7 Real-World Prizes You Could Win in Games (But Probably Wouldn't)

usually the only thing you get for finishing a video game is a sense of accomplishment or in some special cases repetitive strain injury but while a sense of accomplishment is nice it has no real world monetary value which is a shame because there have been a handful of video games through the long and storied history of the medium that have offered real-world prizes to their very best players that range from cash to literal treasures to something life-changing whatever that might be i guess repetitive strain injury counts as life-changing anyway consider these rare and special real world prizes you could win by playing video games and without having to dedicate your life to becoming an esports champion because who has the time now when we released it the first real question was what is inside the cube and i said and i'm known for these things i said there's something amazing in the side something life-changing inside well this is what this video is about peter molyneux is a game developer known mostly for two things one good games from the past like the fable series or theme hospital [Music] and two absolutely outrageous claims about features that were 100 not be in the finished version of his games you've got to put these goggles on goggles put them on like this okay what like that claire has been thrown a pair of goggles notice what she did this wasn't acted she felt the need to reach down for those goggles anyway thanks to the second one we were somewhat skeptical in 2012 when old p molly announced the first game from his new studio 22 cans called curiosity what's inside the cube the idea of the game was that players would all work together to tap away at a big white cube slowly reducing it in size until one lucky player would chip away the final cube to reveal what pete described as a life-changing prize someone's written some expletives on the uh to be fair it was a brilliant bit of marketing the idea of a secret and valuable prize being hidden in the middle of this cube was definitely enticing and i'll admit i did my time tapping away on that 3d square back in 2012 when i could have been enjoying the london olympics or my youth but on the 26th of may 2013 an 18 year old scottish man named brian henderson tapped molyneux cube for the final time and was greeted by this video in which it is revealed that what was inside the cube was in fact a tiny peter molyneux i'm one lucky person has reaped the rewards of their hard efforts how can anything be worth all that effort as peter goes on to explain the life-changing prize in question was related to 22 cannes next game the god simulator goddess and so what is in the center is something that only we can grant and it is the ability to be a digital god as a reward for his hard work tapping blocks henderson was to be named the god of gods in goddess which i don't know what that means and i'm not sure peter does either you you the person who reached the center will be the god of all people that are playing goddess you will decide intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played by and here's the life-changing bit you will share in the success of the product every time people spend money on goddess you will get a small piece of that pie henderson was also to share in the financial success of goddess receiving 1 of the profits from the game which sounds good until you realize that the game never actually properly released 22 cans spent months ignoring henderson's emails and then peter molyneux announced in 2017 that the game had made no money and that henderson would not be receiving anything i absolutely love what i do i love being a designer i love making games that that aren't that are out there to play pretty bold of them to have uploaded this video to youtube and kept it up long after it became apparent that it was all totally now that i think about it i bet they're getting absolutely roasted in the comments oh yeah probably a good idea actually never mind an abstract and allegedly life-changing prize here's a video game that allowed you to win a very real cash prize and you didn't even have to leave the pub fans of the lost genre of arcade shooting games will be familiar with the point-blank series which swapped somewhat realistic shooting of terrorists and criminals for a series of colourful challenges that involved two characters who looked a bit like if bert and ernie had human skin [Music] well that sesame street ruined forever there was however an extremely rare version of the point blank 3 arcade machine called aim for cash this version of the game allowed you to build up prize money as you played and if you managed to complete the near impossible final stage you'd win real spendable money up to 40 pounds which is enough to buy just over half a video game these days that might sound like a relatively modest prize but the developer's fatal mistake was making aim for cash for the most part still a game of skill that meant players who were particularly good at point blank 3 and learned some of this version's unique exploits could keep playing over and over again win hundreds of pounds and effectively empty the machine [Music] one of the few ways your shooting skills can earn you money beyond becoming a professional bank robber just to be clear we're not suggesting you do that all this is probably the reason why aim for cash is so rare and difficult to find in the wild these days it's almost certainly the only coin operated arcade machine out there that could actually lose the arcade operator more money than it earns them still they could make that back and more by simply robbing a bank they shouldn't though obviously i can't believe i'm still having to explain this this is chris cashman and i'm speaking to you from microsoft studios where i host one versus 100 on xbox live one versus 100 live where television meets video games live for a brief shining moment at the end of the naughties we had the xbox 360 game one versus 100 an online battle royale trivia game based on the tv game show of the same name in one versus 100 you either played as the one or as one of the 100 audience members also known as the mob everyone played as their custom xbox avatars because in 2009 xbox avatars was still a thing long before microsoft abandoned them all on a cold dark server of eternal torment why did they program them to feel torment just seems cruel to me anyway if you were the one you had to do better at answering trivia questions than the 100 eliminating members of the mob by getting questions right where they got them wrong but if you got one question wrong you're out so basically fortnite only instead of guns you had trivia and instead of back bling you had trivia and instead of anthropomorphic bananas you had trivia also real prizes i say real prizes the top prize was 10 000 microsoft points as opposed to the tv show's top prize of one million dollars but still back before microsoft points were retired that was like 125 bucks to spend on stuff in the xbox store 125. win more prizes if the mob won on the other hand the remaining members would split the winnings and each get an xbox live arcade game also pretty sweet these questions are all about video games thousands of fresh this one the questions live game show video game hybrid was a bit of a hit with over 2.5 million downloads in the first couple of months and some 200 000 players logging on to play every day but then microsoft canned it in 2010 after just two seasons the tantalizing news for trivia fans still hurting over that cancellation is that as part of xbox's fan fest event in october 2020 xbox chief phil spencer hinted that hey maybe the xbox series x could get a live trivia game in the vein of one versus 100 all of its own maybe we should even be building our own trivia game like from our past and uh allow people to play a tribute game more often um maybe that could happen phil that's all i needed to hear well that and that you're going to release all of the xbox avatars from their cold dark cyber prison they're suffering phil [Music] the legendary game wolfenstein 3d is known for a lot of things popularizing the first person shooter genre launching the careers of famous game developers john carmack and john romero teaching an entire generation of kids that it's okay to eat dog food off the floor [Music] what it's enriched with marobon jelly what you might not know is that on release wolfenstein 3d one of the most famous games in history also had a secret real world prize built into it the way to win was to navigate a fiendish maze of near identical square rooms hidden behind a secret wall in episode 2 level 8 and find this message the idea was that the first player to find their way to the room would win a copy of every game apogee made for life by calling up apogee's telephone support lines back when video games had those and saying the word aardwolf presumably because the word aardwolf is not something you'd ever say by accident the only problem is this flawlessly conceived contest actually had to be cancelled before it was even officially launched that's because as soon as wolfenstein 3d was released it was so immediately popular that map editing programs and cheat apps sprung up that would allow you to shortcut your way to the message the worst part is the poor telephone support staff still had to hear the word aardwolf bellowed down the phone at them over and over again for about the next decade hope they got a pay rise they won't have got a pay rise the thing is were it not for these cheap programs and map editors we reckon it genuinely would have taken quite a while for people to find this thing in 2016 former apogee employee joe sigler revealed on his blog a map that showed not just the extent of the maze of identical rooms but also the complexity of the route required to find the hidden message i don't know that seems pretty hard wolfenstein aardwolf i said it by accident [Music] on the surface trials evolution is a fairly straightforward motocross game where your goal is to either ride a little motorbike across some obstacles or shatter your rider's pelvis in as creative a manner as possible [Music] it is usually the pelvis one yeah however there is a deeper game lying just under the surface of trials evolution a ludicrously complex real-world riddle that makes the da vinci code look like the junior jumble it all started when trials evolution players noticed random letters written on signposts throughout the game cunning players translated these letters into a series of controller inputs via a sophisticated substitution cipher the series of inputs when performed under specific circumstances unlocked an actual original properly recorded song [Music] wake up and listen the secrets are hidden in the brighter toes wasn't this finland's eurovision entry in 2005. obviously no one is just going to make beautiful music for its own sake the very idea so trials fans immediately ran that song through a spectrograph and revealed another hidden message this time in morse code which led to a website on which a series of symbols began appearing once players decoded a message written in these symbols to reveal a super cheery phrase predicting the eventual demise of the universe that's when the real world treasure hunt began entering that phrase produced a block of text instructing intrepid players to go to helsinki to enter a keypad locked building and to tell the intercom that you were there to find the riddle master which to me sounds like a pretty good way of getting yourself murdered by a riddle obsessed serial killer in actual fact the first person who did do this was given a map to the location of a cache of treasures in a finnish graveyard including an antique pocket watch and a small chest containing a key the treasure also included coordinates leading to three other locations around the world a cemetery in bath england a hole in a wall underneath the sydney harbour bridge in australia and a field in san francisco where players found hidden treasure chests each containing a key and a mysterious plaque that read it seemed like forever ago on the reverse of the plaques however was the final piece of the puzzle revealing the eventual location in time and space of the prize waiting for the indefatigable players who had come this far it read midday in year 2113 first sat in org one of five keys will open the box underneath the eiffel tower what's in the mystery box we don't know and the players who followed these threads won't know for another 91 years trials creative lead anti-ill vasuo the creator of the riddle has stated that he has made arrangements for there to be something for the people with the keys to open in 2113 seeing as he won't be there on account of being long dead honestly it had better be something pretty bloody good considering all this build up like a new gamer pick or a trailer for trials eight ooh awesome microsoft points pretty sure they'll be back by then and the only stable currency on the face of it sword quest is the laziest thing you could call a fantasy video game it'd be like calling your fps gun shooter or a game in which you steal cars grand theft auto and yet in the case of the ancient atari 2600 game sword quest the name was accurate because by playing the game you could participate in a real quest to win a series of real world treasures culminating with a gem studded silver sword worth over 50 000 or 180 000 in today's money sword quest was planned as a series of four games themed around the elements of earth fire water and air and required you to move through a series of labyrinths collecting objects and placing others in rooms based on various world philosophies such as the western zodiac the kabbalah tree of life and the i ching which sounds impressive until you remember this game came out on the atari 2600 and looked like this yeah the real draw of swordquest however was the real world prizes each game in the series contained clues that would reveal hidden messages in an accompanying comic book that came bundled with the game and once you'd solved the puzzle you could mail away to atari for the chance to win one of swordquest's treasures which included a gem studded talisman a platinum chalice a solid gold crown and the philosopher's stone a large piece of white jade in a dual encrusted golden box the four winners would then be entered into a final contest to win the grand prize the sword of ultimate sorcery which had a silver blade and a gold handle covered in sapphires emeralds diamonds and rubies unfortunately for fans of blinged out blades the video game crash of 1983 meant that cash-strapped atari wasn't really in a position to be handing out solid gold crowns to people and the sword quest series was cancelled along with the contest still at least two lucky players did receive prizes the talisman which was melted down so the winner could buy a new car and the chalice which still exists in that winner's private collection the fate of the other treasures remains a mystery although given the amount of time that has passed there are only two options one they got melted down or two the president of atari secretly has them in his office and parades around with them in between meetings it's one of the two another one from the 1980s here where game designers seemed obsessed with the idea of hiding real world treasure hunts in their games again possibly because the games look like this [Music] this is paimania a 1982 british text adventure for the zx spectrum that featured puzzles a weird mascot called the pie man [Music] he seems nice and on the b side of the game cassette a truly bizarre theme song that i guess you were supposed to listen to while playing sadly this was the british eurovision entry in 1982 nilpoi the goal of pymania was to find a golden sundial but the twist was that this sundial actually existed in the real world players who figured out the clues to its location had to go there at a certain time on a certain day of the year where they were told they would meet the pie man himself who would give them their prize of a golden sundial worth six thousand pounds [Music] although it took three years the prize was eventually claimed in 1985 by two women who figured out the clues that led them to the littlington white horse in east sussex where according to a contemporary games magazine the famous pie man clambered out from a clump of bushes and to the strains of his own signature tune presented the two lucky ladies with the coveted golden sundial which honestly sounds like something out of a horror film especially when you see the photograph of what a life-size pie man actually looks like give it a try i would pay 6 000 pounds not to have to be anywhere near that thank you very much give it a try maniac thank you so much for watching this video about the real world prizes you could win in video games um if you'd like to watch some more videos we've got another couple up here which definitely won't involve me eating dog food i can promise that uh and if you'd like to like and subscribe that would be great super helps us out now uh if you'll excuse me i need to get through a lot more of these cans to be in with a chance of winning a grooming set lovely at least i'm getting complete nutrition in jelly

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 182,704

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, 7 things, countdown, list, top 10, top ten, top 5, top five, listicle, funny, lol, wtf, weird, prizes, real world, cash, money, win, treasure, sword, chalice, talisman, curiosity cube, trials, riddle

Id: MRVoucqMtWE

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021