Today was the big drop for the first, functional NFTs on the Play 2 Earn game,  Hello Coaster. If you were one of the folks who bought the membership NFT, the Park Lord, that gave you an exclusive drop opportunity to get the first three functional NFTs of the customers, coaster and maintenance crew for the game. All three are needed for mining and generating in-game income as well as the ability to repair assets.

Unfortunately, nothing else happened.

The whole drop was a bit anti-climactic, but that being said, things take time for dev to be completed. On the one hand, it makes sense to feed out certain elements of a game project to the fans, especially those who paid in early to get a front row seat. On the other hand, waiting for things to complete to do something can be a bit tiring. I've seen some other projects do the same, some are even going on a year now. It's an odd strategy, and very different from traditional game launching which was all about producing the initial base play and environment and then making up additional income with upgrades and expansions after the fact.

Much of the stop and go is probably due to cash flow and trying to lean out the development where possible to get from Point A to Point B. It takes an incredible amount of discipline to run a team from an idea over a few beers to code to a finished product. Lots of folks in the NFT and discord world don't get that. It's pretty much a convenience-culture, wen ready? Wen can I make money? When can I flip? That was on display today as well. As soon as the packs dropped, some goof tried to sell them for 3,000 wax. Then the next guy came in at 900 wax. Then the next was down to 400 wax. As of this afternoon, that seems to be the floor, but who knows how long that will hold.

I will admit, I was even guilty of trying to pull a flip. At one point my Park Lord NFT was going for 2,999 wax. My logic was simple. If it sold, I could make a profit, buy another Park Lord when they list again, and still enjoy the game cost free. Didn't work prior to the latest drop, but it was a nice-sounding idea at the time.

That said, I'm not really in the hole here. Just perplexed is probably a better word.

I put in probably about $23 in real money on the $100 spent on the Park Lord. The rest was previous Wax earned in other games. Then, on the run up to this drop, I used 100% free grind as well. So, ideally, if the game does reach completion and starts producing income, my ROI is only $23 or so. Not a bad start so far.

Part of the issue with Hello Coaster, however, is that there is little attention being given to the community interaction and fire up. Other projects I've been on have worked regularly on community build up, generating an idea audience demand for the game products when they launch, even going so far as getting a dedicated community manager on the project. That might be true with Hello Coaster, but I'm not seeing the evidence of it yet. I hope this game gets off the ground, but it's not doing the basic things one would expect to give folks a really good feeling about it.