Since Play2Earn Games are all the rage these days, I thought I'd give one of them a chance, and see how well it actually works. My game of choice became Rising Star, after only minimal research and preparation. My criteria, however, were more rigorous: 1. I didn't want to get lost in the game, playing hours on end every day, no matter how tempting it sounds. 2. I wanted to get going with MINIMAL investment, though I am aware that you can't have Play2Earn without having to Pay2Earn first. 3. I didn't feel like venturing away from the Hive blockchain, which further limited my options. However, after two weeks I can say this: Rising Star satisfied all my criteria, and I haven't even looked into other games (except for Splinterlands which I had retired from years ago).
Starting Out On A Shoestring ... Literally!
The concept of Rising Star is getting ahead in the highly competitive music industry. At the very beginning I am a street busker with more attitude than chords I can play, getting chased away by the cops, and lucky if I can score a discorded pizza slice. On the other extreme are the megastars on world tours, with fancy record labels, private jets, and stadiums filled with fans. That's the goal. So far a colorful setup.
The four circles on The Busker card indicate the various attributes that affect my "missions" meaning the various steps I do to get ahead as a musician. These are the number of loyal fans I have, the level of my musical skills, and finally my income modifier, something I still haven't figured out what it is.
The Zone column to the right doesn't do too much at this point, but the map offers an idea that eventually I'll be able to busk in many different places. For the moment, I'm limited to my home town. In the column of my missions, I can see the typical progression of an aspiring performer: After illegal busking comes the open mic night, followed by a mid week support slot. Next comes licensed busking, then an actual headline slot, even if just mid week. The more prestigious Saturday support and Saturday headline are listed at the end.
In the left-hand column you can see the requisites for each mission, as well as what can be gained by them. At the first level only illegal busking is possible, which requires no more than the ten fans the busker has, and 15% of their energy. It takes 5 minutes to complete, and will earn 10 experience points and between 1 to 5 Starbits.
Let's See How Far I Can Take It
With options this limited, I just got out my guitar and started playing. As I expected, there is not much else to it: a clock counts down the time for me to complete my performance, and then I get paid. The Starbits are the game tokens you can withdraw to HiveEngine, and then trade like any other second-tier Hive token. The XP points are needed to reach a higher level, so you can access other venues, other than the street corner. But then there are also additional benefits that might come your way while playing.
One such thing is your luck as a musician. What is luck for? To get new fans of course! And how can you get new fans? Paying them money to come to see your show is one way (not mine, though!), or the alternative is to get so called drunks. In this game a drunk is the kind of temporary fan with a short attention span. Someone who comes for the party as much as for the music. They may really dig your show, but in the end forget about it just as easily. In other words, drunk fans! Even once I managed to reach the level needed for the open mic night, my original ten fans weren't sufficient for it. However, by busking a few rounds I usually managed to get the number of drunk fans needed. So the only remaining main obstacle was my energy level.
Since illegal busking requires 15% or your energy, it is well possible that you deplete all your energy before you have gathered the number of fans you need for bigger shows. One way you can replenish your energy is a discarded pizza slice, driving it up to 100%, or a cup of coffee someone left sitting around, which increases your recovery rate (by a hardly noticeable amount).
Paying, Playing, and Earning
The first obvious obstacles were fans and energy. It's not much of a game, having to wait hours for my energy to come back, only to click a button and then wait for my show to end. So I looked around among the cards, to see where I should invest in. I had just made my first withdrawal of 1000 Starbits, the minimal amount possible. It turned out to be around 20 cents worth, which didn't buy me much of anything. However, since I was checking out the market, I thought I might as well dig a bit around in my pockets to make this game more fun. In the end I spent about $2 USD worth of SWAP.HIVE on a Pizza Box and some permanent fans. This way, I could wait until I had used up all my energy before regaining the 100%.
The pizza box was a great idea. I guess the fans were too, since it was much nicer to start out with 75 every morning, as I would lose all my drunk supporters overnight. Since playing the game really didn't involve more than clicking a button and checking back on it some time later, I can say that not much happened for a while, until I got into playing Saturday Supports. That's when all of a sudden my Starbits really started accumulating.
I also realized that once I had withdrawn them, I could trade 10,000 Starbits for a pack of three cards. Hey, that's about the amount of HIVE I had spent as my original investment, so I thought I'd give it a try. And what a great choice that was! First I got a really nice mid-range acoustic guitar. Pretty as it is, the only attribute it brought me was 10 luck points. Oh well, it's certainly ten more than I'd previously had. The second card I opened was another musician: Bo, a very happening-looking keyboardist. With his 15 fans and 5 skills he certainly had more to show than my busker, at least sufficiently so. Still, this was nothing compared to my third card:
Make Space for Luthien!
Okay, this is where luck comes in, because this girl Luthien has really something going for her. Precisely, 125 loyal fans, as well as 75 skill points, and 3 luck. Putting her into the place of my busker, I don't have to scour around for drunk fans to play a Saturday Support gig first thing in the morning. Interestingly though, even if I leave my busker in front, Luthien's fans (and Bo's fans for that matter) still count in total, similar to our cumulative skills and luck. We're not a real band though (I mean two keyboardists and an unskilled guitarist? Come on!), particularly, since the slots of band members have not been unlocked. So more things to look forward to.
Am I Getting Hooked There?
But in any case, playing Rising Star is slowly turning a lot more interesting than just pressing a button occasionally. Now my goal is to accumulate my next 10k Starbits for my next pack, and see where it takes me. I could possibly also sell either of the three... but honestly, I don't want to. My mid-range acoustic is my only instrument card, Luthien is certainly too good to sell right now, and Bo... we'll see if we can find him a good niche. Otherwise, he fetches about the price I paid for the whole pack, so that's still an option.
What is the future going to bring? Am I going to continue playing this game? At least for now it looks like it. Am I going to take it to new levels? Certainly, I hope so. Will it be like Splinterlands used to be? Insanely rewarding? Possibly, though I'm not even looking for that. A bit of diversion without eating up all my time, and being able to get ahead without spending too much money (preferably anything), is all I am looking for. And in these regards, Rising Star is clearly a winner.