Splinterlands: My Pragmatic Perspective
I’ve been asked if I thought people could still make money in Splinterlands on various occasions. I believe so, but I’d advise cautiously approaching any investment in the game assets. My policy has always been to dump the rewards and blog about them rather than build my portfolio, and so far, it seems foresightful. I consider the in-game NFTs risky assets. By participating in various challenges, on the other hand, you can easily earn $10-20 each week, half of which is in liquid almost-stablecoin that you are free to swap for anything you want instantly. Call it a conservative approach, if you will, yet as a non-gamer, I find it tailored to my mindset. And quite profitable. Here are my general insights on the game and the current situation.
On Investing in Game Assets
Many people spent a small fortune on assets when Splinterlands was ranked as the number one game on DappRadar, onboarding over 200k new players monthly (a good share of them were bots, but still). The prices dropped significantly, and these 2021 investors have been looking for opportunities to sell at a profit since. If you buy wisely now, you’ll be in a much better position than they are. That’s for cards; I am not involved in other game assets. I did buy several land plots a while ago, but then I sold them before the price fell to a fraction of what it used to be.
If you’re considering joining the game now, the current dip could be a great opportunity, given that you pay with fiat and not crypto. I can imagine spending $50-100 on purchasing and renting cards would not be a waste of money, and if you use the battles and experience you gain for blogging, you can get the investment back in a few weeks, even if the price of your cards drops to zero in the long term. My tradeable cards are worth about a quarter of their original value, though, and I play with Soulbound Edition and Gladiators that I couldn’t dump yet. It still works for me.
On Play2Earn Concept
Games are supposed to be fun, aren’t they? Play2Earn sounds more like a casino scheme than fun to me, or perhaps like a wannabe neat job offer description. Yet it turned out that most people did not join the game to play and have fun; they came to earn. Earning by playing was ineffective, yet you could multiply your micro-earnings by ten or even a hundred if you employed enough bots to play on your behalf. I guess we can call it crypto mining of a kind.
However, dropping prices rendered bot farming rewards inefficient, and then bots were expelled from Modern Ranked. Finally, a new fee for Wild Ranked made people turn bots off. The drop in the graph suggests that only about 10% of battles used to be played by people – and the number of human-led battles remained almost the same.
Via PeakMonsters
Does the Play2Earn concept repulse people who play games for fun and lure gamblers? Is competing with bots entertaining? Can there really be a gaming ecosystem in which people earn in the long term? And how sustainable is it? Well, I am not an expert in the field, nor am I a devout gamer. I’m among the lucky ones who made a profit, though.
On the DHF Proposal
I have no issue with supporting any good proposal by any Hive project, even though this one is labeled as “Privatizing Profits and Socializing Losses.” I effectively voted against it, supporting the Return Proposal instead due to the vagueness of this proposal. From a business perspective, I’d expect to hire the web3 marketer first, making them write down a detailed marketing plan and then approaching the Hive community with a clear vision, reasoning, KPIs, budgeting, and activity schedule. The @leofinance proposal can stand as an example, even though it seems to fail to provide its deliverables.
I am aware that there’s no guarantee even the best marketing plan ever will succeed. There are always externalities you cannot affect. A good portion of luck is needed. The market should be in your favor. However, such a proposal would look professional. If it failed, we could say the marketer and everyone else did their best, yet we wasted DHF funds. Not for the first time, not for the last.
On DAO Management
I’ve heard that the $500k is not that important for Splinterlands and that there are way more funds in its DAO, including over 100k Swap.Hive, which, by the way, rests unused somewhere. That seems to be huge mismanagement to me – if you don’t need the money, why don’t you either convert it to HBD and vest it into Savings (with a 20% APR and only a 3.5-day unlocking period), or at least power up to @steemmonsters, the account that curates game-related content? The curating APR is around 9%. I am aware that the 9k Hive per year isn’t much, but still, it’s free money that was not grabbed. Rumors have it that Splinterlands threw loads of money out the window, and this is quite a similar thing.
How much money is in the DAO, and is it used the best way? Splinterlands is a business at the end of the day, and all businesses should use their funds most effectively. What would shareholders tell management that just lets millions sit on a current account? And how much extra money would wiser funds management generate?
Final Thoughts
I’d be happy if Splinterlands continued on Hive, started onboarding new users, and even let the 2021 investors exit with some profit. I’d understand if they decided to move elsewhere, even though it would likely hurt both Splinterlands and Hive. Perhaps a mature, professional proposal would help, and so would better DAO funds management.
In my opinion, any game needs to be fun in the first place to onboard and retain real players, but I might be wrong on this one – maybe the future of Play2Earn games actually lies in bot farms. It seems that most of the recent updates and changes increased the threshold, requiring you to invest gradually more than years ago to become competitive. This does not seem to be the best onboarding policy.
Via DappRadar - from number one few years ago to 56th best web3 game. I have no clue how do they rate games though.
However, joining the game may make sense if you have the right mindset. I see ways to make small profits – not a fortune, though. The latest announcement can push the DEC price a bit higher, at least temporarily, even though the community complains about the unbind policy – I have briefly browsed the comments and spotted a single supportive one.
Anyway, fingers crossed for @simplegame and his brand new gaming concept.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
I appreciate this information and I really try to applied this Soon. 😊
I've been invested in Splinterlands since the very beginning and it has kind of become a bit of a disappointment for me. I really hope they can turn things around at some point.
Well, the game ain't fun :) People play it for the money, if there was no financial incentive, hardly anyone would play for more than few weeks.
I'm going to be honest with you. Splinterlands did very well with management of game and funds in the early years but when the bull market kicked in IDK WTF happened but the company seems to be just tossing out money left and right and they have got to get it under control before it's too late. I also voice months if not a year ago now why aren't we collecting interest on the DAO funds in a safe manner. I was written off. That easily could have been an extra $100,000 in there from interest a lone by now which would have helped at least to some degree.
Be honest :) that’s my honest opinion anyways, and I am by far not into the game enough to have a truly deep insight. I’d also be happy to be proven wrong - as it would effectively mean Splinterlands will become overly successful, my soulbound cards wouldn’t be worthless. And a bit of that success would drip on Hive too ;)
Thanks for the comment!
remember when they lost $200k odd on an ETH bridge where they lost the keys and just shrugged about it!?
Nope I didn't know about that one but for sure they got some big heads during the bull market and got slapped in the face for it now. My hopes are lesson learned but I'm not getting enough details out of the time for cost reduction of the company while also building revenue. Instead it just keeps sounding like this constant struggle which is not building confidence at all.
It was SPS and DEC for $200k that was stolen on eth/bsc bridge:
https://www.publish0x.com/behiver/latest-splinterlands-hack-reminds-us-of-the-risks-and-weak-p-xmyvxej
I stayed away from that product, simply because it never made sense, to me.
Now, that's not me saying I'm stupid and can't figure things out. That's me saying it doesn't make sense, to me. And of course when there are "thousands" in on this thinking it's somehow special, attempting to tell others, "This doesn't make sense," will just lead to several noisy responses that don't make sense.
So, you stay out of it. Let people do their thing.
Trying to learn about this product now. It's on my radar again because of that silly proposal. The most viewed proposal in history.
For years I just couldn't figure out where all these "people" were. Oh, they don't exist. It's just bots. So it's not a game. It's a mining operation.
Man, those smoke and mirrors really fool people hey?
First of all, it’s great it made people care. Second of all, let’s keep that caring (or discussion) fair ;)
I do play it. Actually, I’ve been playing it for a while, it’s quite a good time killer in the metro, when I wait for a bus or plane or so. I’d never played it if it was not on Hive, though.
In my point of view (and I’d be happy to be proven wrong), hardly anyone would play it with no financial incentive - that’s what I stated in the post anyway. And then it cannot be a good game. I play games to have fun. I work to earn (well, i genuinely enjoy my job, but that’s another story).
Sadly, this opinion is backed by the graph in my posts. It was mainly bot traffic until recently. So yes, smoke and mirrors. And a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
It is possible to market a game to people, and it is possible those new entrants could bring value and stability to the entire Hive operation thingamajig.
How awkward of a situation to be in though. All that good vibes and hype was sold to this populace the entire time. And only now, it's time to get started and take things seriously?
As I battle through this, trying to figure things out, the last thing I want to do is insult anyone. Maybe I sound a little "unfair" but I'm not coming from that angle and attacking. And I can't say I've been misled because I didn't put myself in the position to be misled, so therefore there's no hard feelings.
Growing up, none of this existed. It's new and the only way to get an education is to learn on the fly, as things progress. Can bring the basics to the table but majority must be studied in the moment, on the go.
Studying people and how they interact and react with something new is another step one must take while gathering intelligence. Bring the basics to the table there as well.
I think you and I both know "The Card Game" is a proven successful business model. And "collectables" can hold value.
But you can't just make a clone and force it to happen. Things like "renting" cards never made sense. You'd never let someone touch your cards. Get it back, it's creased and loses value. Rarity and scarcity. You want to own something people want but can't have. As the brand grows, and more people get in, the value of what you own rises. From observing from a distance, it seems like they created new cards in a way that could only make previous cards useless. Yet the "market" says those cards still hold value. That value doesn't come from people wanting to buy them. It's just there?
That never made sense to me. Looked more like "planned obsolescence," which is also a fancy way to make money, but not when consumers want to collect and hold something of value. Very few collect burnt out light bulbs and there's not much demand for those.
Again, I'm on the outside. I have not taken a deep dive. It just never looked like water I wanted to swim in.
I love games. More than crypto. Maybe that's why. Games are fun. Crypto makes people think of the fun they'll be having, after, when it's time. More like a fun dream. Even a nightmare can be exciting. Eventually, people wake up.
*edit: pardon my edits. Several typos. In a rush, didn't proofread until after for some dumb reason.
I too have no intention to offend, nor to insult or use fallacies for arguments. It's not my style anyways.
The thing with collectables is that you don't depend on their origin, be it nature (minerals, butterflies,..), men kind of by accident (coasters, stamps,...), or businesses (various card collectables, Lego,...). If Lego, the card issuer, or a brewery printing your favorite coasters go under, people can still collect, exchange, or even trade the items. If Splinterlands go under, there's a useless random hash that identify cards. So technically, everybody rents the content, owing strings like this: C7-399-8HFLH25URK. It is, by the way, a card of mine. Do you want it?
I hope there would be entertaining games on Hive, the blockchain is more suitable for this purpose than any other. @simplegame is developing a bunch of them, check out what he's doing. Holozing could be a huge one too if the promises are ever fulfilled.
I see a huge potential in some kind of a Pokémon-like game, although I've never played it. Some kind of enhanced/augmented reality which combines your physical location and activities with game environment. A bit like next generation Geocaching.
I love games and creativity too by the way :)
I have looked into what @simplegame is up to. He's probably going to be really mad I tagged him lol.
I hope they do well.
I hope my efforts contribute. Constantly creating awareness everywhere I go, trying to encourage people to see the opportunities available here for the average consumer of the internet. Damn that's exhausting...
Been getting nowhere since 2016.
In early 2017 I created some art and wrote a post called The Blood Dragon Card. There I described my plans to create a card game, revealing the first card. The whole idea was still somewhat unfinished. Card was just a prototype. Then I quietly got to work creating some of the art meant to be cards, eventually. I'd include the art in some of my posts, but talk about other things, or write fiction, funnies, shitposts. Never letting anyone know my plans.
I scrapped the project, for several reasons. Some of my earliest work was garbage compared to what I can pull off today. Even though the images appearing to be a bit rough around the edges was meant to be part of the lore, I realized I could do better and thought that would be more appealing.
So then I started creating far more detailed faces, again, meant to be part of this project. Did the same thing where I'd release it but this time maybe include some lore but not always. Never telling anyone my plans.
So there I am building up this pile of money. Thinking I could use that to pay some people to help build the actual game.
Well. Things didn't work out. Then AI popped up and I become so demotivated that I gave up. What took me years to achieve, I could now do in ten minutes. Devalued digital art. And if anyone wanted my style for their product, it would be too costly. So, yeah. Kinda screwed.
Never did the NFT thing myself because, yeah, you're right. I could have taken the collectible approach without a game. But once I saw people spending thousands on pixelated mass produced junk, I knew I'd be ripping myself off if I charged less and knew people wouldn't pay if I charged more. So that business went out the window.
Now I'm just, here. lol
I guess you could rename yourself to @NoPathLeftToTake ;))
lol just some random OG standing on the side of the road watching the cars go by. Yelling at clouds.
Whatever. I still had fun.
I'm looking forward to getting old enough to yell at clouds the right way ;)
I don't think I'll ever figure that out. But you know I'm going to keep trying...
:)
I kind of have the same thought in regards to both Splinterlands and their proposal, you've written out the thoughts decently and in a respectful manner, atleast in my eyes!
You've mentioned @simplegame, he's more applying some kind of #play2own, right? That's a proven concept, like mtg, pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. Really curious how his games will turn out! :D
I've tried to do it in a respectful manner ;) And honestly.
Yes, he calls it #play2own. There's no real product yet, though, let's see how he handles it.
Položil jsi otázku, která v jiné souvislosti napadá i mě.
"Sportují sportovci pro prachy, nebo je to baví? Je to aspoň kombinace obojího?"
Hádám, že jsi nikdy nesportoval, tedy na nějaké vyšší úrovni :) Kdyby tě to nebavilo, nikdy v tom nebudeš tak dobrý, aby sis vydělal. V některých sportech je to snazší, fotbalista v 5. anglické lize si pravděpodobně vydělá víc než český učitel, a to i po zohlednění kupní síly a platové hladiny. V české prvoligové Dukle mají fotbalisté základ něco málo nad průměrnou pražskou mzdou. V mnoha českých nejvyšších soutěžích méně lukrativních sportů nejsou zdaleka všichni profesionálové a pracují třeba na půl úvazku. Ale garantuju ti, že kdokoli v nich hraje, to dělá proto, že ho to sakra baví.
Ne, nikdy jsem nesportoval. Jako dítě jsem denně hrál ping-pong a fotbal. Ale to nebyl sport, to byla zábava.
Imho sportovat pro peníze je strašně málo, i když i tací nepochybně jsou. Pár fotbalistů už například přiznalo, že ta dřina a ten sport je zase tolik netankuje, nicméně pragmaticky došli k tomu, že by byla škoda ten talent a slibně rozjetou kariéru nevyužít a nevytřískat z ní maximum.
Majorita z nich je ale ochotná nepředstavitelně dřít. A ta dřina tě fakt musí bavit a musíš si jí svým masochistickým způsobem užívat. Bez toho to úplně nejde.
Pro příklad máme třeba kluky okolo 13-14 let (basketbal), kteří místo toho, aby jeli s rodičema na Maledivy, jedou na týden na kemp, kde mají 3-4 fázový tréninky, dohromady třeba i 4-6 hodin denně. A když mají volno, tak si hází na koš.
Potkal jsem se v životě asi s nejodvrácenějšími stránkami sportu... Začal jsem psát odpověď. Ale ono je to na článek. Tak napíšu článek. Kontroverzní, samozřejmě. Dnes. Zítra...
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I haven't played Splinterlands or so, just seen some videos talking about the game on Youtube and some people seems to have a big issue with the game not being fun.
But anyways, regardless of that, if I just look at the DHF proposal. I just think we need to be careful with what we fund and what types of return we might get. Maybe Splinterlands will bring back more value than it take, maybe not.
I'm still not convinced yet, but liked the honest discussion on the town-hall yesterday.
Honestly, it is not fun. People would hardly play it with no financial incentive - and then it's kind of a part time job and not a game.
That must be one of the main problems, like you suggest in the post. Games are suppose to be fun, first priority. A bonus would be that you can make some money while doing it. Think crypto-shots get that right
I can't tell, they're not really my cup of tea. Plus I had some glitches when I tried to play it.