I think that Splinterlands achieved what Valve tried to do with Artifact. Valve wanted to make sure that gameplay will actually earn you something. They did that by making cards tradable on the Steam market, allowing you to earn money with your collected cards.
Artifact failed because it was pay to play and pay to win, basically a huge money sink. Splinterlands is not much different, but little things can cause big changes. Thanks to the way Steem and Hive work, one can earn the cash required to play the game by writing posts. That means you might be more willing to spend that money.
Crypto games have their own cons too though. Most crypto games are still heavily pay to win, some even more than regular games. And they have relatively simple, slow gameplay as well, because a lot needs to be written to a blockchain with limited capacity.
I don't think that crypto games are the future. I do, however, think that crypti games have their own future, with Splinterlands being a great example.
I am pleasantly surprised by such a comment. I hope EXODE revolutionizes the world of crypto games.
Exode does promise some interesting, bot-free gameplay. If they succeed, I think it'll be a fantastic game!