24 September 2007

Moola: Not quite ready for prime-time

I signed up for the Moola beta and got my invitation today. Moola is ostensibly a casual game site. It has an appealing pseudo-gambling structure that is sponsored by ad dollars. Every new member is given a penny and they can play a game against any other player that has a penny (the site has an auto-match feature for players). If you win, you double your money and can play on the next level. If you ever lose your money down to zero, the site gives you a penny to start over. As I said, it is very appealing for people like me who want to gamble a little but not with my own money.

As far as I can tell, Moola's real business is as a get-paid-to site. I already belong to a couple GPT sites (CashCrate and Gangster Greed) that pay you to take surveys, and Moola has similar features. There are invitations that you can give out which are really referrals that will earn you a percentage of the winnings that your friends earn. There is also a Booster Zone where can get paid to sign up for free trials of services such as RealNetworks.

What about the games? Well, that is where Moola falls off. Right now, there are only three games. Hi-Lo is a card game where you guess whether the next card you are dealt is going to be higher or lower than the last card. Ro-Sham-Bo-Ful is Rock-Paper-Scissors with a karate theme. Gold Rush is a game where you try to pick a nugget that weighs more than the nugget your opponent picks. All games are played against real people, but there is no skill involved. It is all guessing. I think I would get bored out of my skull before I even got to the $40 rung! Unless they add some games that have a little strategy, Moola will suffer the fate of the other GPT sites I belong to -- just something I do for about five minutes a week to kill time.

1 comment:

Joel said...

I admit that the Hi-lo game is completely luck for the most part, but there is some skill involved in ro-sham-bo and gold rush. Check out my blog to see why I think so.