The BlogShares Blog

Yeah, this was kinda out of the blue. Jay and I had talked about having a slot machine/scratch ticket type game for some time, and many players have suggested it over the years, but it was really nothing more than a 'want' for the future. Well, Sunday i just 'knew' how to build it, and by Monday night it was mostly done. #blogshares IRC regulars helped us work out a few bugs Tuesday.

You can win shares in blogs (almost always old and dead, so like suggested elsewhere, check them and report them for sigma and more chips!), chips, B$cash, ideas in any industry that has already produced (even if there are no blogs. Matt Williams hit a great jackpot of Biathlon ideas earlier today), artefacts (only ones that you need), Pixel blocks, Raffle Tickets in a current raffle if available, and 1 day, 7 days, 1 month, or 1 year of Premium Membership (off-it snagged a year earlier today).

Chances has been written carefully to be extremely light on the db, with PHP handling most of the math behind it. Now, I can't guarantee that there won't be load issues at some point on this, so BE FOREWARNED that we will take it off line if necessary to keep the rest of the site from lagging.

The only folks who know the exact odds of things are the Admin, GIC, and the BoD. Even so, knowing the odds doesn't really help you much since every prize/failure is a random event from a freshly seeded mt_rand() function (just generates a random number to be used later on in the calculations).

We've also got a way to work in some unique random prizes, which will be coded in soon.

We're also keeping a close eye on the economic effects on the game due to Chances. Hopefully, this will help improve the overall health of things by finally having something to create friction, which should drive demand for chips and cash especially. However, if we find that Chances is destroying the economy in a non-recoverable way, we will take it offline.

So bottom line is, please enjoy it while it is available. We do not plan to take it down, but should events cause its necessity, it will be done. Please feel free to offer your feedback here, let us know what you think of it, how it may affect things, and as always, if you find a bug, please PM me immediately. Cheers, and good luck on Chances!