I was not at all suggesting an ICO (as you say, different question). I was merely pointing out some conceptual similarities and also some ecosystem realities. Exchanges are doing (at least minimal) legal due diligence on new tokens before listing them. They are more likely to balk at a token that represents ownership of the game than a token that is purely a use/currency token.

As far as the current state of the game being nearly-dead right now, that speaks to the importance of setting up the right set of incentives for people to invest in (re)growing it. I think my suggestions do that, but I'm sure they are not the only possible way.

On the matter of complexity, this seems like a complete non-issue to me. My suggestion of separating ownership from the currency token is exactly the same as nearly every other game in the world with in-game currency. e.g. Linden Dollars are not ownership in Linden Labs. Game players need only be concerned with the currency token.

Defining the game as a community project without ownership (and therefore no need for a token, though it is also certainly possible to have ownership without a token) is okay but it means that things like funding and paying of real world expenses like servers, salaries, marketing costs, etc. will need to be done via donations (which could include in-game players and organizations). That's more like a club or open source project. Even then it still needs some sort of governance rules, treasury, etc. Recognizing tokenized ownership seems a more direct continuity from the previous structure, but then again that may not matter since the previous structure ended up going nowhere good.