Today is the day all my accounts get level 2 Pharma Lab without paying. Feels like free money. I should break even in three days. This has been a surprising turn of events. Given the math, it seemed like it should be much harder to turn a profit. Just goes to show you that this game is popular and the guys at the top are willing to spend the big bucks so that we lowly peons can get some ROI.
Speaking of ROI and math, 20% of the prize pool goes into the developer's pockets. However, clarified by the post they made today, 5% of that goes to paying out referral codes. Also, 100% of the funds the @drugwars account makes in upvote tips is going straight into the prize pool. More and more this game begins to take the shape of a real strategy game instead of just pay-to-win garbage.
Honestly, this is already true. No pay-to-win game gives an 80% return. That is crazy talk. Time and time again the @drugwars team seems to lean on the side of not being greedy and trying to make the best game possible.
A lot of people (including me) have called @drugwars a ponzi scheme. Yeah, well, the definition of a ponzi scheme involves making the claim that anyone can make massive gains. Literally no one is making that claim, so it's time to let that criticism die. It's a game, you are paying for it; shut up.
@drugwars is a Ponzi scheme because they rake 20%, but other pay-to-win games that rake 100% are legit because reasons.
Another thing I've been seeing a lot lately is the "fact" that Magic Dice gives much better ROI. Yeah, well, again, pushing the button of a slot machine isn't exactly comparable to playing a mathematically based strategy game. You can never win at Magic Dice. You can, however, beat players at math-based strategy and extract value from them, just like when playing Texas Holdem. You can also automatically gain funds by not buying in and playing a F2P account. Obviously, it won't be much, but Magic Dice certainly isn't going to do that; not comparable.
If this game can manage to have enough strategy and low overhead to allow 5%-10% of the players make money on average, the game will sell itself.
Their hilariously heavy-handed promo is perfect :D
I'm almost thinking about finding other similar games and trying to pitch it to those communities, but honestly I wouldn't even know where to start. The last time I played anything like this was on Facebook like ten years ago. Good old Allies and Empires. I'm probably on some type of watchlist for friending so many people from the middle east playing that game.
#KR
I was very happy to see this in the @drugwars feed:
https://steemit.com/kr/@wonsama/drugwars
It's a tutorial for Koreans to play Drugwars.
We have a pretty healthy Korean community and they will be playing this game in droves.
Tomorrow at 10:07 AM my main account will get Phara Lab level 3 for free.
The building costs $10 so that's a nice bump.
I think my main account is almost broken even because it started sooner; pretty impressive when you consider that I just threw 41 coins in blind without a care in the world.
However, it's very annoying that I don't know for sure. All the transactions on my main account flood me with too much information and I can't seem to find a filter that will tell me how much the @drugwars account has sent me. If you know of a filter like this let me know, otherwise I'll probably just program it myself as JavaScript/SteemAPI practice.
Hopefully I can use my gaming addiction constructively in this manner. If learning some more JavaScript will give me an edge in @drugwars that would be interesting.
100% upvote to anyone that lets me know the status of their free-to-play account. I feel dumb for not making one myself as an anchor but I'm already juggling 6 accounts so whatever.
Steem on!
Return from DrugWars: Accounts Update to edicted's Web3 Blog
