Crypto Gaming – February 2019

Well gaming is slowly (fast?) taking over the crypto industry. This, as many predicted is expected. The early signs are showing this, and probably by all means this is just the beginning.

Gaming is great! It is fun, relaxing and enjoyable. It is also competitive and mind challenging. All in all, quality times while gaming. Introduce the finance element in that, and it is going to another level. This is exactly what crypto games are doing. Overall, there is a great probability for a big rise in the gaming industry by itself. Crypto aside. With crypto, the probability of games taking over our lives is increasing by a lot.
Ethereum has the biggest number of crypto games, but with low number of daily users. EOS is producing games with higher number of users, and STEEM is in the game as well.

If we take a look at crypto applications at the moment and the use cases for crypto, games are at the top.

Here are some webs that ranks the dapps:

• SteemApps
• Dapp.review
• StateOfTheDapps
• Dapp.com

My Experience

Well I have been drawn in crypto gaming and already take a part in it all.
Let’s start with the latest thing.

DrugWars

DrugWars is currently as hot as it can be. Just in days it reached more than 2000 players! This is simply amazing. I don’t think there have been a crypto game growing faster than this one. Here, I don’t think only on Steem based game only. But in the entire crypto industry. Hats down to the team!

The game is in old style mafia game, where you are upgrading buildings to produce more drugs. It is web based and free to play. No initial investment needed. Of course, if you want to speed up things, and you probably will, then you will need to invest something.

The lucrative thing here is that you get paid for playing the game. Payments are made on a daily basis, according to your cut of drug production from the overall production. For the moment the ROI its great and one can get return of the investment in a matter of days or weeks. It is worth noting that the other players keep increasing their production, so you will have pressure to increase yours as well, to maintain your daily cut.
I have invested somewhere between 30 and 40 Steem and I’m getting around 3,5 Steem daily. This is a current situation. It is not guaranteed to continue like this in the future. Have this in mind when making those money back calculation 😊.

One other aspect of the games is fighting. There is units (soldiers) that one need to produce and then you can attack other players and still their drugs. For the moment the battles are deactivated.

Now, what will happen in the future remains to be seen. As for most cases if the game get traction and have a nice number of users it will stay sustainable.

Steem Monsters

Steem Monsters is an old pall of mine and a well-established card game on the Steem blockchain. It was a pioneer in the industry and have maintained it user base for more than a half a year now. The people behind it are one of the most respectable one on the Steem blockchain.

From my experience playing this game for more than four months now, I can tell that it is a fun game to play. I’m quite enjoying this game and it is not just for the money. You get a daily task and when finished it rewards you with a pack of cards. Another, rewards in at the end of each season. At the moment I have around 100$ worth of Steem Monsters cards. This can be trade at the market, and in time their value may increase, since the number of cards is limited.

Steem Monsters vs DrugWars

Compering Steem Monsters with DrugWars I can say this. They operate in a different manner. Steem Monsters is more of a long-term game. You collect your cards, make a perfect team, fight, win rewards. You can sell the rewards or invest them back. In time you will have better cards and make even better rewards. Just a note here, when I’m talking about time, I mean years 😊. DrugWars on the other hand gives a daily cut, liquid Steem. The rewards are better in this sense. But with time, if you don’t invest, or stop playing the game, your cut will be lower and lower. Also, the money invested in buildings are not redeemable. You can’t sell your buildings. They are not unique.

Magic Dice

MagicDice is the first dice game on the Steem blockchain. If you are not familiar with the term, it is a gambling game. So, it must be handled with great care. Money and time limits are mandatory!

Magic Dice have a 2% edge for the house. What this means is that in a long run, the house always wins! It is just a matter of time before you lose your money.
The attractive thing about Magic Dice is that they reward you with tokens for playing and give a 40% share of the profit to the tokens holders. This means that you can make a strategy to lose some Steem while playing, but earning tokens in the process. Then hope for a return of the money from dividends. I have lost some small amount of Steem in this one, and have a small amount of tokens. The payback time at this point for me is calculated in months. But, hey it may get better.

Another great thing is that you can earn tokens with delegation. Games like this one are on the others platform as well, like TRON and EOS, and they have been gaining a lot of popularity. Will see how it goes here. Some of the popular strategies when playing these are martingale and soft blanket. But even with these, the house always wins.

Games Outside the Steem Blockchain

I’m a big Steem fan and have my bigger crypto share in Steem. Still it is worth checking out what else is there.

EOS Knights

As the name implies this is an EOS based game. Actually, it is a mobile game 😊. This is one of crypto games with the highest number of users at the moment. It has more than a 5000 daily users.

The game itself is quite a simple game. You have tree knights and press the button for them to fight. After some time, the battle is over, and you restarted it. You get rewarded in materials and craft better weapons with them. I must say it is not very exciting. But the interesting part is at the market. You get to sell your materials and weapons for EOS. Recently they have introduced a dungeon mode, where you go to fight. You need tickets for this and there are giving a free one, each one or two days.
I play this game more than five months now. I have returned my initial investment in it (around 10 EOS), and now I’m making some profit. I’m around 4000 floor at the moment. What can I say for this game that it has gone trough some challenges.

In December there was an issue with the EOS network and the game was almost unplayable. No matter how much EOS you have staked. In the last month the price of materials has dropped a lot. They have a challenge to balance the market. There was an update that dynamically regulate the drop rate of materials, depending of the number of users. But the prices are not quite stable yet.

Gods Unchained

Gods Uncained is an Ethereum based card game. Very similar with Steem Monsters. This game is the big boy in town. It is one of the biggest crypto gaming projects at the moment. It is baked by Coinbase and have big financing involved in it, with quality graphics.

The game itself is not ready to play at the moment. You can just buy card packs, open them and hope to have some nice cards in there. Also, there is no fixed date when the game will be going live. So, some patience is needed for this one. Similar like Steem Monsters, the cards are tradeable. They have announced that they will be hosting a world championship with a reward pool more than a million dollars 😊. Remains to see how this one will turn out and would it deliver on the big promises. I have bought some cards here as well.

Zombie Battleground

This one is another Ethereum based card games. Obviously, card game are very popular in crypto gaming. This is not a coincidences, since one of the main advantages of the crypto industry is proving ownership. Each card is unique and own by one user. The blockchain guaranties for this.

The game is not operational yet. Because of the Ethereum blockchain that is slow, this game is based on a side chain, or on the Loom Network to be more precise. I’m not an expert on the technology, so will just state simple, that all the transactions are not happening on the Ethereum network, but it has a helping hand in the process.

Unlike these, the Steem based game are all interreacting directly with the blockchain. @acidyo just made a post about this game.

Conclusion

Well we can see that crypto games are appearing and starting to be hard to follow 😊. But no matter how this looks like, it is still just the beginning. All the projects mentioned above are from the last half a year. Some of them, from just a couple of days ago, not operational yet. In five years’, time we will have a crypto games numbered in millions. There may be a play store for crypto apps and games, who knows.

Since it is just a beginning, what I have experienced in the last couple of months with crypto gaming is that this are very dynamic environments. Changes are for sure. What is now, will not necessary be tomorrow. Maybe someone will tell you this is the game to play. But be sure it is not certain. Things can change very fast.

This are exciting time to watch how an entirely new industry is being developed and be a small part of it.

All the best
@dalz

P.S. Shameless self-promotion … All the links are referral links 😊

Backlinks:

• Top 10 Games on All of the Crypto Platforms - December 2018
• Playing Steem Monsters – Season Four
• Playing EOS Knights, The First Mobile EOS Game – November 2018
• Crypto and Gaming - Match Made in Heaven