So a few weeks ago I decided to explore the world of blockchain games. I love video games and many DeFi games are play-to-earn, so you can actually earn money for playing them. What’s not to like about that?

I love RPGs so the two games that I looked at were CryptoBlades and Defi Kingdoms.

My experience? 1/10. Would not recommend.

First of all, it is incredibly difficult to start playing these games.

For CryptoBlades, for example, you need SKILL tokens to start playing. But in order to get SKILL tokens, you need to first buy BNB tokens from Binance, which in the US is extremely complicated.

I first tried signing up via Binance.us, but couldn’t get my account verified. Then I tried the Crypto.com app, but my transactions kept getting declined by my bank (US Bank). I had to call up my bank, talk to their security team, and place the order with them on the phone.

Then I had to transfer the BNB to my Metamask wallet. And then finally convert it to SKILL. But also leave some BNB in my account for gas fees…

You get the idea. It was a painful process and took hours of tedium just to get setup.

And the gameplay? Laughably simple and boring. Honestly, I was playing better game on my GameBoy 20 years ago.

DeFi Kingdoms was even worse, barely any gameplay at all.

Looking at the DeFi gaming landscape right now, I am extremely underwhelmed by the “games” on the market. Even extremely successful games like Axie Infinity are barely enjoyable to play.

Worse, their “play-to-earn” economies are overinflated bubbles based on hype and investor speculation. There is no way the in-game earnings of games like Axie can be sustained, because all the money just comes from players & investors. The economics don’t make sense and are not sustainable over the long term.

And yet… there is a kernel of potential here that could help transform gaming in the future. Ownership of in-game assets via NFTs and helping to guide the development of virtual worlds via DAOs makes sense, especially as these games grow to become immersive metaverses and players invest more of their time and energy participating on them.

But for now DeFi gaming sucks. I would have been better off investing the hundreds of dollars spent trying to play these games into Bitcoin. 🤷‍♂️