Splinterland's Crusade against Bots: Is It Good for the Business?
The usage of bots in Splinterlands has always been very controversial: the rules have never prohibited the use of bots and other automated 'helpers'; so, as expected, they have proliferated like weeds in a beautiful garden.
However, despite the legality of their use, many complained about their existence in the game as it made a very shitty player experience.
However, recently, we have seen a huge movement from the community to remove (or, at least, strongly limit) the use of bots in the game. The first initiative was to exclude bots from the Modern league, leaving them only to fight each other in the (outdated and very expensive) Wild league.
Now, we are having two more governance proposals to further restrict these tools: initiative #41 seeks to ban the use of bots in other forms of play (Guild Brawls and Tournaments), while initiative #42 seeks to restrict the use of "Battle Helpers" (eg semi-automated tools) only to the Wild league as well.
The big question that remains is: Is It Good for the Business?
In my opinion, yes.
Obviously, the change will be traumatic. In the short term, many accounts will sell their assets because they will not want to play manually, without the aid of automated or semi-automated tools. This will probably lead to selling pressure and a drop in the overall price level of the cards.
No pain. No gain.
What I always say and I'll repeat now is: Splinterlands will only succeed in the long run if the game is good. You see: the GAME has to be good. Splinterlands is a game. It has to be fun to play.
Any price changes that are caused by other factors (higher profits from a certain way of playing, speculation, bot restriction, etc.) are irrelevant in the long run. In the long run, the assets of the game will only be worth something if the game is fun to be played. People need to buy cards because they enjoy playing the game, just like they do on Magic the Gathering.
And there is no doubt: playing against bots is boring. And yes: "automated tools that make the decision for you and you just have to click on things" (Battle Helpers) are still bots; it's just a very convenient way of circumventing the rules using legalese and technicalities.
When you join an online game, you want to play against other players. Against real, flesh and blood players who are on the other side of the screen making decisions and being happy if they beat you (or sad if they lose). Nobody wants to play against an anonymous guy who manages thousands of accounts with the same name (john001 john002 john003) and who, at the end of the day, only sees a cold statistic on some dashboard like "today your accounts played 48 thousand games and won 31 thousand". This is not a game! That's a boring bureaucracy!
For this reason, I am in favor of proposals #41 and #42, to further restrict the use of bots and automated tools in our game.
Whoever wants to use this bots, use it in their own little "bot league", one bot against the other: let the best bot win! If that's their jam, whatever.
But, please, let us regular players have fun in peace.
Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!
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