Hello everyone, it's been a while since my last WTF back in December. The year 2022 is shaping like a big year for gamefi, with many strong AAA projects releasing their alpha or beta in the latter half of the year. I have been exploring various projects in many chains and trying them out if they are available. Today, I will be breaking down one of my most bullish horse racing projects in the space, Photo Finish Live.

2022 is not only a strong year for gamefi and NFT, it is also a strong year for the horse racing subgenre. Besides those games I had mentioned back in my last WTH, I have discovered even more games of this subgenre, and they all surely look like they have the potential to be great. The two that have garnered my interest are Derby Stars and Darley Go. Still, of all the options I have, both old and new, this Photo Finish Live project remains the one I am most bullish about -- for the various reasons I am going to break down in this article.

But first, what truly is Photo Finish Live?

Photo Finish Live

Photo Finish Live is a Solana-based play-to-earn virtual horse racing ecosystem that embraces realistic simulation in a down-to-earth setting as close to real life as we can get from all the projects out there. Essentially, I see it as THE horse racing gamefi for true horse enthusiasts.

Virtual Horse Racing Thorough and Thorough.

You see, most of the other projects out there are horse racing too, but most of them aren't providing an experience like real life horse racing. How so? We can break it down in the following two pictures, taken from the PDF version of the game's roadmap:

A realistic horse simulation would have "seasons" or "years", because that's how it is in real life. Suppose you have ever played any horse racing simulation game (that marketed itself as simulation), like Winning Post, Starter Order, or some of the mobile horse racing games out there, you will always find a schedule -- and usually based on real life with the proper derbies and etc.

If we are to simulate horse racing, having a yearly schedule is huge because horse racing is never just spamming to race every day. Most of the gamefi out there have a racing schedule like this. In the likes of Pegaxy, you race as much as you can to burn down the energies available to you. In Zed Run, there are tournaments based on real life time but there's no "passage of time" and horses live forever there, which is another point I will cover later.

But anyway, a proper time system like this one provides the foundation of a truly legitimate virtual horse racing ecosystem. In real life, the most highlighted year of any racing horse is their 3 years old. It is the only year of a horse's career that they can enter the infamous Triple Crown and Triple Tiara races. There are also prestigious G1 races that invite three-or-above or the more standard four-or-above worldwide. With a time and seasonal system in place, Photo Finish is the only one I see so far that tries to duplicate this in the space. There's just a difference in feeling between trying to get your horse to win the Triple Crown than a regular tournament on a random Sunday.

Having a seasonal structure like this also provides the base of a proper breeding system. This is not a game where you can just close your eyes and have your NFTs breed like rabbits. It follows the "one foal per year" (~25 real life days) rules. I think this is good for two reasons: (1) it is realistic and makes you think about what you breed (2) and, more importantly, it slows down the problem with a lot of gamefi out there: mass breeding leads to overpopulation of NFTs and eventually crumbling of the economy.

Speaking of overpopulation, the game is daring enough to let your NFT "dies". Of course, they are still there in your inventory, but there will come a time when they are out of the game's ecosystem. As seen here, all horses go through a realistic life span (except there's no sudden death or freak accident) and everything is kept as close to real life as possible. I think this is one enjoyable ecosystem to play in. As a fan of sports simulation, I am very used to a seasonal structure. But even outside of my own preference, a slower pacing is healthy for gamefi as I have seen way too many gamefi exploded in popularity and go away like fireworks. This game puts some rigid control on the horse population and has a slower pace than many games out there. Hence, I expect a sustaining economy from it. I can say the same for Gods Unchained and Splinterlands. Two games I have played since 2020. They are much slower to ROI, but they are consistently providing updates and their economy just holds on very well.

Spectator Wagering

I am bringing this up because it's totally a unique selling point. From my understanding, many projects shy away from the gambling aspects for a lot of reasons. Some probably think it's simply not viable, or maybe they don't want to be bothered with the laws of countries around the world on this subject. PFL though, they are ambitious enough to include betters into its ecosystem.

I don't know how they are doing it. I don't know whether people are willing to bet on virtual horses over other options. But, just imagining the potential of this being successful one day has me all hyped up. I know there are a lot of projects in the space that just talk big, so you cannot just believe anything you see, but the chance of this becoming like the first gamefi with wagering is there. I think there's a lot of money in the system if this is ever successful. Even if not, I am not complaining as long as the game is fun. This feature, to me, is an extra with a high uptick.

Of course, I am not saying this project is perfect. If Konami ever goes, "fuck it, we are bringing Winning Post to the crypto space", I would be swayed. But until the day another gamefi promises me this kind of simulation experience, PFL is the way to go.

And again, I am not saying this project is perfect, and no game ever is. Some of my pet peeves after assessing all the available info right now are:

• Only 3 generations matter in breeding (I cannot go back from 5x5 after Winning Post)
• Jockey isn't a thing
• Race style (frontrunner, closer, etc) is not available
• Racing skills cut down on horse flexibility when choosing races

But it also has all the other things I like. If you would like to check the roadmap for more detail, the PDF is somehow removed so all you can see is the Youtube video:

Why Am I Bullish?

Aside from my personal preference and bias on horse racing games, there are also other...more factual things that make me bullish on this project.

They Actually Made A Successful Horse Racing Game Before

I think everyone can agree that the gamefi and NFT space are now loaded with scammy teams and questionable projects. I think a reputable team goes a long way and Third Time Entertainment arguably has the best resume out of all the horse sim gamefi dev teams out there.

I don't even have to mention all the games they were involved in with EA - opps, I mentioned it! - but just saying that they developed two of the most downloaded mobile horse games: Photo Finish Horse Racing and Horse Racing Manager.

In fact, if you are interested in this project, you should give HRM a try. A lot of the mechanics are similar to both games and you can learn a lot from trying out HRM. I did that in February to learn from the actual developed product of this dev team. It's not the best game ever but I am pretty happy with the gameplay. It gives me more confidence in the team more than anything.

A Lot of Community Vouches

Among all the projects I had been on or researched, none of them have I seen their members vouched for as much as Third Time, Inc. In a typical crypto project, the developer is praised as a god when everything pumps and then he is getting hated hard when the token goes down hard. I cannot find the news but the mobile games they developed had been through rough patches before, so their members would have the opportunities to diss them. However, not many seem to think that way. I heard from multiple members that claimed this team listens to the community, and I can talk to the team at any time if I have any issues.

While I don't believe it 100% until I can personally testify to those statements, I think a team truly has to be on another level with their community members or customers to receive this kind of feedback.

It's Part of A Sport Metaverse

Photo Racing Live is an ambitious project, but the endless ambition of the team doesn't stop there. Third Time, Inc is also developing The Suites and the end goal is to create a living sports metaverse where people can come in to play some sports, socialize, enjoy the casino, wagering on sportsbooks, and etc.

Photo Racing Live will, of course, be the focal point of the metaverse for horse racing. Horse racing might be a more niche sport for the mass so I will use a more popular sport. Imagine a metaverse where you are not betting or watching NBA games, but games from "Third Time Basketball Live". If done right, that is going to be a crazy amount of money in the Photo Racing ecosystem for sure.

Cost

I know the cost is in everyone's mind so let's first get it out of the way. Do not say I didn't warn you -- this game is not cheap at all. I would also advise against buying the floor because you might be stuck with a horse that will lose you money. You have to pay the entry fee for every race, so having a non-winner will not do you any good.

This is not a grind-till-you-ROI game like Axie Infinity, Pegaxy, Cyballs, or many of the famous games out there; it is closer to Zed Run, where if you buy a lousy horse, then you are shit out of luck.

If you want to just straight up buy a ticket, I'd say having 10-15 SOL can land you a solid horse; for self-breeding, I'd say 15-20 SOL is the minimum range for a solid horse. SOL is worth $121 when I am writing this, so we are looking at $1,815 to $2,420 for a quality horse.

Potential Earning

There is no official list or detail on the actual purses available to us so far. The dev did say that the prize pool will be much bigger when the ecosystem is fully developed and running with money coming from all sides. In the early part though, the dev did say that they wouldn't want the players playing for peanuts when a horse is costing a fair amount of money.

In this Medium article, the dev used "10% of the real life's purse" for the model. While this is not an official statement by anything, I think a presumption that the purse would likely be in the range of 5% - 15% of real life isn't out of reach. Anyway, from the article itself, the purse numbers are:

• Ungraded: $500 - $7,500
• Listed: min. $7,500 USD
• Grade III: min. $10,000
• Grade II: min. $20,000
• Grade I: min. $30,000

These are the total purse of the race, not the winner's purse. The winner does receive a big chunk of the purse (60% in real life) but not the entire purse. Also, races will have an entry fee so you do have to factor in the fees you paid over a horse's career.

I think it's fair to say that the stakes (pun intended) are much higher than many of the gamefis out there. I certainly don't know every project out there, but as someone who spends a fair amount of time exploring what the space has to offer, I have not seen many games with this big of a reward on a single race/match/battle. But of course, this isn't a game that everyone can earn so you better be doing a lot of research if you want in -- and be well-rewarded with your time spent here, hopefully.

How to Start?

Okay, maybe I have you convinced by now (or maybe not). Let's say you want to start, what options do you have? There are two ways to get your horses now and before the game's up: (1) Breed them yourself with the Stylish Stud and Fine Fillies NFTs (2) Buy a Gen 0 ticket right away from the market.

If you are happy to wait until the game's up, then there are also two ways to get your horses inside the game: (1) Buy them from the in-game marketplace and (2) Claim them from the claiming races.

Breeding Your Own Horse

Wait a second, what are Stylish Stud and Fine Fillies? Why am I only heard about this now? So, the SS and FF are the two NFT collections associated with the Photo Finish project. You can use or hold them for various benefits:

• You need a SS and a FF to "breed" a Gen 0 ticket. When the game is up and running, you can then redeem the ticket for the "Adams & Eves" of the ecosystem.
• Holding the NFTs give you airdrop of the $CROWN token every month for up to 26 seasons (so 26 months).
• Holding them also gives you access to the Photo Finish DAO, voting rights and etc.
• Holding a certain number of them will unlock bonus features in the game for you. One of the most significant features and one that comes from the highest VIP tier is perhaps this: holding 20 of SS and/or FF gives you access to breeding reports. This gives you breeding info that is unfound otherwise.

As breeding your own horse is the more complicated (but very fun) option of the two, I will try to cover all the necessary detail but also keep it relatively newbie-friendly and straightforward for this article. Before you breed your own horse, you should understand all the attributes of a horse first, as it would likely affect your decision.

Also, we are at the tail end of the Great Mating Event. If you intend to breed a Stud and Filly of your own, you need to do it before April 20. Yes, I do apologize for introducing this game as late as it is now but you only have 7 days or so to ponder if you want to take this option.

Also, a Stud can breed with unlimited Fillies (so, you can just buy one Stud NFT and use it multiple times) but a Filly can only be bred one time. Thus, the maximum number of Gen 0 horses is 5,000, as that is the total amount of the Fillies NFT.

Horse Grades

A horse grade resembles the overall level of a horse's attributes. They are graded in letters. Each letter has three sub-grades: A+, A, A-, and the Gen 0 ranges from S+ to B-. Each horse will have a different distribution in its stats, so two A+ horses will have different grades in their attributes. Ultimately, they should have similar total overall attributes as their other A+ peers.

Horse Attributes

There are a total of 6 different attributes for each horse and they have different importance on various race lengths.

These are all from the HRM mobile game and their functions might be slightly different in PFL. For instance, temper is one of the most speculative stats right now. Some users are totally on the "+3 temper" camp while some don't see it as that important.

As we can see from the chart, the skill priority for a long range horse is high heart > high stamina > temper = burst > speed > start. When assessing a gen 0 ticket from the market or your own pairing, you need to make sure you can find the synergies from the stats and understand what distance the horse is good at.

Also, if you intend to get a short range or long range horse, make sure you find one that is great in both the important stats for said distance: start and speed for short range, and stamina and finish for long range.

Horse Skill

Each horse also has three skills that resemble the turn direction (left vs. right), track type (grass vs. dirt), and track conditions (soft vs. firm) the horse specifically excels at. These might not be important to max out in gen 0, as not every ticket would have max skills on all three parameters. In the future though, I totally expect every horse to max out in a specific combination. That will be a world where becoming a specialist is essential to win anything.

Breaking Down A Horse Ticket

Now that we understand what makes up a horse, let's go through some horse tickets together. There is some extra info we should know first:

• Stat boost not only increases a specific stat, but a high bonus is heavily implied by the dev to carry strong gene on breeding. Thus, a foal with both parents having +3 speed is very likely to be a speedster.
• Horse Grade > Stat Boost. That means that an A+ horse with max boost is still lower than an S- horse with no boost, but closer to it than an A+ horse with low boost.

This is a very simple graph I drew because horse stat and boost is one of the most confusing bits, based on my chatting with some newcomers to the game in Discord. I hope it gives you a better idea of horse grade and stat boost in the overall scheme. Oh BTW, the max boost I have seen so far is 26.0.

Now, let's check out some horse tickets!

This is an A- grade horse with the short distance combo. It does not have boosts on any other distance so the best chance this can get is to stick to short distance races, probably between 4 to 7 furlongs. It is bonuses on LDF and with its little stat boost, it's best to stick to it. Well, I expect all horses to stick to their niches anyway -- besides the S who can perhaps force things on a weaker field.

In terms of breeding, this horse is all about the short range enhancement. If it's a filly, the owner can consider sticking to short range and perhaps pick up heart and temper from a stud OR to find studs that can improve every bit of it for a more well-rounded offspring.

This is a max boost B- horse. Despite having the maximum boost, it is still a bottom racer in the generation 0 seasons as B- remains the lowest grade of the ecosystem for probably a few seasons. It is unlikely to do too well in racing. It might win some due to variance and smart race picking, but ultimately this is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to racing. Also, due to its great gene, the owner is unlikely to race it in claiming races for the breeders to buy it, so it has to run "one class higher" in the allowance races, which include better-graded horses than the claiming races.

This ticket is most likely "bred" for one purpose only: long-term breeding. As it carries significant genes for breeding purposes, a patient breeder who plays the long game can use it as the "starter" of a strong bloodline. It will take a lot of generations to get its grades up but astute breeders will be able to achieve that. In the HRM mobile game, grading up through breeding is the go-to move. According to the devs, there are more variances in PFL, but having strong genes still provides breeders with the best chance to work their way up.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the only S+ ticket created so far, a horse that will kill it on the race track just by sheer stats dominance. For a ticket like this, you don't really care about breeding gene at all. The goal is to accumulate the biggest winning possible and use that to expand the stable -- while also having fun watching your horse absolutely dominate the field for months.

As we can see from the pedigree, it is created from two of the rarest NFTs in the collection. There are only 5 Studs and 5 Fillies with fixed traits; the remaining are all generated with random traits. Each NFT has 5 traits. The same traits on both sides provide a breeding bonus when paired together. I believe S+ is only possible when you pair two of the fixed traits NFTs together for the 5/5 "same traits bonus" and this is the only ticket that has been done this way so far.

Planning Your Own Horse Ticket

Now that we have a rough idea of what makes up a horse ticket, it's time to go shopping for the Studs and Fillies to make one. There are two handy websites I would like to share first:

• Racer's Edge: THE community data and analytics site for PFL. The horse pairing comparison is a must-have for anyone to go through horses pairing efficiently. Note: The "for sale" filter doesn't include Openseas listing.
• SOLmate Stables: You can find a lot of rentable studs on this site. This gives you more studs to find pairing with (aside from those in the market) and save you costs as you don't need to buy a Stud NFT to breed.

The horse's base grade is determined by the ranks of the two NFTs. If any of the traits matches, a bonus boost will be given. With the tools provided by Racer's Edge, my personal approach is to find the Filly NFTs I am interested in buying and then compare them to the studs on the market and those from the SOLmate Stables (already built-in and available in Racer's Edge).

Everyone has different strategies and philosophies when it comes to building up a stable. Perhaps one way to help you determine your strategy is to establish your parameters:

• Quality vs. Quantity: While they are not mutually exclusive, you can decide to go both, or lean on one side.
• Racing vs. Breeding: I am sure a lot of players are here to try both, but some do have a preference and that can affect your decisions.
• Amount of time per day: It takes time to play the game. As this is a game without any sort of scholar system, you will have to play it yourself and how much time you have on a daily basis should be part of your consideration. For instance, if you only have an hour a day, I'd suggest having a small stable of higher quality horses so the time constraint wouldn't hurt your experience.

Whatever budget you have, I think the first thing is figuring out how many horses you think you can manage per day. To fully maximize a horse's racing career, you are expected to race them every 24-48 hours. As someone who has played horse racing browser games before - and the mobile game HRM from the same developer - I don't think this game is too different from those when it comes to finding a race to enter. It takes roughly 1-3 minutes for me to scout the available races and enter my horse. However, I expect that to take longer because real money is involved in this game. If you want to do a thorough check on various races, we can safely assume like 10-15 minutes per horse. Thus, I think 4-6 horses per hour is a safe range to estimate.

After that, I think your preference for racing or breeding is the one that you need to decide before you plan out your initial stable:

For Racers

• If racing is your jam, I think you should be getting at least A- grade horse tickets. The boosts are less important if you just want some extra bodies to race (even though I will always strongly recommend you to get high boost no matter what your goals are) and the horse grade is the most important thing. I'd say perhaps having strong boosts on the track preference is useful as well as those bonuses are not found elsewhere.
• If you would love to be a claiming race grinder, like you intend to get a lot of B grade horses and enjoy micro-managing them every day, I think it's just safer to wait for the actual game and claim horses to play that than to buy B grade tickets for it. We don't know what the racing landscape is gotta be like before the game; we can only do our best to predict. I predict that the claiming races will be full of Bs. A- and above are the "safe horses" that can win races above the claiming tier. I would only consider buying or breeding B grade tickets if I believe that the horses are going to be much pricier than it is now when the game is out but I guess that's also more of a "flipper" move than "racers".
• I think you should get a full variety of horses that compete in different distances, surfaces, grades, and etc. . The reason is that you will be able to search for a wider area of available races to find the one that fits your horses. If you have a lot of the same short range dirt horses, you can only look for short range dirt races of all the races out there. Not only are your horses competing with themselves in the same race pool, you might also find not a lot of races to race for on some bad days with a lesser amount of dirt races. This is not an issue if you have horses that cover a lot of different race types.

For Breeders

• High stat boosts is a must for every breeder because you need the breeding gene. Of course, I am not saying to ignore horse grade at all, especially if you do intend to race the horses for a bit. One strategy is to retire early and breed gen 1 very early into the game but I think most people would race the horses for a few seasons first before retirement and breeding. In that case, horse grades certainly help you earn the racing purse.
• Be careful with B grade tickets! There's nothing wrong with a "B-, 26.0 boosts" ticket for breeding purposes but the randomized gender for a ticket is a risk you have to take. How so? Because I don't think B grade studs are going to be popular, not even with max boost. In fact, this is already sort of happening right now with the SOLmate stud rental service. I have three studs in the rank 2500-3000 range, which makes them the 75th percentile of all the studs NFTs, and yet I get absolutely no inquiry at all for rental. From what I see, it's only the top 500 getting all the attention even with a bigger rental price. I expect a similar situation to happen in the game unless the breeders are charging a super hefty price on A grade studs. For B grades, you definitely would want to have the fillies who can eventually give birth to your own B-to-S bloodlines.
• For breeders, I think buying a ticket now or waiting for the game to run and having all these tickets become actual horses is something you want to consider more than the racers. The actual horses simply have more data a breeder needs and that might be worth the potentially higher cost per horse. With a ticket, you are risking randomization on the actual stats, the coat color, the gender, and so on for a potentially lower price point of entry. If you love the challenge of breeding a bloodline of beautiful white horses (it's on my bucket list when I have the money to spare), you'd be better hand-picking your studs and mares in the game than rolling the dice with tickets.
• Specialization is good, especially if you plan to do in-house breeding or niche-breeding. Just be careful of inbreeding while you are doing it! One way to do business is to excel in a very specific market. For instance, you could be the go-to guy for RDF (right, dirt, firm) horses a few generations later. Your empire starts with having a lot of RDF tickets so you can create the best RDF bloodlines down the line.

The game is so deep that I don't think I can share everything in a beginner-first introductory article. If you need more help, the official Discord is amazing and the community is very helpful over there. OR if you prefer to read up, here are some extra links with more detailed analysis and breakdown on various things like tokenomics (which I have not covered at all) and etc.:

Third Time Official Medium
Dewaun's Medium
Stenz31's Medium

Interested in crypto gaming? Here's the list of games I have dabbled in:

Axie Infinity
(ETH - Get a little bit of Pokemon and Monster Rancher in this pet breeding and battling game)
Gods Unchained
(ETH - The premium trading card game in crypto space, if you enjoy MTG, Hearthstone, and other TCGs, you will enjoy this)
Neon District
(ETH - Can you thrive in a dystopian cyberpunk world in this turn-based RPG?)
Splinterland
(HIVE - Collect monster cards and duke it out in this fantasy card battler.)
Rabona
(HIVE - Hattrick in cryptospace? You got it, Football Manager!)
Exode
(HIVE - Ambitious space colonization simulation game, a game for the gamers with indepth gameplay.)
Rising Star
(HIVE - An idle game where you try to become the brightest star in the music world. Don't miss it if you are an indie musician looking for exposure!)
Holybread
(HIVE - A casual idle RPG to scratch your fantasy itch with minimal time investment)
Alien World
(WAX - It's now just a mining simulator, but mores are coming in this sci-fi universe)

_{Disclaimer:
All screenshots taken by myself are from various publicly accessible websites like MagicEden, etc.
Other images are credited on-the-spot.
I do not own any of the images used in this post. All rights belong to their respective owners. I do not own any of this content.}