As we all know the primary utility of every blockchain is it's volatile value proposition and transfer of those values freely without interventions of third parties like governments, banks etc. Gaming should be blockchains utility use case number two, because games attract tech savvy gaming audience who are not afraid of new technologies. Combine non fungible tokens (NFTs) that have value with good gameplay and you have a product that masses will use.
Steem, Enjin/Ethereum, EOS and Tron all have a lot of playable blockchain games that use NFT tokens. Before Enjin pump earlier this year there was a lot of hype revolving around crypto games, but unfortunately this prolonged altcoin bear market kinda extinguished that early hype. A lot of games that should of been out already are delayed and delayed, everyone is waiting for that altcoins return to launch their products. When altcoins return just wait and see what happens with Blockchains that have playable games.
Right now there are only a hand full of games that you can call a success, games that give good return of investment and will have a long life. We all know and love Splinterlands, first playable and awesome card blockchain game on Steem that is only getting bigger and better, holding cards provide real value, and most of the beta packs are now sold which will give existing cards higher value over time.
NextColony and Drug Wars are still work in progress, browser based games that have their audiences and are getting improved over time will have their say in the future I'm sure.
We have Gods Unchained, an Ethereum based card game, right now the game is it's beta stage soon to be released and it made quite a lot of ETH for the devs. Gods Unchained is getting larger and larger traction, there are a lot of posts about that game here on Steem.
There are several playable games on Enjin platform which all run on congested Ethereum network, it is never ideal when you want to run a gaming platform on another already congested with transactions platform.
Gaming needs to be fluid, transactions needs to be almost instant and free. When you give a long timer and transaction fee inside a game, that must fail, it will fail, it will never reach a mainstream audience, they will bury that product before it launches. Ethereum is clearly not my favorite blockchain.
We have strange EOS games like EOS Knights and Prospectors which are interesting, but economies of those games are in constant decline. These games have their peaks early on and tend to die out with time, just one example is EOS Knights material price, before you could sell materials for 20x higher prices than today.
Some would say that game is heading nowhere, but when alts return there will be an uptick of item and material prices in that game. Prospectors will probably be the same, influx of new users will surely increase the possible ROI in that game. But where do we draw the line of gaming for fun and gaming for ROI? Games like EOS Knights and Prospectors are precisely built to be money making games, those are not for everyone.
Then there is another EOS gaming platform called Itam Store, it is basically a smartphone EOS gaming store with three playable games atm. Dark Town is an RPG where you can sell NFT items, however there are no buyers, I managed to sell one item for 4EOS that I snatched for 0.8 EOS in the game store, never again though. Every time you want to sell an item it will cost you EOS RAM.
Which brings us to another horrible EOS experience with their wallets. Not every EOS wallet supports every game, you will need to have multiple wallets if you want to play something new, user experience is not great as you can imagine.
Two Itam Store games that are left are Spookiz Link Puzzle and Space Rider, basic bubble pop game like candy crush and futuristic bike racing game, games to kill time with while waiting for a prostate exam.
Tron is my least investigated gaming coin/platform, I only used it for Splinterlands promotion few months ago. It seems they only have some very basic games and a lot of gambling games, until they produce something serious, then we can talk. There are way too many gambling crypto games out there. Be careful around those.
As you can see, the overall state of blockchain gaming is not where I hoped it would be in mid September 2019. But development is happening, there are playable blockchain games out there. In order to have many decent or great blockchain games clearly it will take more time than previously anticipated. Until that happens I'll be here in Steem trenches, watching, waiting, commiserating.