player should be able to get ahead in the game quickly," Kwari offers up a mixture of first-person sci-fi gaming and hit-based performance that sees the player either gathering or losing money across skill and stake levels while also having the chance to win gameplay-related money and prize jackpots.
Kwari is free to download and play, with the site only charging for the ammunition used during the frantic first-person combat. The service is keen to point out that any redeemable cash gained or lost between in-game players remains that way at all times and never passes into Kwari’s hands.
However, while it’s an interesting concept and will likely attract plenty of gamble-friendly gamers, it would appear that Kwari is fashioning itself as a single-sex experience – at least based upon a recent commercial for the beta service.
The ‘Superstar’ ad exists as an indirect nod to the tasteless exuberance of MTV’s ‘Cribs’ series and sees Rich Lightfoot, an arrogant teenage gamer and "master assassin," revelling in a celebrity lifestyle while showing the viewer around his mansion, which just so happens to be populated with topless women, expensive cars, and masses of free-flowing cash.
Will Kwari, as with the likes of SkillGround, attract gamers away from the risk-free safety of traditional PC and console-based multiplayer? Will it fill that void between amateur and professional gaming? Will it wise up to the fact that girl gamers are a massive demographic that perhaps won’t be attracted by blatantly sexist advertising? Or will it only spawn a whole new breed of videogame gamblers armed with marginal gameplay skills and an overriding drive to feed their addiction in new ways?
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