Should we have to pay for bots?

[hrothgar]

As long as we can think of new features to add for free, we will do so.  Who decides which new things are free, which are pay? Dunno, we usually sort this stuff out as it happens.

Has it ever been attempted to where everyone could just share their own bandwidth and have a P2P Bridge Playing Network. Sort of like the file sharing P2P Networks.

 

It seems BBO biggest cost is the bandwidth

I think that you are confusing fixed cost and variable cost...

 

Assume for the moment that that you've already develop BBO and have a nice stable code base, client side code, server side code, a few nice enhancements like Full Disclosure, whatever.

 

At this point in time, the major expense is most likely related to hosting:

 

You need a nice solid server

You need a nice bid pipe.

 

In theory, a if you architected the system using a peer-to-peer network, you could distribute this cost across the total user base. Matt Clegg originally designed OKBridge using this design philosophy. As I recall, the primary motivation had less to do with cost dynamics and more to do with academic research that Matt had done when he was at UCSD.

 

Two important points to consider:

 

1. If you are consider designing a system from scrath or re-architecting the existing system you need to wory about the fixed cost of the investment.

 

2. There are VERY significant security implications. OKB had a major incident in which a player wrote his own client and used this to "peek" at all four hands. You'd need to play some complicated games to make sure that this problem didn't crop up in a lot of the easy P2P implementations.

[uday]

Bandwidth is not a major cost.