First things first, this is of course just an opinion based on observation, you know the rest of the disclaimer… don’t take financial advice from strangers on the internet!

The hot potato explosion…

The past two months or so have seen the advent of a countless number of ‘hot potato’ games as well as the near extinction of 1 gwei safe low prices… At first the hot potatoes were great, with everyone jumping in and vast amounts of Ethereum being turned over. A few hundred games later and a few scams down the line, and the Cryptogaming community has rightfully become a lot more careful and cautious of throwing money at such games!

What’s next?

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that people are slowly turning their heads towards the longer term - there will be hot potato elements, but they have to be within sustainable and repeatable games.

One category of games that partly fits this is the ‘casino style’ games. Whether this is fixed odds gambling like Etheroll, the bottomless pit that is Ethcrash or slightly more in depth strategy like Hedgely, (Which will be back bigger and better - watch this space..!) they have one appealing aspect in common - repeatability. They can be played at any time and for as long as you like. You can’t really miss the start, and the mechanics are generally less dependent on lots of people piling Ethereum in at the same time as you!

The second category of games, which I feel there is more to talk about, are the longer term projects aiming to create their own ‘ecosystem’. These may have a hot potato element when there are releases, but the key aim is sustainability and a user driven economy, as well as some kind of narrative to allow players to get involved in more than just market talk, but some kind of community and role play! This ultimately means that you can properly engage with the game and develop your assets in some way within it! After all we’re here to play games as well as just make money and break our f5 key..! Another notable advantage to this model is that there will be some kind of utility associated with the assets — it’s no longer bagholding if there is a benefit to holding…that’s called investing ladies and gentlemen!

Below is a non-exhaustive list and quick assessment of a few such games that I personally follow and think are taking steps to achieve the aforementioned aims of creating a gaming ecosystem!

Many of you will be familiar with Mobsquads, with episode II being released on the 17th of March. Mobsquads followed Ethervillains which as I saw it was one of the first in the movement of ‘hot potato with extra functionality’. The idea is that there is a minigame running in parallel with the standard flipping action that goes on, which enables you to make more cash as it progresses.

Mobsquads II takes this a step further with multiple levels of minigame, as well as ‘quality of life’ improvements to UI such as real time toast notifications, so you see things as they happen, all making for a better ‘gameplay’ experience, something which was often lacking in the ‘production line’ hot potatoes!

See link below for more detail:

https://medium.com/@martin1209/mobsquads-ii-the-end-of-the-beginning-81c74c728ca6

Rumour also has it that this is just the precedent for a much larger digital underworld in which you can be immersed, opening up countless more ways to interact with gang members…

Cryptocities is, in my opinion, the most established ‘game ecosystem’ in the Cryptogaming world so far. It presents long term goals and clear progression which rewards patience and is determined by location points and past discoveries. For a great in depth explanation of the mechanics refer to this prize winning article:

https://medium.com/@cryptoengineerq8/long-term-crytpogame-for-fun-profits-yupp-that-would-be-cryptocities-net-922cb9584db8

Cryptocities is a great example of a tried and tested user driven economy, there are enough assets and enough liquidity relatively speaking to be able to reliably predict what is considered reasonable value - the cities assets have been more stable in their Ethereum price than crypto over the past few weeks!

The other notable achievement is the progression of an API from the development team. This is taking the creation of the game ecosystem to a much more literal level. It will provide numerous opportunities for expansion and collaboration, and particularly provide independent developers with a foothold and a chance to be a part of something bigger, as opposed to trying to get afloat entirely by themselves.

The developers are launching a small mini game called Floating Towers at 15:00 UTC on Saturday 17th of March for anyone still after some pure hot potato action, but from a transparent and trusted source. To sweeten the deal, they are even providing a 0.1 Ethereum bounty to the first 10 successful transactions from discrete addresses. For anyone interested, see the link below. You will notice it is a referral link, which I would of course appreciate you using, but if you prefer not to then feel free to just remove the numbers from the end of the URL.

http://floatingtowers.com/337386

Ethernauts is a relatively new development in the Cryptogaming sphere, showcasing a space capitalism driven game by a team of gaming industry professionals, boasting in depth lore and a role play oriented community. It was released in early March with the first round of factories being rolled out, and the economy has been developing ever since with new ships hitting the market, and upgrades imminent. Have a look at their article for a better explanation of the mechanics, as well as a road map setting out their ambitious plans for the future.

https://medium.com/@zackjordan_68555/ethernauts-a-new-kind-of-blockchain-game-568540a10bcb

Ethernauts is a good demonstration of the early stages of a player run economy. There was a hot potato aspect at the start, with factories as the traded assets. Factories are currently the only source of ships which can be used for exploration or be sold on the market, and the statistically driven exploration mechanic is the only source of ‘salvage’ in the game. It is already possible to observe the market tendencies and how the users are settling on relative value for the available ships, which will continue to fluctuate as further features are rolled out.

The next phase of this will be the implementation of upgrades, which will add a whole new dimension to the market as well as the existing ships that will be available.

Since all of the assets are generated from the user side, either by production or exploration, patience and long term strategy will be key, especially as new sectors, crafting and crew members become available to unlock deeper layers of gameplay.

Ethercraft is a major project with an established team that has been running since January which currently has some of the largest transaction volumes within the Ethereum network. This captures our memories from the classic top down adventure and dungeon explorer games. The team is is in the process of adopting a statistically driven dungeon raiding mechanic, allowing users to equip their characters with equipment of their choice, choose a set of behaviours and send them in search of guarded treasure! They have numerous articles on their regularly updated medium page with all the information you need to know:

https://medium.com/@ethercraft

Ethercraft has created an economy by staggering limited releases of items. These have already permeated onto external market sites such as etherbay.com.

They have also successfully implemented a crafting system. As the dungeon exploration aspects of the game are rolled out, we will certainly see greater trading volumes as an increasing number of items become available, and players decide on their equipment and strategy of choice for dungeon exploration!

Cryptomines is a smaller game within the Cryptogaming movement made by an independent developer, yet nevertheless has been around since February. As we all know, in crypto, that is a very long time! I am including it as it is one of the first one longer term games I looked into, while hot potatoes were still all the rage!

The idea behind Cryptomines is simple, you purchase a mine, and every day that produces resources based on its level. These resources can then be either sold on the open market or used to upgrade mines to improve production quality and quantity. Due to its simplicity, it is a very useful model for observing the evolution of a user run economy which doesn’t have too many variables to complicate it, it’s worth checking out!

Wrapping up

I hope you’ve enjoyed the read and your curiosity has been sparked at least once.

As I said at the start, this just covers a few longer term strategy games in the cryptogaming space that I have experienced and have got me thinking.

There are countless others, and I have absolutely no doubt that things will keep advancing at a staggering rate. We will be the ones who are fortunate enough to be able to look back, knowing we were once the pioneers leading the vanguard that ventured beyond these brave new frontiers!