Gamenomics

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Recent events have got me thinking about the financial aspects of gaming. Back in the 'olden days' video games were just about fun. We would pump our coins into arcade machines for a few minutes of blasting things and maybe a chance to get on the high-score table. Later home computers and consoles let us do the same at home, but you would generally have to pay up front. Of course there were free games and piracy was rife in the home computer world. You would still not generally make money. At some point we got on-line games where you could buy extra items as you went along to improve your progress and there were markets where you might sell those you could find in the game.

Most of my gaming was in the earlier eras with a late bloom when we got our Wii. In the last few years I have discovered various blockchain games and got into some on Hive. They put a different twist on things as you can be earning things with serious value and that may be more of a reason for people to play than the actual gameplay.

SPS

@splinterlands recently introduced their SPS token that is being airdropped to players in amounts depending on the assets you hold. I have played the game for years, but did not anticipate this sort of return. You can stake what you get for a nice income, but it looks like only about 11% is being staked for now. I suspect a lot of people are selling it for a quick profit. I have found the game to be quite money-driven with a big push to get people to buy card packs and then land that could be pretty expensive. You would expect that the largest land parcels are being bought primarily as investments.

Splinterlands can also be profitable if you win good cards and sell them. I just tend to do the daily challenges and sell spare cards to get DEC to spend on others. My deck is worth some $1000s according to Peakmonsters, but I am not desperate to cash out as some of the valuable cards help a lot in my battles. The prices for some are just crazy and I cannot afford to level up certain cards I would like to improve. I wonder how many people are willing to pay those prices and what they expect to make from them.

Splinterlands has tolerated accounts that appear to be bots for some time and those are obviously purely for profit. The rules were changed to reduce what they could make if they were selling off their cards, but it still goes on. I expect they cost little to run, so can still be profitable.

The game seems to be bringing in a lot of new players recently judging by the number of accounts they are creating. I hope some will look deeper into what Hive can do.

The other main game I play is Rising Star, which is a more passive experience. You do need to find a strategy to optimise your progress, but for me it is largely about collecting all the cards and I love that it is themed around music. However I was able to sell some for good money recently and I used most of that to power up my Hive account. It seems some of the newer players are desperate to make quicker progress and I wonder if that is driven more by money. It could take them a while to earn back what they paid me. I have had some sending me DMs asking for special deals. I may do that in some cases, but if they are trying to get much cheaper prices than the general market then I do not see why I should. The market should fnd its own level based on demand. I know the devoper does not want to make it purely about money, but it is inevitable that will be the motivation for many. Making a few extra dollars can be significant for some.

I have played some of the other Hive games, but the gameplay is not that interesting to me and they just seem like faucets. I get a small drip of passive income from one, but am not investing more in it as it is just not interesting enough to me.

I really do get that I may not be a typical player of these games. Some will be desperate for money and others who are already be well off will treat them as additional investments. Those who develop them may be concentrating on playability, but that may not be the main draw. Not everyone is a blogger or even interested in the social side, but Hive has lots of opportunities to earn. I just hope it can be about more than money.



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48 comments
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I have been playing dCity for more than a year now. Another one that felt interesting to me was dCrops(lol, being from a farmer family😅).

Recently, I started playing Splinterlands again, but mostly due to the update coming in about land and things. Last year, I bought a lot of cards and didn't had enough time to complete quests daily, so sold them and left.

I am not pushing this time. Will see in the next few months what it is all about, and then maybe invest a little bit.

I have seen a lot of people play rising star, but I have no interest in music, so never tried it.

Maybe the unique interest pulls more players. I love optimizing my city on Dcity. Thinking about different strategies to maximize my income. Reinvesting to build more.

I am not sure how many of these games will survive in the next 3-5 years, but I am sure crypto gaming will be a big industry.

Play and earn a small amount, it's fun to do😅 So, I am enjoying it.

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I have a small dCity that gives me a little income, but I just lost interest in actively playing. I still say there should be something for everyone as we have different tastes.

There is a nice community around Rising Star that makes it fun for me.

!BEER

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I guess I need to know more about @splinterlands and @risingstargame

Maybe the games might be interesting for me and help me engage more on the blockchain.

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Games can take up time, so you have to decide what matters to you. You could at least check out some of the musicians in Rising Star. @manclar has done some interviews with them, including with me.

!BEER

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Thanks for the mention dear @steevc, your work on Hive is just amazing, and i really appreciate all the added value you bring to Hive!.

!PIZZA

PS: I suggest you @davidbolu34 to give a peek on my interviews, and also if you love retro gaming, follow me at @manclar.gaming, that's my gaming account, when I start some days ago, a new project just for old school gamers, posting about old games, that are very good, and sharing very good classics. I am sure you would like it, and learning step by step, stuff of this both amazing worlds (music & gaming)-

Also, please let me know if you like my work bro, I really appreciate it! <3

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@manclar, ¡lo siento!

Puedes llamar al bot PIZZA un máximo de 10 veces al día.

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I would say both of these games are not gamenomics.

They are actually based off of collectible pricing.
or if you want to say they are like a game, then the model is called cardnomics.

This model was made popular by TCG's.
The markets to follow for this would be MTG and Pokemon:TCG

I see no difference in these markets.

A lot of talk is going around that Splinterlands has proven the play2earn model, when it is just a cardnomics model, modeled off of MTG.

I fell the play2earn model will become the norm but right now all the blockchain games I see are nothing more than digital versions of collectible markets.

Everygame from Cryptokitties to Splinterlands, to Axie are just growing off of the FOMO hype of a collectible market with some cardnomics (pack opening) thrown in.

I have some thoughts of how real play2earn will look in the future but I will hold back for now.

Just my 2 cents.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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I had no idea if gamenomics was even a word. You can earn from the games in different ways even without selling cards. Some people may be selling the tokens they earn from missions rather than re-investing, but some card trading may be required to make good progress.

I know some games with physical cards are big, but I have not played those. There is rarely anything that is completely new and games with take influence from various places. They can each add their own unique twists. Some involve direct competition with other players and some are solo efforts.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but there may be more innovation than you give them credit for.

!BEER

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I give them credit for helping grow Hive and what they have done to show use cases for the technology.

I just don't think they deserve all the credit for some ground breaking crypto business model.

I am glad they are part of the ecosystem, but want to be honest of what they bring.

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I have some thoughts of how real play2earn will look in the future but I will hold back for now.

Unless we are all selling our privacy to advertisers, any P2E variation is going to have winners and losers (if we insist on only looking at the financial side).

A lot of talk is going around that Splinterlands has proven the play2earn model

It has but so did tennis/golf/ice hockey 100 years ago.

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There may be a way to do it without selling privacy to advertisers, but that will most likely be the next step taken by a bunch of companies, as it is the lowest hanging fruit.

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I can kind of see what you are saying. The obvious model of Splinterlands is the TCG model. Open packs, then secondary market.

But I would disagree some too. This is not all there is to it. That does exist. But you also are rewarded for playing the game. Winning ranked matches. Daily quests. Seasonal rankings. All earn you some kind of monetary value.

I'm pretty new to the game so I don't know the extent of it but just looking at the amount of DEC top players get for winning a ranked game, if one were to be pretty hardcore about the game, you could probably earn a small wage just playing at that level. Like $50-100 a day. And that's not even including the reward pools for the other stuff or using the secondary market for selling/renting cards, just purely what you earn from winning games.

If that's not play 2 earn, not sure what could ever be considered play 2 earn. Granted I think there can be and will be better games that implement similar or better play 2 earn mechanics. But I do think what Splinterlands does is both a TCG model AND play 2 earn.

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I completely agree! I'm still not into Splinterlands, but i've been playing Rising Star for sometime now and I really love it, even though I'm not even close to being a whale there.

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A lot of these games and collectibles have been very successful. I think as long as they can continue to put together something fun and enjoyable, we will continue to see more things like it.

Axie Infinity is probably the best example out there now. Splinterlands too, though it hasn't gotten as much attention as the latter.

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They told me that to get started with Axie Infinity you have to face a cost of $ 600, so I haven't even tried. I prefer Splinterlands

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Love both those games and don’t play for money but hey money is good too!

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Would we play if there was no money? We might, but others might not.

!BEER

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For sure especially RS I played so many games for no money lol

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At first, I was a spliterlands junkie; then, I kind of got bored. It also requires time and focus, unlike Rising star, which is my new focus.
But thanks for writing this post - I just pooped into spliterlands, claimed my SPS and rented out a bunch of cards. My collection is worth 2k, according to peak monsters. So I might as well get a bit of a passive income!

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I've rented out some cards, but not making too much from that. I've heard of people starting with a new account and making good progress just by renting the cards they need. I think the games benefit from having various options in how you play.

!BEER

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Totally think it's worth it. Rented out quite a few cards and started playing again. Almost made 1000 Dec since I last posted. But that is mainly from gold foils!

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I played through the tutorial of Splinterlands a long time ago. If I remember right it was advertising quite heavily through Brave. The game seemed okay but once I hit a certain point and it wanted me to buy cards I stopped and never looked back.

Kind of wish I had given it more of a chance. I used to love MTG and got into Hearthstone a bit. Collecting things in general is quite addicting. Have been thinking about giving it a shot again lately. If I can just find the time...

385% APR is quite madness though! I'd probably just plump it all down on there and sit for a while haha. Depending on how long it takes to pay out anyway.

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A lot of these games need you to buy something. I think they at least need a way to try them for free before you decide. Rising Star has no compulsory purchase, but progress will be slow if you don't buy any cards. Of course people will try to exploit anything with potential for profit and the developers have to decide what barriers to put up for that.

!BEER

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I kind of understand the model. And I'm really not against paying or anything. I have spent more than I like to admit on things like gacha mobile games and such. :(

I don't know, I guess I just wasn't super into the idea of playing a new card game at the time haha. I opened Splinterlands again last night, may try it out for real this time.

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Splinterlands and Rising Star are my favorite blockchain games, and I say this after trying 8 blockchain-based games even external to Hive (I tried two games on WAX and one on EOS).

Those who develop them may be concentrating on playability, but that may not be the main draw.

Completely agree.
I don't know if you've tried Alien Worlds on WAX.
A boring game where all the players play for one purpose: earning TLM tokens.
Splinterlands and Rising Star are fun to play unlike so many other games....
!BEER
!PIZZA
!LUV
@tipu curate

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Not played Alien Worlds, but I think I heard some people I know did well from it. I am not just driven by money, so things have to be fun.

Cheers for all the extra tokens :)

!BEER

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thanks for showing us that the Staking system works. I'll try it too over the weekend

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I'm starting to think maybe it's time to staking all the SPS tokens that are coming to us

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I think it's worth doing. The APR has dropped a bit, but you can still make a nice return. I will sell some SPS to invest in other tokens though. Best not to bet on just one thing.

!BEER

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