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Yup, if what you describe is true (and I suspect it to be true), I will be really interesting in knowing what keeps people coming back to the game and actually paying real money for extra points.

Because if it were just handful of PHP scripts, hey, I can code them in a weekend :)

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I guess it's just the drive of being the strongest, or the richest, or whatever the goal of the game is. It's pretty satisfying to see your name on some sort of leaderboard. The text based nature doesn't bother a lot of people even now. The real problem is making a game that's fun, and that's the hard part.

I just realized, we're all on a text-only site and getting onto the "leaders" page was a big motivator for me for a short while. Perhaps I should quit throwing stones in my glass house.. :)

maybe the kid has somehow hit on the right level of random feedback - just enough to make the game addictive?

and then the leaderboard as you point out would be a strong motivator as well.

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