Andrev Nox
SOMER Blink
Cognitive Development
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Posted - 2011.05.01 08:07:00 -
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Edited by: Andrev Nox on 01/05/2011 08:12:26
Apologies for the delay, Somer's out of town, and I just discovered the thread. :)
 Originally by: Akita T
(no idea how many special events or bonuses or whatever the heck incentive program he might use)
Since we're celebrating, I'll release some statistics we haven't publically given before. :)
In terms of ONLY promos, 1,336,650,543,223.72 ISK has been given away to date, and the average given away daily goes up as our customer base goes up. On the 24 hour span during which we hit 20T total given away, we promoed off about 50b worth of kit. For the 30T celebration day, it was 90b. We also have our biggest single-item free giveaway being announced in the next couple of days, during the tail end of the Guardian-Vexor bonk currently running.
In terms of free blink credit from achievements, 1,244,483,000,000 ISK to date. We also have quite a few new achievements (and new ways of getting achievements) on the near horizon to expand this number as well. :)
As far as we're aware, we're also the largest benefactor to donate to Eve Uni, we run a scholarship program for Agony U students who can't afford tuition, and we've been talking with RVB to support what they do. We also host several private PVP tourneys for alliances with high blink membership. I'm in the process of figuring out how to host similarly styled carebear tourneys for our highsec customer base :)
And, as mentioned, we do have internal costs to pay - there are currently 23 active staff members in Blink, in jobs ranging from freighting, to data entry, to prize construction/acquisition, to prize delivery.
Originally by: Johnny May
just watch it for a while, you will see 2 - 4 pretty
young players winning most of the blinks in one or two days,
but not enough to show up in the ranking statistiks,
and those characters are changed every few days.
Every now and again, someone sees someone else win a string and this type of post pops up. I'm always happy to address it, though :)
Sometimes, a person (or group of people) wins several in a row because they buy a larger number of tickets to a specific blink. "Buying better odds" essentially.
Sometimes, a person wins several in a row just due to sheer blind luck. There was even a guy who won 3 promos in one night (during the 20T celebration.)
But with over 315,687 prizes given away (not counting the 2,546 free promo giveaways discussed above), we'd need a LOOOOTTT of alts to perpetuate a scam on the scale you're suggesting :p
And, as many others have pointed out over the months, every legitimately closed blink nets us a bit of profit. We'd be terminally stupid to rig the system in any way, as it would be the one sure-fire way to kill our business forever.
Plus, if we really wanted to go that route, we could just have simple, public "house bets" where no-one wins. This is a normal practice in casinos, both virtual and otherwise, and is acceptable to most folks. We don't run Blink like that on purpose. It's just more fun if there's always at least one person celebrating when each Blink closes. :)
If you like, you're free to evaluate our method for choosing winners. The code we use to get the number is here. As you can see, we draw it from random.org. You can find their real-time statistics here and several peer-reviewed papers on the quality of their random-generator here.
Hope that helps :)
PS - Always blink on 7. We rigged 7 to win.
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