It’s been two years since I decided to start writing a paid daily ($25/month) and free weekly Substack about blockchain games.
Previously, I’d been writing such articles on an ad hoc basis, typically when I had the time and something to write about. Unsurprisingly, the results were patchy.
Effectively it had become time to stop entirely or start doing it properly, which is what I’ve been attempting to do for the past 500-odd articles.
Of course, committing to write a daily Substack about anything — let alone blockchain games — isn’t easy. At this point I could cite my favorite meme: “We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy!”
But that wouldn’t be entirely true. Committing to write a daily Substack is just that. It’s something you commit to doing and get on and do. Certainly I’ve had to make some lifestyle changes. Now I’m up at 7am and as early to bed as possible but that was something already being influenced by middle-aged family life. No more working through to 4am and sleeping in until midday.
Perhaps the most surprising part of the process for me has been evolving the format of each email, which is now broken down into various elements; in part to provide structure and particularly to provide structure if there’s not a lot of news to cover.
I’ve also played around with weekly structure, notably in terms of the AI Friday email, which is designed to be a bit more playful, again covering for a day often lacking in headline news.
But returning back to my thoughts when starting this daily adventure, what remains interesting is that I wasn’t too hung up about user numbers.
Of course, this isn’t to say that they don’t matter at all. Especially in terms of my much appreciated paid subscribers — you know who you are — getting some financial return is very encouraging, even if I have set the price of subscription deliberately high, which triggers churn. The most common feedback for why people stop being a paid subscriber is “price” but I’d rather that than “quality”.
Equally, interest in blockchain is very sentiment-driven. I didn’t know it at the time but I launched GamesTX at peak bull market 2021 so it’s been a tough grind through the latter half of 2023, as the following graphs demonstrate.
2022 was solid in terms of both paid and free subscriber growth but 2023 has been slim pickings for both.
Of course, the secret I probably shouldn’t tell you is the real reason I write GamesTX and plan to continue through all the likely mayhem of the coming bull market is that I write it mainly for myself.
There have been very few days over the past 20 years when I haven’t written something about whatever part of the games industry I’ve been interested in. And being paid to do so directly by your readers, and also owning all that content for whatever future opportunities may arise — custom AI chat bots — is the best use of my time that I can currently think of.
So thanks to everyone for reading. Thanks especially for those paying and those who have paid in the past too. Let’s all keep it up for 2024.
P.S. My most read article is from September 2021 when Axie Infinity was first booming. It was called “Blockchain Games Vs Pyramid Schemes”. I think it still reads pretty well.
P.P.S. My second most read article is from March 2022, entitled “My token killed my blockchain game”. I think it’s pretty good too!
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Calendar
Parallel launches its $25,000 prize pool tournament — 8th December
ZBD’s 0.5 BTC-reward tournament for Splitgate launches — 10th December
Genesis mint for Overworld; priced 0.15 ETH — 15th December
Square Enix’s Symbiogenesis launches — 21st December
Champions Tactics’ The Warlord mint — TBA December
Shrapnel launches early access — TBA December
Humble Brag news
And it only took 5 years! #BlockchainGamingWorld
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