I've spent a total of exactly 41.491 Steem on DrugWars.
Sounds like a lot until I realize that's $12.

This is a big deal because I have never ever considered paying for a pay-to-win game in the past. I've played several of them:

• Allies and Empires
• Farmville
• Candy Crush
• Evony
• League of Legends
• Hearthstone
• Etc.

Every time I hit a wall and can't progress farther I just quit playing. Not this time. I hit the ground running and figured I should donate a few dollars to developers working on games here.

I've already received back 5 Steem from the Daily Payroll.

When it really comes down to it the game creator siphons 20% all of the money to himself and adds the other 80% to the prize pool. Therefore, when this is all over, I would hope to get back 80% of that $12. We'll see! I need to make 28 more Steem from this game to make that happen.

Traditionally in a pay-to-win game like this, once you spend the money it's gone forever. However, in this case there is going to be an 80% return. This will probably make it a lot more addictive then it's predecessors. The positive feedback loop of winning money back after putting money in will hook a lot of people.

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Daily Prize Pool

Everyday players receive their fair share of this daily prize.

7% gets distributed to drug producers
1% is given to the Bank Heist investors.

Bank Heist

If you're worried about getting your drugs stolen you can dump them into the bank heist and they will be protected from theft. The Heist pays out at the same time is the player's share, which appears to be around 4:30 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Total prize pool.

This game is increasing in popularity quickly. Using simple math we can see that the total prize pool is 11,435 Steem ($3316). Simply multiply the Heist payout by 100.

Edit:

After going to sleep and logging back in I see that the prize pool has risen to almost 20000 Steem, and it's almost starting to increase by 1000 every hour.

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Mechanics

The game is very simple. There are three resources:

• Drugs
• Weapons
• Alcohol

These resources are used to upgrade buildings and hire henchmen to defend said resources. The main purpose of the buildings is to increase the amount of resources you get over time.

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Combat

Henchmen cost a certain amount of weapons and alcohol. They can be used to either defend your stash or attack your competition to steal it. Each unit has an armor/attack value. The exact combat algorithm is unclear. There are a few bugs. I attacked a few people but never saw the outcome and the outcome didn't appear in the history. It also seems to take a while for your troops to return to base after an attack. Unclear.

Hopefully a bit more strategy is added to all this. I've got a turn based combat system I've been brainstorming that might work well with games like this. I'll write about that later.

This game is clearly in alpha stages but it might become something very interesting.

Some features I'd like to see added:

• A turn based combat system that active defenders can launch.
• Allies and Enemies lists.
  • The ability to gift resources and/or building upgrades to friends.
  • The ability to defend an ally with your own troops.
• A World map.
  • Something that promotes scalability in the event of more people playing.
  • Better organization of information. (Who to attack/defend/etc)

Broken economy (reward share idea)

None of this really matters until the payout structure gets fixed. As it stands now it doesn't matter much if drugs get stolen from you. 87.5% of the payout is allocated simply for accounts that are producing drugs (doesn't matter if you lose them).

I would propose changing this to a system where the payout is granted to users through a reward share system. It would pretty much be the same thing as the heist, except reward shares are the things that get stolen in combat.

For example, say 1,000,000 drugs were traded for 1,000,000 reward shares. The daily payout for that day is $1000. Therefore, at the end of the round, everyone gets paid 0.001 Steem for each reward share they are holding at the cutoff time. Once the round is over, all the shares are destroyed and we start a new round.

Disadvantages

Right now, the system we have in place provides a much better feedback loop to new players. You spend money and you get a kickback immediately. Under a reward shares situation where everyone is fighting for shares, the competition would be much more fierce and perhaps turn new players away.

Perhaps it would be better to change the payout percentages:

• 1% - Heist
• 2% - Drug Production
• 5% - Unsecured Reward Shares.

Other iterations like 1/3/4 might also work well. Just spitballing some ideas.

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Conclusion

Skimming 20% off the top of the reward pool is too much. Even Steem only skims 10% to the witnesses who provide a much more meaningful and complicated/trustworthy service.

Regardless, @drugwars provides an excellent starting point in the race to the bottom. It is the beginning of an evolution. One that will continually cut away greed and give more power to the users of Steem rather than allow the developers of these products to suck out all the value for themselves.