Recently been helping someone filter through some play-to-earn games. Really just with the mind of where is the shallow side, the taster before a person jumps in and pulls the dollars out.

I have simple guidelines when it comes to anything crypto really.

1. Do not pay
2. Do not pay
3. It takes time

The first two also apply to Software and Movies.

Maybe that is just because I live in Africa, but it is quite a good philosophy. Obviously I have covered the reasons when you should just cough up the money, but mainly those would be for services.

When it comes to games I have only ever paid for 1 Game officially and that is Minecraft. Now when it comes to access, I guess it would be lying to say I have not paid for Splinterlands, or Terracore.

Now the $10 down on those compared to the $30 down on Minecraft are not exactly Apples and Oranges.

Anyhow, this is where it gets tricky, because remember the guidelines; do not pay.

So which games can you actually exchange time for future earning potential. Well, on Hive there are a couple I think, when you then qualify earning potential then there are none.

Well maybe Rising Star. I think.

Anyhow not trying to bag on Hive games, they do what they do and with every iteration it gets a bit better, not to mention the base layer does not exactly provide the features some might want out of the box so it really is just a damn hassle I can imagine.

To cut a long ramble short, for now we have settled on Gods Unchained and Sunflower Land. GU is on a second layer Eth chain, which I guess can feel super sketch and frankly I don't know if someone could ever get their few cents given you need to likely move to Eth to even cash out.

Then Sunflower Land is on Polygon, inherently that means it should be easier to ever cash out.

Further down the list of things that might be worth trying with just blood, sweat and tears would be Sandbox and Decentraland.

What all of these have in common is not really potential payout, because frankly I do not know if any of them are worth a dime.

They have in common that you do not need a bloody dime and that they have actual functional games that you freely spend time on.

Fair enough if you want a local comparison as a Hiver this would be your first week in Splinterlands, RisingStar (kinda).

It might be that Sunflower Land - a farming sim - gets tedious after a week, I don't know, guess we will see. I know that Gods Unchained has been going strong for over 2 Years and they have the closest thing to a Triple A game you can get on blockchain. Being gracious with the A's of course. This is blockchain we are talking about.

Oh yea, the core point is, that it is very hard to find actual play to earn games that have a focus on the game and find good ways to then implement the economics. People buy brands and frankly if they don't even get a chance to like your brand then why would they cough up money for a promise your brand makes.

That promise unfortunately is implicitly that they will earn something. People will have a lot more understanding that in fact they might earn but they might also be on the losing end because someone has to be so then they ask daddy for more money because that is how you get on the winning end. In the end that is all these games are, the bullshit of saying you own your assets means almost nothing when it is not worth owning and you would think that after a few years of failed trash projects web3 would realise this by now.