If you have been following the recent developments with Splinterlands you would have noticed a clear trend that since start of this year they have been focusing on marketing campaigns and on-boarding of new players to the game’s ecosystem and this was the clear emphasis during the launch of latest collection of Conclave Arcana as well. All online game developers know that the success of any game develops on primarily 2 key factors: Ensuring entertaining gameplay to retain existing players Scalability to on-board new users
Running successfully for 7 years Splinterlands has already demonstrated that it has a cult following from it’s existing users. What it needs to focus on now is to expand it’s user base especially to newbies to crypto and NFTs.
What Exactly is Campaign? In the homepage of Splinterlands when you select the Play options you can now see “Campaign” mode. Currently you can play the Book1 part of the campaign and it shows the next book or set of campaigns will be coming soon. This shows that there are more such activities planned for the future. Campaign is basically a PVE mode compared to the regular PVP mode where you are matched against a random opponent. Current Campaign book includes 11 chapters with each offering rewards in Glint and Soulbound NFTs that can be played in the ranked matches as well. The difficulty goes on increasing with each chapter and the rewards as well go up proportionally. Initial chapters focus on just explaining the gameplay and in later chapters you will be tested on what you have learnt and be encouraged to experiment with setting up your decks for the battles.
Why this will Attract New Users? The biggest challenge any Web3 game faces in growing it’s users is the apprehension new players have about spending their money on the game. They are not sure if it will be a wise decision and if they will stick to the game long term. Campaign offers a great solution by giving an alternative to new players to get the hang of the game without investing their capital. Familiarise themselves with the gameplay and at the same time earn some rewards. Getting those glint will make them get used to the in-game marketplace and find out what all can be purchased there. The soul bound NFTs that get rewarded during the campaign include summoners and monsters so players can start playing ranked battles after completing the campaign.
Of course these reward cards will not be enough to reach gold level or above but I think it will give players a chance to formulate strategies to win some games in Bronze league atleast. This will be a great start as now they will be in a better position to decide for themselves if they want to invest further in the game in terms of time and money or not.
The only game element which is for now not included is the SPS tokens. In my view it would have been a good idea if a few SPS were given out as part of the campaign which is enough to buy at least one common Rebellion or Arcana card from the market. This would have given a chance to new players to understand how SPS and Glint operate within Splintelrands. While Glint offers the opportunity of getting user bound rewards which can’t be traded with other players the other currency SPS can easily be traded with other players on the game.
Will This Revive Modern Battle Format? I think the user base has not expanded as much as most of us were expecting from Arcana collection launch. When I started this season I was expecting tough competition in Modern format from Bronze league itself but I see that there are not many players in Bronze with a decent Rebellion or Arcana card portfolios. In fact in Silver also most players have very few Arcana cards specially the Epic and Legendary ones. This creates a good opportunity for new players to start earning some SPS by entering the Bronze league after completing the campaign.
Cheers, Sam