Awesome I look forward to it =D!

I wonder how long it will be before we hear reports of gold farmers...

after looking at the value of questgold, i think i will pass, faster than i did with MechanicalTurk.
as i undestood, for a mug you will need to answer a few hundred questions with the highest rating.

i dont know, i usually have a higer value for my time and effort than for pennies, i mean, i like mmogs until they become work, then i ditch em.

@jtraveller: I agree. This whole system sounds wonderful in theory, but I think few will actually think the incentive is worth their precious time. It's like Warcraft without the aesthetic, and even THAT feels like a job. I think its really interesting that a major company is melding RPG mechanics into an information website though. Not necessarily a bad thing.

I think that given the fanatacism of Wikipedeans as an example, there's every chance this incentive may gather a rabid following - sure, it's unlikely to suck in any 'real' gamers but somehow the internet always seems to find fans for oddball schemes like this...

An interesting idea, but if it's as tedius as jtraveller says, then it'll put off a lot of people. Probably too many people.

The idea's not new at all, though it haven't been widely used in commercial sense. Example:
I used to be a member of one smallish forum (a few hundred active users), we had a gold system in place, where users could earn some coins for benefiting the website, by taking part in competitions etc. Then we could spend the money on some new forum features, perks, or just trade it for something between ourselves. System worked well, I think my best "purchase" was a six-digit icq number from one of the users. That was about 4 years ago.

So my point is - a lot of users would already be used to something like this, and if the "prize is right", they'll happily use it.

This whole concept of a "game outside the gaming world" does indeed work. Things like this have already been introduced in the workplace and its a proven formula to keep workers motivated. For instance someone in a Quality Control environment will earn points by reaching a certain quota and these points may be used to purchase things such as extra lunch hours or maybe even days off.

For this to work, they need to give everyone avatars. When users have enough gold, they can upgrade their avatar with new clothes.

I'm not sure whether people would answer hundreds of questions in exchange for a mug... but they might if it means they get a cool new hat for their avatar. WoW and Second Life have proven that.

@jtraveller:

Mechanical Turk was great when it started. I made something like $400 in the first couple weeks, but after that everybody jumped on the bandwagon and it became almost impossible to make any money with it because the system didn't scale well, and the sweet HITS disappeared. I miss playing "find the business" and "name that tune". That was some easy money, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

@xot:
the idea is really good, but amazon needs to give the system a bit more tought in order to make it more appealing (for me), or perhaps i just have too little time and money, which seems plausible too.

interesting idea. I think this works in real life