Over the past 2 years I have played my fair share of “Blockchain Games”. Some have been fun and some have been stupid. And while I think the space has a ton of room to grow and great potential, the current offerings leave a lot to be desired.

In the Mobile gaming world, you will hear people complain about “pay to win” games. Most everybody hates pay to win games because it’s not an equal playing field. If you have disposable money to spend on a game you can progress further or faster and there by beat the people who can not and have a better chance of winning, or in blockchain games case, making more money.

Now just because a game is pay to win doesn’t mean it isn’t fun or that you can’t make any money on it. Quite the contrary, you can have loads of fun playing pay to win games. (You might not win though without paying).

Upland.Me

This game is very much pay to win. It is a digital real estate game for Los Angeles (and New York is coming online now). You as a player can purchase property and earn a tiny bit of “rent” on each property. You only make a little ROI (return of investment) on each property each day so you need to purchase a lot of properties in order to keep the game play going consistently.

I won’t get into to much details but you are given starter money with which you can purchase 1-3 properties. If you collect the ‘rent’ from those properties it will take you a couple months of saving in order to purchase another property. That just destroys the appeal of the game because nobody is going to play and then wait 3 months to play again for 5 minutes.

I understand that with more players in the game it will be more appealing to play every day. But where it sits now it just isn’t fun unless you sick cold hard cash into the game to be able to purchase more properties.

Verdict: Don’t waste your time or money.
My article here

CryptoKitties

Now I got into CryptoKitties after the craze of it wore off, I think. I got into it because I knew it was crazy when it came out and wanted to take a stab at it.

The premise is this. You need to buy 2 “kitties” and breed them. Then you can sell your new baby “kitty”. Rinse and repeat. Each Cat has unique stats/qualities that effect the babies and the goal is to breed rare kitties and sell them for a ton of money. The irony here is the “rare” kitties are purely on just what people want and which ones look crazy enough.

You can’t do anything with your Cats really except breed and sell (which is a little messed up come to think of it).  I bought 3 kitties to start, using my cold hard cash. I mistakenly bought 2 males at first so I had to buy a 3rd one which could actually be bred with the others. The baby was ugly and when I tried to sell it for like 1 penny nobody bought it.

This game is a little different than pay to win because from what I understand the baby cats genes/qualities are somewhat random. So anyone could bread a rare expensive cat. BUT the people who sunk money into it and have multiple cats that are different and can breed like crazy obviously have a better chance of making more money.

Verdict: Don’t waste time or money unless you get into this one early.

Splinterlands

Now this game right off the bat tells you that you need to buy the starter pack for $10 to really enjoy the game and benefit from it. And they are 100% correct. It is a collectible card game where you battle other people and earn more cards at the end of the season and for completely tasks.

It’s a simple enough game and each card has a real-world value based on the open market. After the initial $10 investment you can make some money playing this game. All you need is a little know how of the game and time. Because you can earn cards every day and level them up and sell them for money.

Verdict: If you have $10 you don’t mind losing, give this one a go.

My old article here

EOS Knights

Here we have a mobile game where you control 3 Knights that attack bad guys and you collect the drops from it. With the mob drops you can craft weapons, armor, etc. Once you are a high enough level you can then sell those items for cold hard cash.

The only problem I have with this game is that it takes WAY to long to get to the point where you can make anything worth selling. And when you do 1st make something to sell, it’s not worth much. I would not call this game pay to win. But I would call it “time to win”. You need to invest a lot of time into it in order to make anything of value. It is a fun game and I had a blast playing it but I eventually gave up on it after about a month of playing.

Verdict: If you are bored and want a time suck then give it a go.

My old article here

Prospectors.io

Guys I love this game. There are two version WAX and EOS. You control 3 workers who can mine, gather, transport items. The goal of the game is to earn Gold. You do that buy mining resources out of the ground and selling them to other people. You can move items across the world for people in return for gold. This game honestly is fun to play and just take a little time each day to play and you can make some serious gold after a while.

The only problem is that the game world is static. What I mean by that is in all the plots of land in the world were spawned with a static amount of resources on them. So as time goes by and people mine/gather the items there is less available. There will be a time where there are no more resources to get. If you started playing this game 6+ months ago then you are in good shape.

I wouldn’t recommend starting to play it today though as it will be agonizing to start now. They went through some changes a while back and people that already had accounts were kind of grandfathered in and new accounts NEED to pay money to actually earn anything. Each character has an energy bar that has to refill after they complete tasks, it is a lot easier to do more tasks if you are a paid player or a grandfathered in player.

Verdict: It’s fun to play but don’t expect to make any money unless you have been playing a while.

My older article here

ChainClash

Premise of the game is this. You get a avatar. You battle the avatar 5 times a day. You earn a small share of the EOS pool each day if you completed the 5 battles. It is stupid simple to do because you don’t even need to win the 5 battles but just complete them. And each battle takes seconds to complete.

For context yesterday I earned 0.0004 EOS for completing the 5 battles. It’s not a crazy amount but it’s simple and quick. This game isn’t a pay to win game if you purely look at it from a tiny bit of EOS each day point of view. You can purchase better avatars and items if you want to but you don’t have to.

Verdict: I play it as it passes the time while you are on the porcelain throne or sippin some ‘Joe in the morning.

The point I want to get across is that I have felt like Blockchain Games have billed themselves as another way to earn some crypto while playing games. I think that most of them are not realistic and your time is better off doing other things but then again, I am not you. 😊