RE: The bitter truth about Drug Wars
It sounds like you don't understand the definition of a Ponzi.
At some point, that won't be true. It's still really early and early people will easily make ROI and in fact make well over the ROI.
The math is simple.
Let's say over the next year 1M Steem is spent on the game.
200K Steem goes to developers.
800K Steem goes to gamers.
How can everyone make ROI if the pool for gamers is only 800K yet 1M was spent? Now we are talking about one year later, the "early birds", those ones you speak of that can make ROI in a week, made well over their initial investment. This means new players get even less of the 80% to make their own ROI.
At some point the rate of new players slows down, as this happens, the amount of money to pay old players slows down dramatically. At some point (far less than a year is my estimation) there won't be money to give anyone an ROI that hasn't been in since the early days.
It's mathematically impossible, how can 100% of players make more than 100% of what they spend when they are getting paid with only 80% of the money spent.
This video does a really good job of explaining it all.
Is it just my impression or is that's an incredibly biased analysis coming from someone who spent a lot without putting any thought into it?
If you are insinuating I'm upset or feel ripped off, quite the opposite, I got in early and even though I spent almost 3K Steem I'll easily make it back. I am just a big advocate of transparency and being realistic.
I just want to point out that you're discussing a game. Your entire focus is on investment potential. I'm actually kinda stunned. I am urged to ask a bunch of questions about how you approach other matters, but I'm not going to, for reasons.
I just find it noteworthy that this is your approach to a game.
Have a profitable day!
Look at all the discussions about the game. They are all ROI and profit related. In fact even their logo clearly focused on making profit for playing.
Yet the entire game was build as a ponzi. I suspect not on purpose but more of lack of understanding and ability to add a value element.
I’m pretty confidident in saying 90% are playing purely for financial reasons.
I appreciate your considered reply, and you may not be wrong about 90%. I think you are, but have no metrics to substantiate my opinion, so won't argue the point. The situation is that this is indeed a game, and not a financial vehicle, so if you're right 90% of players are going to learn the difference.
It's very interesting to me to see a game being approached in this way, and I am learning much that will take me a while to grasp fully. It is pretty valuable to understand this particular dynamic going forward, as more games will certainly be made that have a financial component. It's one of the greatest of innovations Steem has brought into the world, and I can see it also impacting many other societal aspects.
Thanks for your substantive contribution to my understanding!
I believe @themarkymark's post was made to highlight how unsustainable it is if one should approach the game as a financial venture. I have full confidence that any "ponzi" element was accidental on the dev's part and now they are scrambling to fix the distribution and (more probably) the image of the game.
It's sold as a game, it did not tell you invest; but everyone 'invests' anyways, is it an investment vehicle now?
The solution is as simple as the dev investing something back into the game. He could invest 10 steem or he could invest 1 steem or make upvote partnerships. He can get ads. Either way, it's easy to solve. No, it won't solve the "problem" of people who have "invested too much", but games don't have to care about that.
Uh huh....
Drug Wars has made 160K Steem. Dev take is 32K, this is also the gap between what people paid and the start of their ROI. Now most people (like you said yourself, you can make a profit in one week) expect to make money not just break even.
Where do you see them making up 32K while also taking a profit? But it isn't 32K. If you can pull an ROI in a week, what happens in 6 months from now when you made way way over your break even? Where does that money come from?
And another big problem will be the more or less inactive players because they are still receiving steem without doing anything for the game. And having an script doing all the stuff automatic is also kind of the wrong way for such a game.
Without an change of the reward system this game will die really fast.
There will be no new players in the future if you still have to invest 50+ Steem to accomplish anything. Atm the game is not really playable without investing Steem. You don'tearn enough ressources to build anything (have to wait multiple days for one building) and can't recruit enough troops to secure your little pile of drugs.
They will have to change the whole system to have an easy start and after that it slows down but atm we have a slow start and from that it gets very slow...
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Maybe a way to solve this is always create new features in the game. For example, the research center and training stuffs are disable. they will begin at a low cost when enable, maybe this will make all players put a little more steem in the game again, cause is cheap. Imagine 4k users putting ~1 steem or more to upgrade the research center in the next week. Adding new features like that from time to time, making the game more interesting to play , and making people put just a little more steem in the game maybe solve the steem roi issue and reward better the most skilled players...idk, what you think? @themakymark
there is no problem to solve if the game is fun, because it is a game, not investment fond. yes some will get the investment back, but it should not be the main reason to play it. think @themakymark said it, can't call it a ponzi because it is a game, just a lot people don't look at it like that
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I agree, but i think the point of the discussion is if there's no steem at the pool, the game stops to be fun..don't you think?
that is the problem of the games in cryptoworld :D we will see will it be fun when all futures are available. i earned nothing from steemmonsters but i still play it.
The game needs to be fun, so people can play without money interest. But at same time the game needs some crypto flowing in to remain fun? xD