So if Netflix fleeced a bunch of software engineers out of their money at a rigged poker tournament, then used their ill-gotten gains to instigate a project with the same outcome as the Netflix prize, that wouldn’t be a scam?
The only sensible way I can frame it to have one be “scammy” and the other not is to have the prize-seekers not really caring about the prize, but caring about the edification / signalling / prestige of triumph in a gamified and high-profile problem. This seems credible, but it also offshores some of the benefit of all-pay auctions to another mechanism.
So if Netflix fleeced a bunch of software engineers out of their money at a rigged poker tournament, then used their ill-gotten gains to instigate a project with the same outcome as the Netflix prize, that wouldn’t be a scam?
The only sensible way I can frame it to have one be “scammy” and the other not is to have the prize-seekers not really caring about the prize, but caring about the edification / signalling / prestige of triumph in a gamified and high-profile problem. This seems credible, but it also offshores some of the benefit of all-pay auctions to another mechanism.
Yes, I don’t think that the motive is important to its being a scam, but I can see how one might think that.