Darts-like game where coins are thrown at the target. Bullseye wins a prize, surrounding holes eat your coin
Darko SavicMar 17, 2022
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Gamify tips/micro-donations with a darts-like game in which coins are tossed at a target full of holes. Hit the bullseye and get rewarded. Any of the surrounding holes eat your coin.
Why?
A fun way to gamble with pocket change. The likelihood of loss is high but you can make up for it with dexterity and skill.
A way to gamify micro-donations/tips.
How it works
The target is full of holes, the size of the biggest coin you might have. You throw coins at it from a specified distance.
If you hit the bullseye hole, you win something. If you hit any of the surrounding holes your coin is gone. To spice things up, and increase your chances of winning, some holes can optionally be made to return the coin so that you can try again.
Automated game
The bullseye hole funnels the coin into a coin acceptor. The prize depends on the denomination of the coin. The bigger the coin, the bigger the prize.
Multiplayer game
A darts-like game rules, but with coins. Some holes are traps that will eat your coin. They are adjecent to those that will give the highest points. The game is free to play. You pay for it with lost coins that fall into traps.
Bullseye serves as a button
Hit the bullseye and:
a bridge appears so that you can cross a creek
an elevator comes to pick you up
turn on electricity/lights/water
get coffee/drink/snack
Next to a standard elevator button (in a shopping center) put an arrow that points to the target and a message "real men call the elevator by hitting the bullseye with a coin".
A few problems/solutions
What if someone is so skilled that they can hit the bullseye every time? An automated device gives out prizes like a vending machine. Have a limited number of prizes in the machine. When it's empty, the skilled thrower goes away:) Or, hand out prizes that become progressively less useful with quantity. For example single gift-wrapped rose. There is only so many you can hand out before it becomes weird.
What if people throw from a close distance to cheat? Put a physical barrier between the person and the target. For example, throw from a balcony, accross the creek, etc.
Alternative uses
Hit the bullseye while the bartender watches and get a free drink. Miss it and the coin counts as a tip.
Hit the bullseye and a company donates some money to a charity. Miss it, and only your coin goes to that charity.
How could this concept be improved? What other game can be played by throwing coins?
I like your idea and I'll try to think of a design or a feature that could make it even more interesting.
But what I wanted to share with you was a game that we played as kids every year for Easter.
Name:Shooting eggs
How does it work?
The picking of the strongest
In our country, it's an Eastern tradition to decorate eggs in different colors, patterns, or stickers. These eggs first serve as a decoration on the table and then they become food. For breakfast, we would pick an egg of our choice and hold it firmly with only one side sticking out of the fist. The other "player" would hit it with his egg and the ones that would not break would be the winner.
The shooting range
The strongest egg of the house would then be taken to the local square, where older people from the village would gather, exchanged money to have a lot of pocket change and wait for the kids. Each kid would bring his "strongest egg" and put it in front of the wall, 5-6 meters away from the "line". The old men would stand on the line and try to hit your egg with a biggest coin they have. With every miss, a kid would earn 2 Croatian kuna (approx.25 cents). If one old man misses an egg too many times, another one would come and try. When the egg gets hit, the kid would take the earned money and go.
Why?
The point was:
to occupy the kids while the people drink coffee in a local bar
make their visit to church more interesting
teach them about how they can earn money
meet the locals
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jnikola2 years ago
"Shooting donations idea"
When I wrote this, I got an idea for a coin game with donations. People could put the thing they want to donate on a small stand. The other people could use the coins to hit the "button" or a stick that releases the item. If they miss, the coin drops in a donation "pool". If they hit, they get the item. It could be done for toys, books, clothes, or anything that can be hung or put on a platform of a certain size.
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Few large, concentric holes instead of many small ones
Povilas SMar 17, 2022
The target full of small adjacent holes as you illustrated above would make coins bounce off frequently and fall on the ground, this is because a lot of the target space would be taken by their edges (the rings), the probability of hitting the edge would be high.
To avoid this, you could instead make big holes - imagine just removing the filling from the concentric compartments of the dart target and leaving only the metal rings, everything else would be just empty space. The rings would be turned into tubes and each one would have an inclination downwards to catch and collect the coins once they enter the hole and start falling down.
Then it would be like in the darts game - you'd either hit one of the concentric holes or miss the target entirely, it would still be more probable to hit the ring (edge of the hole) than in the darts game since the coin is bigger than the needle of the dart arrow, but it would be way less likely.
If you hit the largest concentric hole, your coin is gone, if you hit the middle one, it's returned to you, if you hit the center, you get a prize. The prize could be returning two coins of the same nominal value that you initially threw. There could be more different variants of winning and losing/retrieving your coin depending on how many concentric compartments the hollow dart target would have.
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Darko Savic2 years ago
I understood the problem but didn't quite understand how you would minimize the cumulative amount of ring borders from which the coin can bounce. Every hole needs a ring around it.
An alternative solution would be to place the holes deeper inwards so that even when the coin bounces it's caught by a tube and returned to the thrower. There's no reason they wouldn't try again just because the coin bounced.
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Povilas S2 years ago
Darko Savic If you have many small (about the size of a coin, slightly bigger, etc.) holes that are close to one another (like you illustrated) forming a target, the probability of hitting the edge ring of one of the small holes is way higher than the probability of hitting the edge of a large concentric hole like in a dart target.
This seems pretty obvious to me, but if you think otherwise we might try to do some calculations, I might be wrong.
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Povilas S2 years ago
I mean the concentric holes would be large, like few times the diameter of the coin, and the further the hole is from the center, the larger would be its diameter, you might be quite likely to hit the edge of the bullseye hole if it was small, but not the edges of other holes that are further away from the center.
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Donors vs Sponsors
Spook LouwMar 31, 2022
To incentivize people to "donate" who might not have wanted to, the game could be a bit of a gamble against a sponsor. Some of the holes for the coins can lead to a certain repository, which is collected and donated, while other holes lead the coin back to you, but the sponsoring company pledges to match the donation. A screen could keep track of the amount of money the sponsor owes to charity, which would motivate people to try and get big businesses to donate more. Whether you win or lose, the charity benefits, if you win you can feel like you've helped a charity without it costing you anything, and if you lose, it still goes towards a good cause.
Having people use coins should ensure that the sponsor's pledge doesn't ever really surpass what they can afford. The "game " offers them good advertising, and they would be able to claim charitable tax deductions.
Darko Savic Mar 17, 2022
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