RE: Splinterlands | Moving Beyond Ponzinomics !
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The thing I always find myself pondering when it comes to the entire "play to earn" concept is "where is the VALUE PROPOSITION" in play-to-earn... period?
How does someone playing a game have "value" to the world? It may be fun, but it's a bit like sports: 0.001% of the players might get paid as professionals, and everyone else is basically in it for free. You might get paid for winning the NY Marathon, but nobody's going to pay you for your morning jog. Is the entire premise partially false? Is play-to-earn even possible, absent a scenario in which tournaments have an entrance fee and the rewards are given from a prize pool that's actually collected from players, rather than based in Ponzinomics?
Consider a non-digital — but related — game like MTG; it's now 30 years old and has 50 million players, both in physical space and online. The game itself doesn't reward anyone (unless it's a sponsored tournament), but there's a huge economy surrounding peripherals to the game, from cards autographed by artists, to original art works, to rare expansion decks, to card collections and so on. If you want an artist signed Black Lotus card, it'll set you back a cool US $500,000-ish on eBay. The financial aspects are in the collectability and scarcity of game assets, not in game play itself.
It'll be very interesting to see what direction Splinterlands goes, and how they handle this transition. I say this not so much as a player, but just as a very minor SPS stake holder.
The value proposition comes from owning assets and being able to sell which on it's own doesn't really produce earnings. In the end, it just needs to be a game where players are willing to spend money on without the expectation or need to earn. Something else that could bring in outside money to give value to players are advertisements. It in a way already exists with the tournaments but it would be nice to have during the waiting screens.
I still kind of want to buy cards to have fun with but it has been made impossible from a financial point of view (especially during the bull market where everything else is going up). The fact that cards become nearly useless over time the way things are set up now is a big issue. One of the reasons many were willing to invest is that idea of Magic The Gathering that some of the old cards that are really rare over time increase in value. That concept for Splinterlands has been broken.
I'm also interested to see how it all plays out!
Yeah, it's pretty crazy how much money I've lost on Splinterlands cards. 😭