I’ve been asked if I thought people could still make money in Splinterlands on various occasions. I believe so, but I’d advise cautiously approaching any investment in the game assets. My policy has always been to dump the rewards and blog about them rather than build my portfolio, and so far, it seems foresightful. I consider the in-game NFTs risky assets. By participating in various challenges, on the other hand, you can easily earn $10-20 each week, half of which is in liquid almost-stablecoin that you are free to swap for anything you want instantly. Call it a conservative approach, if you will, yet as a non-gamer, I find it tailored to my mindset. And quite profitable. Here are my general insights on the game and the current situation.
On Investing in Game Assets
Many people spent a small fortune on assets when Splinterlands was ranked as the number one game on DappRadar, onboarding over 200k new players monthly (a good share of them were bots, but still). The prices dropped significantly, and these 2021 investors have been looking for opportunities to sell at a profit since. If you buy wisely now, you’ll be in a much better position than they are. That’s for cards; I am not involved in other game assets. I did buy several land plots a while ago, but then I sold them before the price fell to a fraction of what it used to be.
If you’re considering joining the game now, the current dip could be a great opportunity, given that you pay with fiat and not crypto. I can imagine spending $50-100 on purchasing and renting cards would not be a waste of money, and if you use the battles and experience you gain for blogging, you can get the investment back in a few weeks, even if the price of your cards drops to zero in the long term. My tradeable cards are worth about a quarter of their original value, though, and I play with Soulbound Edition and Gladiators that I couldn’t dump yet. It still works for me.
On Play2Earn Concept
Games are supposed to be fun, aren’t they? Play2Earn sounds more like a casino scheme than fun to me, or perhaps like a wannabe neat job offer description. Yet it turned out that most people did not join the game to play and have fun; they came to earn. Earning by playing was ineffective, yet you could multiply your micro-earnings by ten or even a hundred if you employed enough bots to play on your behalf. I guess we can call it crypto mining of a kind.
However, dropping prices rendered bot farming rewards inefficient, and then bots were expelled from Modern Ranked. Finally, a new fee for Wild Ranked made people turn bots off. The drop in the graph suggests that only about 10% of battles used to be played by people – and the number of human-led battles remained almost the same.
Via PeakMonsters
Does the Play2Earn concept repulse people who play games for fun and lure gamblers? Is competing with bots entertaining? Can there really be a gaming ecosystem in which people earn in the long term? And how sustainable is it? Well, I am not an expert in the field, nor am I a devout gamer. I’m among the lucky ones who made a profit, though.
On the DHF Proposal
I have no issue with supporting any good proposal by any Hive project, even though this one is labeled as “Privatizing Profits and Socializing Losses.” I effectively voted against it, supporting the Return Proposal instead due to the vagueness of this proposal. From a business perspective, I’d expect to hire the web3 marketer first, making them write down a detailed marketing plan and then approaching the Hive community with a clear vision, reasoning, KPIs, budgeting, and activity schedule. The @leofinance proposal can stand as an example, even though it seems to fail to provide its deliverables.
I am aware that there’s no guarantee even the best marketing plan ever will succeed. There are always externalities you cannot affect. A good portion of luck is needed. The market should be in your favor. However, such a proposal would look professional. If it failed, we could say the marketer and everyone else did their best, yet we wasted DHF funds. Not for the first time, not for the last.
On DAO Management
I’ve heard that the $500k is not that important for Splinterlands and that there are way more funds in its DAO, including over 100k Swap.Hive, which, by the way, rests unused somewhere. That seems to be huge mismanagement to me – if you don’t need the money, why don’t you either convert it to HBD and vest it into Savings (with a 20% APR and only a 3.5-day unlocking period), or at least power up to @steemmonsters, the account that curates game-related content? The curating APR is around 9%. I am aware that the 9k Hive per year isn’t much, but still, it’s free money that was not grabbed. Rumors have it that Splinterlands threw loads of money out the window, and this is quite a similar thing.
How much money is in the DAO, and is it used the best way? Splinterlands is a business at the end of the day, and all businesses should use their funds most effectively. What would shareholders tell management that just lets millions sit on a current account? And how much extra money would wiser funds management generate?
Final Thoughts
I’d be happy if Splinterlands continued on Hive, started onboarding new users, and even let the 2021 investors exit with some profit. I’d understand if they decided to move elsewhere, even though it would likely hurt both Splinterlands and Hive. Perhaps a mature, professional proposal would help, and so would better DAO funds management.
In my opinion, any game needs to be fun in the first place to onboard and retain real players, but I might be wrong on this one – maybe the future of Play2Earn games actually lies in bot farms. It seems that most of the recent updates and changes increased the threshold, requiring you to invest gradually more than years ago to become competitive. This does not seem to be the best onboarding policy.
Via DappRadar - from number one few years ago to 56th best web3 game. I have no clue how do they rate games though.
However, joining the game may make sense if you have the right mindset. I see ways to make small profits – not a fortune, though. The latest announcement can push the DEC price a bit higher, at least temporarily, even though the community complains about the unbind policy – I have briefly browsed the comments and spotted a single supportive one.
Anyway, fingers crossed for @simplegame and his brand new gaming concept.