I have set up a content submission system where registered users can submits articles, screenshots, and trailers for upcoming games on a game's stock page. Users simply click on a link and a submission form will appear on the right side of the window (instead of an annoying pop-up). The form asks for details such as the link to the content a user wants to submit, the source of the content, headline, and date if available.

Users will later be able to vote on how good they think the user submitted articles, screen shots, and trailers represent the upcoming game. The top rated articles, screenshots, and trailers will appear on the stock page. Users will later earn DKP for submitting content.

I got a lot of work completed on the trading system. Orders are now filled when matched and cash is adjusted from the user's balance. Order status is available to track whether an order is still open, filled, or cancelled. Users can use this page to cancel an order. The stock pages also now reflect the last traded stock price, the all-time high, low, and volume of the stock.

The Portfolio page lists the user's current available cash for trading and long and short positions. The long and short positions tables list the stock names, average price the user bought or shorted the stock, the number of shares of that stock in the portfolio, the current market price, the current value based on the market price, how much the position has changed in value in cash and percentage.

To prepare for setting up a prediction market exchange, I first set up a simple account system. Checking out games and their stock information will not require logging in. However, to trade the stock and view your own account information, you will have to log in. I set up a page for the user to customize a Profile. I also added an Order Book to the stock pages that is only viewable after logging in.

Early functions of the trading system were also implemented. Users can submit orders that will appear in the Order Book. The trading system will match orders by price.

I've set up a MySQL database on my PowerBook to store all the data regarding each stock. I think a good way for people to get a taste of an upcoming game would an opportunity to quickly read previews from various reputed game review sites, see screenshots, watch trailers, and possibly try a demo. All of this content would be aggregated through links other websites who focus on providing such content.

I set up a key word search for searching video games by Title. I also set up a navbar on the side to browse games by platform and genre.

My name is Brian Shiau. I have been working on applying prediction markets to finance and consulting applications for the past couple of years. My advisors and I have discussed in depth how prediction markets can serve as great information aggregating tools for consulting and market research. However, participants in such prediction markets often get bored and so the markets cannot garner sufficient trading interest to maintain liquid trading and therefore do not predict any useful information.

Instead, I have decided to experiment by launching a prediction market for trading something fun--video games. I'm a gamer myself. I enjoy reading about upcoming games and gauging whether a game will catch enough buzz so that their multiplayer experience will be worthwhile when the game comes out. But there are just too many games to read every preview out there. I had just learned that Chris Taylor is working on Supreme Commander (the spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation, one of my favorite games) due out in early 2007. The game had been presented at E3 2006 and won the award for best strategy game, but apparently I had missed it in the deluge of news on Sony PLAYSTATION 3 and Nintendo Wii.

My idea is to create a website where gamers could learn more about upcoming games, then express their opinion about it by buying or selling a stock that serves as a proxy for the game's buzz. A visitor could then quickly see which upcoming games are attracting the most buzz--those with the highest value stock or the most trading volume. Essentially, this could be a new way of aggregating gamers' expectations for upcoming games and a faster way of identifying which games to learn more about.

So far, I've developed a homepage explaining the project and a template page for presenting a game and its stock.