Swordquest Earthworld Tragedy.

[JohnReaper]

I recently found out that the old Atari reward for completing the sword quest earth world challange, the 25k amulet of awesomeness. was melted down and sold to a gold collector...

I feel like a bit of gaming history was lost. your thoughts on the matter?

If a company had a promotion like that in games now. How do you think the community would react? would there be an upheval would people post strategy guides? Would there even be a prize as cool as the old items before?

 

[Rawne1980]

To be fair, it was valued at 25K in 1982 ... it would have been worth a lot more now.

On March 1, 2011, gold hit a new all-time high of $1432.57 per troy ounce[/qoute]

Compared to....

1980, $252.90 per troy ounce

That's quite a significant increase and would have netted him quite a bit of money.

Tragedy at such a rare piece being treated so, it may be but I would have done the same thing unfortunately. Money like that you just don't pass up.

And no.

I doubt we will see another prize quite like that. Let's average it off at 5 times what it was back then meaning we'd need a prize of $125k and I can't name one developer/publisher that would give something like that away.

 

[Veylon]

It's an interconnected, hacker-friendly world now. If you put up a huge prize that can only be found through clues in a game, they'll be hacked out and spilt before it even hits the shelves. That particular type of competition isn't really possible now.

 

[DoPo]

Spoiler: Tangentially related but it reminds me of a slightly similar story

So this guy was doing work on his field - ploughing or something, I dunno, it was back at the end of the 1960's. He pretty much stumbles upon a statue of a pegasus made out of gold. So, after wandering briefly what to do with it, he got together with a friend of his to brainstorm it - they decided to split the loot. And they did split it. Fifty-fifty. They sawed it in two, because that's friggin' brilliant.

Spoiler: Here is a picture

And yeah, you can also see how big it was, roughly.

You can notice that only the front part is there - the guy's friend got the rear and it's now lost - there are speculations it was melted down for the gold or something. But the original finder held on to his piece. Not that he valued it but apparently he was afraid people would be asking questions where he got this from, so he hid the piece until he could find out a way to sell it off discretely. And how do you hide that? Why, he painted it white (I think it was white) and just placed it above of his front door. On the outside. Completely inconspicuous. Or not, as somehow somebody notified the police, they looked into it, and that's how the golden pegasus ended up in the museum.

I feel like a bit of gaming history was lost. your thoughts on the matter?

Yeah, it's a bit sad that it's lost. But I dunno, what else can you do with it, too? The trophy for the accomplishment is all well and good - I can understand holding on to remember it, but why does the trophy have to be made of gold, of all things? You could have it made of...I dunno, steel or something and it still look friggin' awesome. I just feel those 25K (actually, I suppose it was worth more to make it) were a bit wasted by Atari to begin with.

If a company had a promotion like that in games now. How do you think the community would react? would there be an upheval would people post strategy guides? Would there even be a prize as cool as the old items before?

I don't know what the original challenge was, but we do have alternative reality games that achieve a similar results (I think). As for in-game ones, didn't...WoW, I think, have something? Like some objectives you have to achieve in-game with little to no clues from the outside? These competitions tend to work out, I believe - after all they are competitions - posting a winning strategy would allow others to beat you.

 

[NightmareExpress]

I'm more curious as to what happened to the sword (worth 50k in 1982 dosh).
It was rumored to have been in the house of former Atari CEO Jack Tramiel (who died April 8th, 2012) but the rumor was never confirmed and Tramiel himself repeatedly said that he didn't have it.

If it wasn't destroyed (I think the blade was made out of silver with the hilt being gold with encrusted gems), I'd liken it to be some sort of relic. A real life Master Sword/Witcher blade hybrid bar the actual presence of magic. The ultimate prize that the four winners of Swordquest would have had to compete for, a (real) legend of gaming.

As to the question of "would a company do that now" with "similar prize(s)", hell no.
People wouldn't post guides (it's a contest, why would you let others win?) until after the thing was over and the prize would be a whole lot more mundane. I guess that's what makes the loss of these particular prizes rather large, as it's something that gaming will never see again (or at least for a very, very long time).