The History of Battlejack
Wagering has always been a compulsive vice of man. It has come in many different forms throughout time, from the simple dice or card game, to betting on professional sports or the allure of mini-games on video slot machines. Enterprising individuals have always striven to envision and create the next big attraction in gambling. The latest face of the gambling world started with artificial interactive environments. Designers originally started with high definition settings that reacted instantly to input from the players. Players could visit the most spectacular casinos in the world, or play with artificial digitized versions of the greatest poker players in history, all without ever leaving their house. The technology quickly grew to allow multiple real world players to interact with each other in hosted private artificial environments. Casinos began to create server farms where hundreds of thousands of players could log on to play in tournaments hosted by the casino without a need for the actual casino. It wasn’t long before entrepreneurs began to see the possibilities of providing an action element to the games of chance using this interactive environment. From that point, much like themed video slot machines, these tournaments developed themes of their own. Casino owners discovered that they could change the way Blackjack was played to create a more competitive environment. Instead of having all the players compete against the Dealer, they instead competed against each other. They renamed it Battlejack due to its more combative nature, however most of the conventional rules of Blackjack still apply. The dealer would still control many of the aspects of the game, but by changing who the players competed against it created a much more popular game that could be played tournament style like a conventional poker tournament.
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The most popular Battlejack tournament is Arena. Designed as a mesh of Battlejack and military combat, a player creates a Soldier, and that soldier fights in an arena style battlefield against the other players and the Dealer. While the actions of the soldier are controlled by the player, the outcome of each action is determined most often by the results of a single hand of Battlejack. Players are often grouped into squads, and while they are competing against other players, there is fierce competition among every squad’s soldiers to be the one to “clean out” an enemy soldier. Much of the poker terminology in the game is interchangeable with the player's slang of warfare and combat terms that has developed over the years. It is often easy to tell the difference between players that are gamblers playing to win chips and players that are gamers who play for the Player versus Player (PVP) aspects of the game.
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A few years later, after all the bugs were worked out of the system, and the growth of new players had hit a plateau, there came the next step, tournament streams. Getting people to log in and play themselves was a great income stream, but it wasn't main stream, a large percentage of people would never log onto a server to wager the little bit of hard earned money they had. However, they would pay a nominal fee to watch it live, streamed into their homes and fed to them Point of View style from the eyes of their favorite player's soldier. It was a success.
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A by-product of the streaming broadcasts was the introduction of subtle advertisements in the matches themselves. In the case of Arena, the combat options started out quite simple, each soldier had a rifle, a pistol, a knife and grenades, but as Arena grew in popularity, the marketing potential grew as well. Manufacturers of all manners of gear for the advancement of warfare invested millions into the casinos to get them to integrate their gear into the game. Now players are not limited to attacking with a simple rifle, their soldier can head into the Arena equipped with the latest HREF Assault rifle. As the upper echelon of players became established through a worldwide instant update ranking system, players began to realize that cashing out their chips hurt their rank, which caused the most hardcore players to seek out sponsorships to help them take care of real world costs, thereby turning the game into a profession career. So sponsorship of individual gamblers or even whole teams by a company is commonplace now. Every individual or team victory is instant credibility for a company’s new cutting edge gear. In fact, research shows that whoever sponsors the individual or team champion at the International Arena Tournament has the sales of their gear triple the next year. Obviously the desire and pressure to be a multi-year reigning champion is immense. So while the goal of any player is to accrue as many chips as possible; most elite players never cash out their chips, instead keeping their Winnings as high as possible to maintain the best possible World Ranking and also in case they need to draw from it in a future match.
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As the rewards became bigger, the competition became more and more fierce. Out of this desire to win at any cost came a wave of hackers, players attempting to beat the system by any means possible. At first, corruption of the system ran rampant, players lost fortunes and their ranks overnight. In a few short months, hacking was nearly the end of Arena. However, after extensive testing in competitive matches the creators of Arena decided that while outright hacking of a Arena match would be considered cheating, result in an immediate lifetime ban from any Arena game, and the pursuit of criminal charges, “Stratagems” would be allowed. Stratagems in the end, added a new layer of strategy to the game. The sponsors agreed to allow surprises for two reasons. First, if they didn’t, their marketing tool would disappear. Secondly, there is no equivalent to Stratagems outside of Arena which means that no matter what, there would still be a consumers looking for the best real world gear money can buy.
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So the time is now, and you have decided to take a chance at greatness, so player, create a soldier, buy in, and prepare for battle, it's time to enter the Arena!
