   Rewarding Play
  Hello thereSay I had a game in which the player earned Gold, but that was it. It is a Fantasy Gambling game and I'm trying to work out a way with out introducing real currency to make players want to keep playing, apart from the enjoyment of play. Re-play ability is what I’m trying to achieve so how can I reward the player for playing?I will have a leader board (Players with most money) and sort of Player of the week things, in which a player has done something worth knowing, like won a lot or lost a lot, or won on a really stupid bet, etc.I thought of having an online shop, in which the player buys certain things for their hard earned gold. The shop would have limited stock of everything which would be replaced weekly, costs would fluctuate based on how much of everything was being bought and on how much the "house" (me) was winning or losing in the in game gambling side of things. The shop would have a selection of the following things I would assemble from various independent people and volunteers, Concept art (from the game, nice images), Gifs (small Gif images from the game), Wallpapers, screen savers, Indi music (get some nice sound artists to produce some random songs for people to test then buy), Mini games (I'm sure I could find a few programmers that wouldn't mind parting with a few chess or pongs), Display Pictures for IMs or Profiles, and colours for in game chat. I was also thinking of talking to a few other games websites, trying to get them to contribute a bit (more for advertising and networking) of their game stuff to my shop. I.E. say a game used EXP, you could buy something at my shop for 1,000 gold and get a few EXP on another game, and everybody wins.Do you think my current ideas are good? Can you think of any more? Keep in mind the all the player does is place bets and chat with the community. I will talk more about the idea if anyone is interested. Cheers in advanced.   
  You bring up some interesting ideas by letting players of your game spend their virtual cash on virtual items.I seriously think there's some great gameplay to be had with that.However, I think at least a little bit you should be focusing on making the games fun so that people want to play them?If you have a fun game you wont need rewards, but then again, rewards can make the game fun (:so shrug, i think you have an interesting idea but I would say don't skimp on the gameplay of the game itself (or games if you have more than one).even if your gameplay is simple, you can do things to hide the repetition (like by adding different modes of play - time attacks, special rules, beat the AI etc) which is what will help replayability.   