Friday 11 March 2022

Pay to win - Chess?

 The concept of 'pay to win' games has always offended me. If you are not familiar with the concept, it is essentially allowing you to pay extra money to a free game, to receive benefits that other players do not get. It is a business model for some games, which while profitable, can annoy an existing user base. More so if the game starts out as 'free forever' before it isn't. 

In the past I played a few games like this, but as soon as they became 'p2w' I lost interest. But having said that, I do wonder what 'p2w' chess might look like. eg Buying takebacks, Rejecting your opponents first choice, two moves in a row, castling after moving your king

Some of these are probably too drastic (Playing QxQ and then blocking their recapture!), but the more subtle additions might be a thing. At least one possible advantage is that it may reduce the effectiveness of chess engines (at fast chess), but in the end it would probably fail in the same way that all attempts at 'improving' chess fail. They aren't really improvements.


No comments: