lunatim

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How is it stupid to want money Tim?

Not stupid at all. Making an occasional 100 euros from winning a contest doesn't mean somebody is a total greedhead; it's just very gratifying to know that you're good enough at what you do that you can make a buck or two at it. I'm still paying money each month to maintain my RCT fansite, Lunatim's Loopy Land ( http://www.lunatim.c...and/loopy.shtml ), so making money from playing RCT isn't really my ultimate goal. I just enjoyed the hell out of RCT and winning the Atari/Hershey's contest was just an added bonus.

On a larger perspective, I'm not into the whole 'greed is good' mentality, but unless a person is a trust-fund recipient, we all need money just to make it in this world. I'd love to live in a world where money isn't necessary, but that's a pipe dream that will never exist. I just hope to make enough money with my time-travel novel and kinetic art ( http://www.lunatim.c...t/kinetic.shtml ) to quit my seasonal day job--I don't really expect to become as rich as Croesus doing it...

Nice? That would be amazing... winning like... half a year's pay-check for playing a game...

It'd be cool to be a professional computer-game player. Alas, this was definitely a one-time deal, though. I wandered away from RCT to my kinetic art because I can actually make money on occasion with my art...

rK_--That's great to hear you can actually win money from online poker!

5dave--Congrats on winning the 50 euros! Too bad you didn't receive the other 60 euros, though...

Xcoaster--Yeah, I thought it was funny about the winner myself. They announced the results several months after they said they would and never made the winning coaster available like they promised. I don't think the Blue Kangaroo was even blue and there was nothing 'kangaroo-ish' about it. Just looking at the video they offered, it looked like a poor design, even for a 10 year old. Two or three lift hills, and it still almost stalled out. What was really funny is how, on the press release, a bunch of corporate pooh-bahs lauded the kid for being the 'next great coaster designer'. I thought it was peculiar, too, that he was from Pennsylvania, home of Hershey's. I'm not really going to speculate on what really happened, though.

However, they didn't really have to give me anything at all, so I'm not complaining. I really needed the money at the time, so I'm glad to have gotten some money out of it. $100,000 would have been nice, though...

I don't think anyone here has won serious money besides a couple hundred bucks from tournaments here.

There's actual RCT tourneys that give/gave out money?? That's a pleasant surprise. I had no clue that there were even contests out there for RCT that gave cash prizes. It's pretty gratifying to have one's park or ride featured on an RCT fan site, but prying money from the wallets of tournament organizers takes particular skill. There's a serious paucity of prize money for sim games compared to tactical/first-person-shooter games; if Maxis had actually given away cash prizes, SimCity would have sold a lot more copies, IMHO.

I know what you're talking about when you say you are proud to earn money from playing a game you enjoy. I won 200 dollars from a command and conquer tournament and it made me feel great.

Congrats on the Command & Conquer win! Do they still have cash prizes for that particular game?

So? How do you feel? No-life? I don't even want to win money with it. Nothing, this is a game I play for fun, not for money. 

How do I feel? Actually, I feel kinda proud to actually have earned money for playing a game that I enjoy.

No life? The main reason I've been away from RCT is that I've been busy as a kinetic artist working gigs from Las Vegas to Belgium. Heck, I just picked up $250 on Friday for teaching the art of stick-bomb making, and this Thursday a local reporter is coming over to interview me and videotape an attempt to beat my own record of a 2,102-stick bomb. Besides my art career, I have a new girlfriend, and am working on an epic time-travel novel. I don't knock people who are still playing RCT, but don't accuse me of having no life.

Besides, what's really cool is to play something one enjoys--and make a few bucks from it as well. The 3 hours I spent making Cocoa Coaster were actually fun, and the money I earned was just frosting on the cake.

But, seriously, I've been curious to know if other people have entered contests for RCT and got cash prizes. I'm aware that gamers have won considerable prize money for first-person shooters and games like that, but there doesn't seem to be much money going around for God games like SimCity and RCT...