As we enter the final quarter of 2024, splinterlands continues to navigate countless challenges in a difficult economic climate. Splinterlands has come a long way since 2018 and over the years has continued to adapt to changing market conditions and community expectations. While splinterlands continues to be a top blockchain game, from the outside is it still worth playing in 2024 and into 2025?
Player Base and Engagement Levels
While over the years, we have seen splinterlands daily players numbers dwindle back below the 10k region in 2024, it still ranks in the top 10 for card-based blockchain games and overall ranked 64th for all crypto games according to dappradar.com.
This is far from the dizzying heights that splinterlands reached during the 2021 NFT bull run, where almost 200k players were playing regularly and it was going head-to-head with Alien Worlds. It's obvious when looking back now that the numbers back then were mostly made up of bot farms and the 6.6k daily players is a more realistic representation of the player base.
Yet the community aspects of splinterlands are strong with many different social media channels pumping out and creating content that keeps on spreading the word of splinterlands:
- Active Discord channel.
- A whole community of hive bloggers.
- Positive community on X (search #welcometothefamily).
- Various Youtubers sharing and discussing the game.
Gameplay
From a gameplay perspective, splinterlands remains an auto-battler at its core. Players assemble teams, select cards, and then watch as the game's mechanics play out the battle automatically. Those comfortable with auto-battlers (e.g., Simple Auto Pets, Dota Auto Chess), will know all the strategy and depth lies in how you compose your deck and select monsters. The learning curve is steep and can be daunting for new players given all the rules, abilities, rulesets, different splinters etc. There is more complexity as you factor in the hundreds of cards spread across different editions (e.g., Alpha, Beta, Chaos Legion, Rebellion etc.) and determining how to build a competitive deck will require a substantial investment of time and money.
Splinterlands Tokenomics
Over the years, splinterlands had developed a reputation of being a great play2earn game and attracting many players who were interested in crypto gaming. In the heyday of the 2021 NFT bull run, players were earning $20-30 daily on average playing the game. However, the game's economy in 2024 paints a different picture. The value of all splinterlands tokens and NFT assets (e.g., cards, land) has declined over the years to the point that the financial incentive to play the game has been significantly impacted. Also, players no longer earn tradeable NFT assets but rather earn Soulbound NFTs which require a large amount of money to make them tradeable.
Therefore, many of the player base would have discovered the game during the 2021 NFT Bull run and invested heavily into the game would have seen their investments diminish over the past years and it's disheartening for many.
New Player Costs
A while back I did a post looking at what new players would need to spend to get into splinterlands. First, there is the $10 Spellbook purchase, which is necessary to unlock the ability to earn rewards in the game. When compared to other crypto games it is a low cost to get started. Read the post to gain more insight but with the current state of the in-game economy, the return is not as favorable as it once was.
Developer Ongoing Support
The Splinterlands team has worked hard to foster a strong, supportive community and continuously engage players through new features, lore expansions, and events. Just in 2024 alone, there have been twenty releases, which is a testament to developers' continued support of the game.
The big elephant in the room is the runway and sustainability of the game and whether the team has enough to keep the game on. The need to print more cards to generate revenue has been a default strategy of the developers. This approach has been met with scepticism by the wider community.
The reality is that splinterlands is not seeing mass adoption and the ongoing costs for maintaining splinterlands will continue to put pressure on the overall ecosystem.
Is Splinterlands Worth Playing in 2024 and into 2025?
In the consulting world, whenever there is a difficult question asked the default answer is always to answer with -- It depends. But this is a valid response to this difficult question. It depends on your expectations and what you hope to get out of the game. If you are in it purely for profit, it may not be the best time to invest heavily, as the earning potential is not the same as it was. However, if you enjoy tactical card-based games and want to experience this in the crypto landscape, then splinterlands may offer you that experience. However, just be realistic with your expectations.
Concluding Thoughts
The reality of splinterlands in 2024 is a game of mixed fortunes. A successful game built on top of a very active community and a very strong focus on gameplay, but the game's declining potential due to the challenges surrounding the game's economy poses a huge threat and challenge to new and existing players.
Are you new to splinterlands and want to learn to play the game? Check out my Ultimate Guide to Splinterlands: A Collection of Articles and Guides. If you enjoy reading my splinterlands content, please follow and support me by signing up to playing splinterlands through my affiliate link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=mercurial9.
Thank you for reading and hope you have a good rest of the day!
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Good analysis. I would say this is a high risk / high return investment. You can accumulate a lot of SPS tokens playing in Modern league and if those tokens experience a pump at some point during the height of crypto bull market it can really payoff...
Alienworld is a token faucet disguised as a game. You just click mine, wait some minutes and repeat. It's popular because TLM is traded on Binance.
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