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Up until now, one of the few ways to make money as a professionalgamer was to enter into a tournament and hope that you were moretalented than your opponents. That's all about to change, though, as Kwari,a new online shooter for the PC, has set out to reward players who winthe monetary jackpots for head–to–head matches. Thanks to a feature at MTV Multiplayer, a number of details about the game have been revealed.
Kwari is a "free" shooter, but only in terms of the initial cost to getthe program onto one's computer; as soon as it's installed, the costscome into play. The first expense? $5 for 5,000 bullets. While thatmight not sound completely unreasonable to some of us who generallyplay as snipers during our FPS time, that could easily add up to over$50 a session for other players who are a bit on the trigger–happyside. The other constant expense comes in the form of how the game'seconomy works: gamers earn revenue for the damage they deal, but theylose money for the damage they receive. There are also a number ofdifferent jackpots one can win during each match, several of which canpay a significant amount of money (based on the figures claimed to havebeen won on the game's leader boards).
This is a game of skill, not luck, so it shouldn't fall into theworld of gambling. Still, Kwari Limited Marketing Director Al Kingclaims that the publisher is spending a lot of time to ensure thateverything about the game is completely legal for its upcoming USrelease. So far, the game has been approved in 37 states and isexpected to launch in the US sometime around June.
Even though reviews of Kwari's European release have been less than stellar,the game is apparently doing well in terms of paying players. Accordingto what King told MTV, Kwari has sold over 50 million bullets, and over40 percent of the 30,000+ game downloads have become paying accounts.Exactly how these numbers will change once the game officially launchesin America has yet to be determined, but it seems like a safe bet thatgamers who find the challenges of online poker to be too nonviolentwill soon have a new way to (legally) gamble against one another.
Blood money comes to first-person shooters cash-for-kills