Idea #5: A web site that facilitates local game borrowing
I live in Manhattan. Manhattan has a whole lot of people. Many of these people play video games. Most of those people who play video games would probably appreciate being able to find people to swap games with.
So here it is, idea #5, create a web site that makes it easy to find people to play games with and borrow games from. If you are Dave Harding, you probably think craigslist already does this. My conception, however, is much more featureful than the barebones craigslist. It would be something more like Game Trade Zone, except with the focus on finding people near you to lend games to and compete against rather than to trade for keeps over the internet. Users would list their game collections, annotating them with how willing they are to lend them out. They would have lists of games that they want to borrow. The system would automatically find matches between games of similar value from people who are close to each other. The system could even keep a "trades graph" among the members, and then see how far apart prospective traders are in this graph under the assumption that people who are closer to ones "social circle" are more likely to be reliable.
Why do this at all? Why not just use game trade zone, or ebay, or craigslist? I feel like this idea could build a community of gamers. It seems a lot more friendly and social to borrow temporarily than to trade for keeps.
Why do this for just games? Wouldn't this idea also make sense for say, books, movies, CDs, etc? Basically anything that is reusable, durable, and easily transportable. Yeah, the idea works there too, but those things are not nearly as interesting to me. By focusing just on games, it could make the experience better for them. It's probably not too hard to list every published game for major systems, so this would help with make a slick UI for inputting game titles with auto completion. The site could also integrate game rankings from some third party to make a more compelling experience.
So here it is, idea #5, create a web site that makes it easy to find people to play games with and borrow games from. If you are Dave Harding, you probably think craigslist already does this. My conception, however, is much more featureful than the barebones craigslist. It would be something more like Game Trade Zone, except with the focus on finding people near you to lend games to and compete against rather than to trade for keeps over the internet. Users would list their game collections, annotating them with how willing they are to lend them out. They would have lists of games that they want to borrow. The system would automatically find matches between games of similar value from people who are close to each other. The system could even keep a "trades graph" among the members, and then see how far apart prospective traders are in this graph under the assumption that people who are closer to ones "social circle" are more likely to be reliable.
Why do this at all? Why not just use game trade zone, or ebay, or craigslist? I feel like this idea could build a community of gamers. It seems a lot more friendly and social to borrow temporarily than to trade for keeps.
Why do this for just games? Wouldn't this idea also make sense for say, books, movies, CDs, etc? Basically anything that is reusable, durable, and easily transportable. Yeah, the idea works there too, but those things are not nearly as interesting to me. By focusing just on games, it could make the experience better for them. It's probably not too hard to list every published game for major systems, so this would help with make a slick UI for inputting game titles with auto completion. The site could also integrate game rankings from some third party to make a more compelling experience.