Excellent article. I've followed you and looking forward to more like this. I also played DrugWars and had a lot of fun with it but I only invested 45 cents worth of Steem and managed to get about $5 worth of Steem back out of it before they changed the payouts (at which point I stopped playing.) I suspected that one to be a ponzi right from the start, which is why I only spent 45 cents in the game. I've been developing an intuition about these things.
I also play NextColony but it hasn't been very exciting for me so far. I haven't spent any money on it at all and still just grinding. Haven't been able to explore or battle or really do anything yet and I've been playing about a month. At least it takes less than 15 minutes per day to play. My meta-skill level is currently at 193. Maybe I can join your alliance?