So I had the pleasure of participating in the Alpha stages of Splinterlands, Gods Unchained, and I was looking for other similar games out there on the market and this research has led me to be even more bullish for Splinterlands and the future of the game.
In today's post, I will go over a few reasons why Splinterlands is the best Trading Card Play-to-Earn Game out on the market right now.
#1 Functioning Marketplace
It's no secret that this is the most critical deciding factor in order for the crypto play-to-earn game to succeed. It's even more important than the actual gameplay itself at the moment. In an ideal world of course we want to have great graphics/gameplay and a working NFT ecosystem (and we will get there eventually) right now we are going through some growing pains in this new exciting industry where companies are focusing on getting one thing right at a time.
Take a look at Splinterlands and Gods Unchained, for example, both games started around the same time and while you can argue that objectively God's Unchained is visually more appealing and has more engaging gameplay, it hasn't had a functioning marketplace where you can buy and sell your in-game assets for well over a year and a half. With the release of Immutable X, they are looking to take back the market share for crypto trading card gaming, and while these companies built on top of Ethereum layer 1 (such as MATIC and Immutable X) loves to talk about the potential and the scalability of Ethereum, the reality rarely matches the expectations.
While Immutable X has solved the ridiculous gas fees you have to pay on every transaction, you still have to pay the one-time gas fee in order for you to use it and it's also slow compared to the other blockchains out there. MATIC has the same issues where it's too slow and the fees are quite high compared to using other blockchains.
Splinterlands is built on HIVE blockchain and does not have any of the issues I mentioned earlier so from a functionality point of view, Splinterlands is much more polished than any other trading card game out right now in this space.
#2 Legacy
Even if there were better Play-to-Earn Trading Card Games to come out in the future, the fact that this game is basically the first of its kind means it will always have value from the novelty/collectors standpoint. Just like CryptoPunks while it's not the most impressive looking NFT collection, the fact that it is basically the first collectible art NFT justify's the high value according to the buyers and collectors. Just like how the original Pokemon cards are worth a lot today for the same reasons we discussed above, I don't see how this couldn't be true for Splinterlands, and considering how much they are already ahead of their competition unless they completely drop the ball somehow, Splinerlands will always have a place in the Play-to-Earn space.
#3 Community
Splinterlands has one of the best Play-to-Earn Crypto communities out right now. They have over 10,000 daily active users on their official Discord channel oh and remember how I mentioned earlier about the importance of having a working marketplace? Well, besides the market you can access natively on the Splinterlands game itself, there are two other marketplaces you need to be aware of. One is Atomichub which is a marketplace based on the WAX blockchain where you can purchase cards, land plots, and other in-game assets using the WAX tokens and two, Peakmonster, which is a community-based marketplace that some would say is far superior to the native Splinterlands marketplace, but Peakmonster is much more than just another marketplace, you can access other statistics about the game such as daily user sign-ups and other information about the game that might be useful to you. They also introduced a rental system so it's a utility platform that you want to familiarize yourself with if you want to get serious about Splinterlands.
Splinterlands ability to cross-pollinate between different platforms such as HIVE, Steem, WAX, and more, as well as their ability to form a powerful community that is passionate about the game and is willing to contribute in many different ways will set them apart from their competitors.
So these are the main reasons why I believe Splinerlands is the king of trading card play-to-earn crypto game out right now. Let me know what you think in the comments down below, how do you feel about the future of Splinerlands, and tell me about your current favorite play-to-earn games out right now.