The Play2Earn Report - Hive Edition

When I first came into contact with blockchain and cryptocurrency technology, I was only looking at it from a financial point of view. I did (and still do) margin trading and some long(er) term investing. I really did not know about blockchain games and it took me some months before I more or less randomly stumbled across Gods Unchained as my first game running on the blockchain. I've always been an avid gamer and so this sparked my interest. Having fun playing a game and at the same time earning some crypto? What could go wrong!?

At first I indeed was pretty happy with the results I've gotten, I even sold a legendary card I got from a pack for 0.25 ETH, quite the rush. After that early success I started to actively search for more blockchain games and ultimately, I ended up trying a lot of different games from a lot of different chains. I did have some success with some of these games while I was pretty discouraged by the results I got from many others.

I basically got 3 takeaways from trying these games:

Many blockchain games are not really games, but poorly built investment schemes which would never exist if it wasn't for their blockchain integration and people hoping to earn money from playing them
A lot of these games are mere Ponzi schemes that can only work as long as new players join the game, paying for the rewards the older players are paid
Even the more legit games often suffer from using the wrong blockchain and suffer from slow transaction speed and high fees.

Some weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing why I consider Hive to be the perfect blockchain for gaming and I'm still 100% convinced of that. My blockchain gaming focus has since shifted almost exclusively to games running on Hive and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Starting with this article, I plan to do a weekly recap of my activities in the Hive games I play. This won't be a "yay, best game ever!"-style article where I try to promote these games. Instead, I'll give some insight about where I see each game and what I expect to see from it in the future. Since this is my first article, I'll provide some general thoughts on where I come from and what I expect to see from each game in the future. Later articles will focus more on the current state of affairs.

Splinterlands

Probably the most obvious game to start with as it's the only established game on Hive yet and might be one of the most successful blockchain games on all different chains combined. I really like the game as it's fast and easy to play. With the main reward focus on daily quests and end of season rewards, it doesn't take much effort to claim most of the rewards but if I feel like I can still play a lot more for some additional rewards whenever I feel like.

Other then the initial 10$ for the summoners spellbook, I didn't invest any money and according to PeakMonsters my cards should now be worth between 180$ and 200$. Considering I only started to actively play in early March, this is quite an impressive number to me.

For now, all DEC earned in Splinterlands will be reinvested into improving my collection. The last two seasons I managed to reach Champion II and I feel like I'm getting close to making it to Champion I. If not this season, I'll probably manage to do so in the next one. Once I'm there, I'll start to shift towards investing some of my earnings and withdrawing the rest, but I'm not exactly sure on the ratio yet.

I did some advertising for the game for a while but the results have been pretty underwhelming. Out of the 11 people I referred, only one has bought the summoners spellbook. Once Splinterlands releases their improved new player experience and retention starts to improve, I'll probably start to actively go for referrals again, but for now I don't think it's worth the effort.

eXode

Easily the game I'm most interested in, eXode was the first (and so far only) game that I actually invested any meaningful amount of money in. According to the collection page, the worth of my unopened packs and contracts amounts to a total of 2.501$. I definitely consider this to be a long time investment and I don't plan to touch it any time soon.

As I want to play at the top level as soon as the next playable version is released, my current focus is on building up my own collection and preparing all the cards I want to use. I still was able to sell quite some cards from my contract drops and I'm actually quite happy with these early numbers. I sadly did not track my exact results so far (which is obviously going to change now) but I'd guess that I made about 500 Hive from contract card sales so far. A lot of these cards would probably sell for more down the road, but until eXode releases its Colonization gameplay, market capitalization is probably going to remain rather small, so I'm happy with the sales I can make right now.

As I already have a huge investment, my earnings currently are used to power up Hive, but I'll be ready for some additional investment once another round of contracts or a new edition is released. With the concluded presale, there's not too much for me to spend my money on at the moment anyway. I don't expect to see new contracts or a new set any time soon either (probably not until 2021) so there's no rush in setting earnings aside. Once we have a first ETA for that, I'll probably shift to saving up 100% of my earnings.

I did a lot of advertising for eXode and I'm pretty happy with the results. I referred 13 people to the game and 12 of them ended up buying at least an Origin. I'm on hiatus with my referral incentive program for now, but that is going to change once the next playable version is released.

Rising Star

Probably the fastest growing blockchain game right now. It already has a lot of cool and promising features and it seems something new is added to it almost daily. I was lucky enough to join it really early, so I have already built up a nice collection and have a pretty solid Startbits income. I have it running most of the time (even at work) as it's really easy to handle and only needs a click or two every 5 minutes. The Rising Star Radio is a brilliant feature as well and in itself makes playing the game worthwhile.

Rising Star did change a lot in regards to the way Starbits are paid out and at the same time made it more interesting to spend Starbits in the game. This in turn really helped the game's economy and to stabilize the worth of its token a lot. My ingame earnings are split between buying booster packs and converting Starbits to Hive. As of now, I use the first 10,000 Starbits each day to buy a new booster and convert the rest to Hive for power up via Hive-Engine. I'm actively monitoring that ratio and I'm thinking about shifting it a bit. I'm a little worried by a possible Starbit inflation though, since there's still a linear portion to the Starbit increase per fan, so I remain cautious for now.

I casually advertise Rising Star whenever I can and managed to find 17 referrals which amounted to about 4,500 Starbits earned. I'm not doing any referral incentive program because of the comparably low rewards for referrals but it's still cool to have some minor passive earnings so I'll keep posting my referral link whenever I can and I can only encourage everybody to try the game. It's free, fun, and easy to get into.

Cryptobrewmaster

The latest addition to the bunch. I like both the graphics and the setting a lot and I'm still pretty hyped for the possibilities this game brings to the table. Development felt pretty slow so far but then again it's in an Early Alpha stage, so there are probably a lot of things going on in the background that simply are invisible to me as a player for now. The developer is nevertheless pretty active in the Discord so I'm not worried about it at all - making great games takes time after all.

With one of the last updates the game finally allowed to transfer CBM (its token) in and out of the game. So far, we have no indication what the token should be worth in the end and without any information on how it's going to be used in the future, I was a little cautious on just saving it for now. That's why I sold 1000 CBM for about 50 Hive. For now, I'm going to save up the rest until we get more information. As of now, I could use these tokes to get better quality ingredients but looking at the numbers it just doesn't seem to be worth it. A beer from the "free" ingredients sells for 29 CBM while the beer made from "good" ingredients only sells for 3 CBM more. I'm pretty sure that that's going to be changed again soon, so for now I'll just monitor the development and brew my free beer daily.

The referral system has not been revealed yet and there's no way to see how many referrals you actually got. So for now, I'm casually using my referral link whenever I make a post about the game, but I'll wait and see if it's worth the effort. Since the game is completely free to join and play there really isn't much reason not to try it, so promoting it should be rather easy to do.

Conclusion

So these are the games I'm actively playing. I'm aware that there are more games on Hive (and elsewhere) but I decided to only play what I enjoy and deem worthwhile. If you have any tips for me regarding other games I should try I'd be happy to hear about them. If you can provide some information where to start or why I should play that game I'll gladly be your referral.

Starting today, I'll actively track my earnings from each game and I'm somewhat excited myself to see these numbers...