I totally agree with the competitive curation system - it is 'fucked up' - makes no sense, as to the curve - there is no such thing on LEO, I quite enjoy being able to give a decent vote for the odd comment, I miss that on the pure Hive platforms.
Certainly making those changes before getting rid of the reward pool is the way to go!
I agree it's better as a social chain - as to games, they all just seem to be subtly different versions of collectible card games - we're hardly in Halo territory, so I'm not sure how much they will fly going forwards - mainstream gaming is going VR developed by teams of 100s, we're just not competitive.
Don't get me wrong, those games are fun, but it's really is not time to drop the social aspect of Hive, part of what makes them fun (for me at least) is the communities, linked through Discord and blogs.