Except from my eldest son, who is so busy with Axie Infinity, the four of us including my wife and my two sons have now our personal accounts on Splinterlands. My second son and I have been playing this game for more or less 100 days already. Understanding its mechanics and its economy, I see long-term potential for this game. The only shortcomings we have is the lack of substantial capital.
Since 2016, the only game I know is PVZ. I usually play this game whenever I get bored or to prepare myself to sleep. My sons were mocking me whenever they see me play it through the years. They told me to try other games. I never thought that Splinterlands would cause me to uninstall PVZ from my mobile phone.
Nevertheless, there are times that I find myself nothing worthwhile to do. To relieve myself from the day’s stress, I usually either read books or watch videos. It is just this July that playing online game was included among my stress-relieving activities. However, once I am done playing, it usually requires two to three days for me to play again because it took that long for my ECR to recover back to its 100% status. There are times that my ECR even falls down to just 40% after renting cards and playing the game. To fill up the waiting period, our IT suggested to create another account.
When my youngest son heard of my interest to make another account, he warned me that I might be banned. I am not sure if it is really true that in the most popular Play to Earn blockchain based game now, only one account is allowed for one device. To verify if more than one account is permitted in Splinterlands, I posted a question on Discord about this. Someone responded that other players create 10 or even 100 accounts, and so multiple accounts are allowed on Splinterlands.
Hearing about this, I asked my second son about the current status of his Splinterlands account. His reply was not so clear. I later realized when he gave me access to his account that he really did not progress that much after more than 100 days of playing the game. His total card value is just less than 3 USD.
As for my wife, I thought she already had an account, but when I checked it, she still did not purchase a spellbook. And so, I immediately told my second son to buy two spellbooks for his Mom and his younger brother. I sent him an electronic cash worth $50.00 to buy two spellbooks and credits to use for rentals. The goal is to reach Bronze I in all three accounts the soonest, and afterwards, they can start playing it by themselves.
And so, for now, I am the one using their accounts. After completing a daily quest for my second son’s account, I was satisfied to see Lava Launcher. This card is now worth $3.30. I just spent around $1.57 for card rental. As a result, my second son’s card value is now $5.47.
As for my wife’s account, Exploding Rats is the first card she received as a reward. It is worth $0.59. My youngest son laughed. I told him not to take cards with low price for granted. Through time, his mother’s holdings will grow. Who knows? His Mom's account might receive an epic card by the end of the season?
As for my youngest son’s account, it took me to complete at least three daily quests before he received his first card, Pelacor Deceiver:
My plan is that once the other three accounts reached 5,000 collection power each, I will return their accounts to them so that they themselves can use it. For now, since they are still somehow clueless as to the mechanics of the game, they still don’t know how to move up to higher leagues. Just like in the case of my second son, perhaps, he was discouraged with the recent changes making it difficult for him to climb up, and so he almost abandoned this game.
What is funny is my youngest son. Even this early, he was already asking about the ROI. I told him that playing Splinterlands does not mean quick money. He needs to have a long-term mindset. Once he reached a card value worth 1,000 USD, that’s the time if he wants to sell or rent some of his cards. But for now, the goal is card accumulation.
Using my second son’s account, I was surprised with the changes in the level of difficulty in moving up to the leaderboard. When I was still playing in the Bronze league, I usually encounter stronger cards whenever I was about to enter the top 100. But this time, it appears that reaching that level is not as difficult as before. My son’s account even reached the 58th place. I am not sure whether something changed in the dynamics of the game as a result of recent adjustments in rewards or am I the one improving in playing this game?
At the end of the day, here is our report cards:
As you can see, my rank climbed to 3,418 from 7,120 and my rating moved up to 1,915 from 1,717. My collection power increased to 8,385 from 8,255. Total card value is $349.60.
As for my second son’s account, since I recorded this earlier, I was not able to change the 79th to the 58th place. His rating changed from 1,755 to 2,057 and his collection power increased from 50 to 150 because of Lava Launcher. His card value too increased from $2.57 to $5.47.
Regarding their Mom’s account, her ranking changed from 59,316 to 23,261. Her rating moved up from 713 to 1,253. Her card value is now $0.59.
Finally, as for my youngest son, his rank climbed up from 145,758 to 80, 514. His rating changed from 850 to 1,047. He still did not have a card when I made this table.
The following day, their Mom commented on our group chat saying: “Oh! Playing Splinterlands requires focus!” I then made this long reply to educate my family:
Actually, NFT or ERC 721 is still on its early stage. Three to five years, we don’t know what will happen to this space? The future is unfolding before us right now via blockchain technology, but most people are unaware of it. Play to Earn blockchain based games is the kind of alternative we need to replace the dishonest monetary system that we currently have. This is the reason why I am focusing on this game. I am grateful to God for using our eldest son to help me see find the missing piece of the puzzle. I have been studying economics since 2009 and I have been integrating it in my financial literacy advocate, but most people are too afraid of something they don't understand. This is not simply a computer game. This is democratizing the monetary system. In our existing system, only the government has the power to create money out of nothing. In blockchain technology, anyone can create money provided there is a value or services behind the crypto coin.
Unlike Axie Infinity, Splinterlands has not gone viral yet. Axie is now an $8.4 B NFT play to earn blockchain based game and has opened the door to other NFT Play to Earn blockchain based games. The market capitalization of Splinterlands as of now is just $166 M. There is still a big space for growth. Imagine if Splinterlands will follow Axie Infinity 3 to 5 years from now and grow into a billion-dollar company, what could be the price of the NFT cards we're holding. A $1 NFT card could shoot up to $10 or more. Splinterlands is not a short-term game. There is a huge potential here if a player will take it seriously and will consider it as an investment. Many players still do not understand the economy of Splinterlands because they are too lazy to read.
If reading this article made you curious about Splinterlands, why not give it a try? Here's my code.
Grace and peace!