Splinterlands: A Pay-to-Win & Play-and-Earn CCG

Splinterlands, a blockchain-based trading card game in which players build teams of creatures that battle automatically, is examined as a more accessible and resilient alternative to earlier play-to-earn titles such as Axie Infinity. Originally launched in May 2018 as Steem Monsters, the game is one of the oldest in the sector. The analysis, published in March 2022, argues that Splinterlands blends pay-to-win and play-to-earn mechanics, and that this hybrid is both its greatest criticism and a source of its durability.

Progression depends on ranked-battle performance and the power level of a player's cards, with higher crypto and card rewards gated behind higher ranks. Because ranked matches are zero-sum, top rewards concentrate among elite players, and those seeking to earn must keep investing time and money in better cards. Even so, the entry barrier is low: the game runs in a browser, costs roughly $10 to start, accepts fiat and crypto, and offers card rentals for pennies a day, avoiding the manager-scholar dynamic common in guild-based models.

Platform data drawn from the Splinterlands API and HiveSQL shows daily sign-ups falling sharply from their fall 2021 peaks while daily active users remained fairly steady. This suggests a game less dependent on constant user acquisition than many blockchain peers, with players staying partly for enjoyment rather than profit alone. The economy nonetheless suffered amid recent crypto volatility, though built-in shock absorbers, greater gameplay variety, and cheaper on-ramps make it sturdier than Axie.

Weaknesses include complexity, with tokens and NFTs spread across as many as four blockchains, and uncertainty about how organic the community is, since it originates largely from the HIVE blockchain's reward-driven social network. The argument is that ongoing spending by pay-to-win participants subsidizes earners and prevents the unraveling seen in purer play-to-earn designs. The full essay promises deeper treatment of the game's history, design, token flows, the rental system's threat to yield-seeking guilds, and future scalability, but only the introduction is available here.