I'm not sure if this is considered gambling. The player accesses the service thru SMS or MMS. They are required to answer a single question with a price value (ie. 7.35) representing the price value for a product found at a local shop. So the question could be "what is the price on Maxtor 40 Gig HDD?". You must SMS back with the exact price that the local shop is selling it for. Each time you get it wrong a response SMS/MMS message is returned with advertising of the local shop (ie. Did you know Future Shop is better than... or The price for this so-and-so item is) and the same question is repeated back "what is the price on Maxor 40 Gig HDD". Once you get the price value right you move on to the next round. The player will be competing against other players on the mobile network and so must try to guess the exact value before the others to make it into the next round. After making it thru the rounds successfully you win the offered prize (ie. Apple Airport) which can be picked up at the local shop. Offer a JAVA app so that a player's friends can participate by only offering price suggestions to you during play.

The local shop donated the prize free of charge to be won by the player in exchange for SMS/MMS advertising thoughout the rounds. We make money off the SMS/MMS activitiy which could cost a bit more than a standard SMS/MMS submission.

Is this considered gambling, even though the element of chance isn't necessarily here since the player must guess the exact price of a value which is publicly available at the local shop? And the financial risk is just SMS/MMS submissions rather than actual cash, i guess?
-- quantass, Jul 11 2004

interesting [+]
-- Urban Kayaker, Jul 11 2004


marvelous, truly marvelous
-- andrew1, May 04 2005


cool
-- quantass, Mar 30 2008



random, halfbakery