When I was a kid, I used to play the game of a funny little plumber called Mario. This guy used to jump around whenever he saw an obstacle.
Every day, I would spend hours trying to complete the next level. But it gets more challenging and complex with each level you advance, just like life.
In life, you jump up or down, trying to dodge your problems. And every next level gets more challenging.
In between, you need mushrooms to move ahead. And sometimes, when you are motivated, you can throw fireballs at your problems.
The gaming industry has changed a lot in the last decade.
Games used to be something that people would play for fun. Every kid dreamt of becoming a game developer when they grew up. Because that was the only option to keep your passion alive.
Now, it's a multibillion-dollar industry, with different career options like streamers, developers and investors.
The fun thing about play-to-earn games is— you can start at a basic level and grow from there.
For example, dcrops is a hive-based game that just one person develops— scriptkitty!
I used to play Farmville a lot. Dcrops reminds me of those countless hours I wasted creating imaginary farms, chickens, harvesting crops, and expanding farms. I wasted time, but I was hooked to that game.
I am pretty much hooked to dcrops too.
Sure, dcrops is quite basic compared to Farmville. You can plant crops and harvest lands. But you have the opportunity to grow with the growth of game. Just like people made tens of thousands of dollars from splinterlands.
Dcrops will improve in the future. More and more functionality will come with each update.
Till then, I will keep buying a piece of land every fifteen days(when the season changes).
That's my advanced strategy!
The takeaway is that you can develop a game, be a small investor, enjoy it and earn from it simultaneously. And play-to-earn games are still in their early years.
I play three games on hive— Dcity, Rising Star and Dcrops.
I have played splinterlands for a few months. It's fun but needs time and money to grind up. Both of which I have little.
Dcity is fun. From a distance, it looks like another collectable card game where you collect cards and dump tokens for profit.
But it becomes fun to play if you learn a bit of math and strategy.
There are dozens of strategies you can experiment to play dcity. Some people have 20-30 different accounts to collect free citizens and technology.
That's quite profitable if you know what you are doing. I am quite lazy to build up the second city. So, I have procrastinated that strategy for 3 years.
Other people build their war shares by collecting military-industrial complexes and drone factories.
Then some people hold sim(dCity token) to receive daily sim rewards.
I have a mixed strategy. I have around 1.6 million sim power and receive about 1.18 hive.
1.6million is around 680 hive. So, I will get around 430 hive in a year. It becomes more interesting when you assume that hive prices might double in the next bull run.
Of course, it's not fixed. Everything changes, hive economics, prices, dcity strategies. But you can build different strategies around these factors. That's the fun part of play to earn games. You can build unique strategies using your small investment.
Another game that I play is Rising Star.
In this game, you collect cards. There are many cards like people, instruments, seasonal, transport etc.
But the basics of the game revolve around collecting two things— fans and luck from the instrument of your choice.
I have been buying cards with the small amount of tokens I get daily.
I am about to reach 95k fans. And my luck is around 20k. Each month, I add 5-10k fans and 2-3k luck.
Every level you complete, the next level becomes more challenging.
If you have mushrooms(xp cards) it helps. You can jump to next level easily but they are pretty costly.
Everything else is simple. You keep moving forward, complete one level at a time.
The thing is, games have been around for a long while.
A few decades back, people used to play games outside. Then they moved on— to play board games. I am sure many are still addicted to chess and monopoly.
The game addiction is growing each year. No one had seen Fortnite, Pubg, COD like addiction a decade back. It is an industry that will be on an uptrend for the next three to four decades, atleast. (Until AI takes over humans😅).
Kids are getting more and more addicted to games. And when they grow up to learn that they can earn money by playing games, everything will change. The gaming industry will become more competitive.
It is possible in the future that kids will choose gaming as a career, and their parents will cheer up for making this choice(something very rare today).
Like every Asian parent wants their kid to be a doctor or a software engineer. Future Asian parents might want their kids to be gamers.
If you are a gamer at heart, you can envision this future.
The financial aspect of gaming both destroys it and develops it.
When you try to extract maximum value from something, you can't enjoy it anymore. It becomes worse than a corporate office job.
You are clicking and clicking for a few tokens.
I have done it for hours, playing splinterlands, and then realized what am I doing.
But the financial aspect will help to develop the gaming industry in the future.
Where there is money, fun and competitiveness, creativity will follow.
We are just starting!