Shame on you, SPT marketing
"Hey guys, look at my game, it's on a blockchain! You can see it's alive so stick your money into it!"
The phrase above is enough to attract investors. But would it attract gamers, who are the core of any, well, game? Uh, no. It wouldn't. Almost nobody knows Splinterlands is a good game with great strategic and fun gameplay. What's worse, the team doesn't seem to care about it.
But it gets worse. Would you invest in a new brand with a lot of hype in it and a product showing great potential? Maybe, yes. Splinterlands is more than 2 years old but it gets the treatment as a new product. It's too old for that strategy. You would consider a successful product with an ever growing or at least a stable and large enough database instead, which hopefully will be the case again at some point.
Wasted potential
Splinterlands should have an ever growing playerbase. It has good gameplay. It has frequent enough updates. It's still adding great features over time. Things almost never break, but if they do, they're quickly fixed. I personally own maxed cards that are not that strong, and they don't fit my collection focus but I won't sell them because I like the way they play.
The problem is how nobody outside the community knows about any of these great points. When a player like me wants to keep some of their cards even though those specific monsters don't make him a lot of money, you can be 100% certain you've got a game people can grow passionate about! But they won't even try it if the game has never been advertised to them.
Getting things right 101
Here are some major features that would resonate with the right kind of crowd - gamers and anyone who wants an extra source of income:
- Good, fun, varied emergent gameplay - Each battle will make players eager for the results!
- Guaranteed income just for playing the game - More income if you get better cards and/or get better at the game!
- What you earn can be instantly withdrawn at any time - There's no minimum threshold!
- Both regular play and tournaments award cash and asset prizes every day - You can earn a lot over time, even if you don't invest a lot!
- Expanding features and collection - Keep up with the updates, because the game is here for the long run!
- Combine multiples of the same card to make them stronger, then take them to the appropriate competition - Tournaments offer different max card levels, so there is the right event for all collection sizes
I would have started playing Splinterlands even sooner if those points were explicit. The SPT marketing team should expose them. But they don't. They should! So it's up to the community to push some buttons, make them go into the right direction.
Everyone involved in the game will appreciate the end result, including investors. An interested playerbase means an active market. Hey, just look at the image at the top of this post. It's very attractive, isn't it? Too bad only people who are players already would pay it any attention since it has no outside exposure.
Anyone can get into the game with paypal so there's no reason to put so much weight into the fact it runs on a blockchain. Because even if it didn't, those features stand on their own with excellence.
