Game prizes
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We need more real-world prizes in our video games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Prizes are everywhere. Simply take a look at your TV: Sports and racing, dancing and singing contests, game shows and reality shows. Beyond the TV, we have poker and chess tournaments, even eating competitions. Prizes capture our interest, for killing terrorists ($25 million for Osama Bin Laden) and capturing common criminals.

People love prizes. They give us competition and drama. Las Vegas thrives on relatively mindless games like slot machines, craps, and blackjack, where the engagement isn’t nearly as deep as in video games. So why do the people who make video games ignore what could be the dramatic centerpiece of our best-known games, the prize?

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.