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Show HN: Highscore.money – Pay your way into the highscore
- klaustopher 10y agoI wanted to pay $0.01 to stay at the bottom of the list, but the minimum is $1 ... Sad :(
- keesj 10y agoActually the minimum is $5. Because of the credit card fees and associated accounting work anything lower than that doesn't make much sense.
- klaustopher 10y agoGot that ;) Was just looking for ways to "trick the system"™
- keesj 10y agoHaha love the creativity
- 603 10y agoI hope that the internet will meltdown once enough has been collected
- Artoemius 10y agoThis is basically a pay-to-win game simplified down to the leaderboard. I hate pay-to-win games. They do have an uncomfortable similarity to the real life though.
- keesj 10y agoExactly. Thanks for putting it this way. I couldn't find the right words, but it's indeed the most stripped down version of pay-to-win.
- keesj 10y agoA while ago I was thinking about how people spend a lot of their money on impressing others. Fancy clothes and jewellery, the red sports car, etc. Really all it is, is showing off how much money you've got to waste. I like to make things more efficient, so I came up HIGHSCORE.MONEY – A public scoreboard you can participate in by simply paying. The more you pay, the higher you're place in the scoreboard. Of course, it's a bit silly, but people can be silly at times so I figured I'd give it a shot and see what happens. Curious to hear what the HN community thinks.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cprecioso 10y agoI think it's a bold, fun idea, with good aesthetics. Now, I'm not going to pay anything, but maybe someone will? After all, this is mostly advertisement space. Humble Bundle leaderboards have served as de-facto advertisement space for some time. And if we go a lot back, The Million Dollar Homepage is still up, isn't it?
- keesj 10y agoYep, exactly. I've seen similar concepts be successful in the past. Of course we only get to see the successful ones (survivorship bias) and for every successful 'experiment' there are a 1,000 failed ones, but I figured why not give it a try.
- nibs 10y agoI always thought this should exist for philanthropy. If you get a critical mass, it becomes self perpetuating. I am not sure the value of doing it just because, but taking a standard percentage of funds raised and passing the rest through to charities would probably really get people spending.
- ryanlol 10y ago>A while ago I was thinking about how people spend a lot of their money on impressing others. Fancy clothes and jewellery, the red sports car, etc. Really all it is, is showing off how much money you've got to waste. Except often "fancy" clothes simply fit better, are better made. Sports cars can be fun to drive. Those are certainly not a "waste" of money, assuming you have the money to spend, of course. It's really not all that black and white. I love the site though, clever.
- _Marak_ 10y agoI kind of hate this, but I still paid you $22 because it's actually awesome. Nice one! Maybe donate the funds to charity?
- keesj 10y agoHaha thanks :) I specifically chose not to donate the funds to charity, since I don't want to provide any value in addition to be being featured in the highscore list. Otherwise it would become about who's most charitable. An interesting too, but a different concept altogether and I'm not sure it's one that would work. (it's not ridiculous enough)
- _Marak_ 10y agoSeems like scores are not cumulative based on email. :-(
- keesj 10y agoThat's true. Is there anything on the site that indicates this? If it's unclear I want to make sure to clarify that. The reason it's not cumulative, is 1) to keep things simple, and 2) I feel it's morally objectionable to add such a strong game mechanic as I imagine people would keep 'upping' their score in order not to lose their spot.
- gourou 10y agoI love this idea, it would probably look better if it was for charity though.
- colinbartlett 10y agoReminds me a bit of the old Million Dollar Homepage: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
- c17r 10y agoSeeing Million Dollar Homepage was 11 years ago makes me feel old!
- keesj 10y agoYep. That was a great concept and one I wish I thought of myself. I've seen many copies, but they never take off because it's not original anymore and it's hard to get press coverage. I hope HIGHSCORE.MONEY is different enough. We'll find out in the next 24 hours I guess.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- oskarth 10y agoThis could be the new http://milliondollarhomepage.com http://milliondollarhomepage.com of this decade.
- vinchuco 10y agoOr social network for hi net worth individuals
- aparadja 10y agoJust paid $30 to get Radio Silence to the top, out of pure interest in how much traffic that'd bring. Well played!
- laurencei 10y agoGood work on setting this up. I think I've heard of a similar concept before, but using t-shirts. Setup an "exclusive" t-shirt range, of nice cotton white t-shirts. The t-shirt would include a picture/logo/design, which was $X - where $X was whatever amount you wanted to pay for the t-shirt. So you could walk around with a t-shirt that said $100 - or you could walk around with a t-shirt that said $1,000,000 - and people would you know you spent $1m on that t-shirt...
- keesj 10y agoHaha yes I've had similar ideas before. The problem with that though is that they can be easily faked (e.g. anyone could design/print a $1,000 t-shirt). – It's also less like to go viral than something online. That said, I like how it brings the idea to the physical world.
- laurencei 10y agoYeah - that's what I thought when I heard the idea as well - someone just prints the same t-shirt with $1b - and the concept it gone. But your idea keeps it exclusive... Good luck! :)
- smt88 10y agoShirts are too easy to fake
- ryanlol 10y agoNot necessarily, could use a higher end fabric to make such significantly more expensive. e.g. http://www.sunspel.com/uk/mens-sea-island-crew-neck-t-shirt-mtsh4000-white.html http://www.sunspel.com/uk/mens-sea-island-crew-neck-t-shirt-...
- smt88 10y agoHow would someone be able to verify that walking past you on the street?
- logicallee 10y agoThe problem with this as gamification is that there is zero ability to play for less than the current high-score. That is a real problem: suppose 500 people were wiling to pay close to, but not over, $10, but hardly anyone was willing to pay over $10. If 15 people have paid $10 it now prices anyone wanting to pay up to $10 completely out of visibility. Since we said there were 500 such people, you lose $5,000 while making 15 * 10 = $150. That's a real design problem. Pay-to-play should give everyone something.
- keesj 10y agoInteresting perspective. Right now you can still get 'value' out of it by paying less than the #1 spot, since the first few spots are still highly visible too. That said, your logical reasoning still applies. I'm not sure what a better solution would be though. A leaderboard works because it's exclusive.
- phoobot 10y agoYou could lower the current score by one cent every x seconds
- sharemywin 10y agothat's a really cool idea.
- aparadja 10y agoThe idea of a permanent score is what inspired me to pay, though. A steadily declining score doomed to fail wouldn't have felt nearly as cool.
- mnx 10y agoI've paid a cent, and it threw an error in my face, and didn't show up :(
- keesj 10y agoWhen you enter an amount below $5 you'll get an error message telling you the amount is too low. You won't be able to enter your credit card details and thus won't be charged.
- mnx 10y agoUnless, as I did, you mess with the JS a bit. I don't know if stripe allows you to set a minimum on their side, so perhaps there isn't anything you can do to prevent that. Anyway, enjoy my 1 cent :)
- rvschuilenburg 10y agoReminds me of the $500,- BlackBerry clock app: http://crackberry.com/500-desktop-clock-app-blackberry-i-was-dumb-enough-buy http://crackberry.com/500-desktop-clock-app-blackberry-i-was...
- dagw 10y agoAnybody else remember the I Am Rich app for the iPhone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
- trahn 10y agohave you thought about adding a visits count? would give an indication of what you are buying...