One of the more interesting things going on in Ethereum world is games. It is fascinating largely because I don't think anyone really knows how it's going to play out. There isn't a market leader out there with the critical mass or maturity of development behind it to set any standards.
Cryptokitties and Cryptocountries, to name a couple of the bigger examples, are digital collectibles that in spite of really high valuations, are like all collectibles, ultimately based on the communities that support them - and pretty fragile for that as compared to the sizable community around baseball cards, for example. The new wrinkle is that blockchain provides incontrovertible proof of ownership. It's the virtual equivalent of being able to pick up and hold in your hands, to truly possess, that Ty Cobb baseball card. Cool enough in and of itself.
Next level though is to start truly leveraging the decentralized nature of smart contracted assets. CryptoCities.net is building a gaming business model to do this. Their phase 1 in progress now is essentially a mining process whereby users are 'discovering' locations with varying points and resources attached to them. The locations are discoverable on an algorithmic ladder based on existing location points in your possession and the number of previous discoveries you have made.
There is a discovery cost in ETH per location point of the newly discovered property, and this looks as if it is being tightly controlled by the developers as a market lever to prevent flipping to the point of flooding while allowing some small profit to allow for limited selling along the way to keep enough ETH in pocket to fuel more discovery. They are trying to encourage dedication.
And this is what it's really all about -- getting to phase 2 games integration. Phase 1 operations are well-clothed, but really you are essentially mining, and it is about as much fun as mining is. Ultimately you would choose to do it because you believe something like the following will someday work to your advantage.
You own a location's 3 points and its '(good for) family' feature and a game developer has decided to incorporate the cryptocities.net assets as uniquely identifiable objects with properties (discovered through API) that are transaction-able in gameplay. Someone plays the game and decides to buy your location for use within that game. The transaction is recorded in ETH. You get paid for your cryptocities.net discovery and the game developer gets a cut.
What's fascinating here is just like the whole cryptocurrencies space in general in that it is so wide open. Would it be like my kid trading or buying stuff for his Rocket League car in XBox with other online players? Are the assets alterable within gameplay - like could I set up a trade route between cities and move a feature from one to another? Could assets be 'rentable'?
One way leverage comes into play is that the more games that are built upon the assets, it would simply drive up demand assuming that whoever owns a location removes it from play from other games. Exclusion would cause scarcity. The real pie though is the opposite - to own the same asset across multiple games within the cryptocities.net ecosystem. Like record your addition of stables to your location with horses and have horse archers across all your games of world domination. Or maybe someday mine the crystals for a lightsaber that you plunge into the depths of Doom. Yeah.