Quote from: jackpotmaster on July 24, 2025, 12:31:34 PM

Quote from: dimtiks on July 24, 2025, 12:07:53 PM

Quote from: jackpotmaster on July 23, 2025, 06:04:27 PM

A video game does not need a token and neither do many different types of projects in crypto. It is flawed from the start. Sell equity if you want funding, don't print tokens for free and then sell them.

Quote from: Xylber on July 21, 2025, 04:04:26 PM

Many crypto games are just a stacking pool with a game interface, like plants vs undead, or the one with the spaceships (I don't remember the name). People buy the scam token, play the game, and devs are cashing out the USDT. The token lose all its value in a few weeks.

I'm surprised that games like PUBG, CS2, LOL, Valorant are not using some kind of crypto to trade skins, but I guess there must be some legal wall.

They suck and just exist to drain money from naive investors.

Valid take — and I’ve heard the same frustration from many teams, especially after watching project after project burn through hype cycles with no underlying product or system.

You're absolutely right: not every game needs a token, and in some cases, tokenizing too early (or for the wrong reasons) does more harm than good. If there’s no gameplay utility, no economic loops to sustain it, and no governance role – it’s just another vehicle to extract value and disappear.

That said, tokens can work – but only when they’re tied deeply into the systems layer. Not just a currency, but part of how players interact, compete, trade, and progress. We’ve worked with teams that approached it more like designing an in-game resource economy – with emissions, sinks, sinks that evolve, and even hybrid monetization that doesn’t rely on token sales.

Equity and traditional funding absolutely still make sense, especially when the token has no real utility yet. But if a team is going the Web3 route, they need to treat the token not as a shortcut, but as a system design challenge – no less serious than progression or matchmaking logic.

Appreciate the candid view – conversations like this help push the space toward more mature and grounded thinking.

— Dmitriy | dimtiks.com

We are in some agreement here even if my view is a bit more strict than yours. A lot of web3 mistakes come from inexperienced project owners trying to get rich this way. The future is not going to be some world where people analyze and trade tokens and NFTs all the time. Neither a world where people participate in Discord and Telegram and such. Real people are too busy to invest so much time in a single project unless they are half addicted gamers who don't do anything else.

A game must have token economy embedded in itself, and preferably it should have very little exposure to crypto at all. What I mean with that is that an average user should be able to come and play the game without even understanding that the game currency is a real crypto token at all. If you build a good game where the in game currency is the token and you add some burn mechanisms, utility is already there. What I have seen web3 greedy games do is introduce another in game currency which can be bought with traditional money, so stupid.

Totally get where you’re coming from — and yeah, I think we’re largely aligned, even if coming at it from slightly different angles.

The “token-first” mindset has definitely wrecked a lot of otherwise promising teams. They chase short-term hype and forget they’re building for humans, not just DEXes. And I completely agree — the average player should never have to know they’re interacting with crypto. If anything, the presence of blockchain under the hood should feel like infra, not interface.

We’ve worked with teams that wanted to do “crypto-native” games — and we always push back on the idea of two separate currencies. Unless there’s an extremely strong design reason (which is rare), it just creates confusion, value leaks, and bad incentives. The best implementations we’ve seen treat the token as the only in-game currency, and let utility emerge naturally through crafting, trading, upgrading, staking for features, etc. Then add soft gates (like burn mechanisms, locked progression, or time-based unlocks) — and suddenly you’ve got an actual economic layer without it screaming “speculation”.

And yes, 99% of players aren’t going to sit in Discord/Telegram or follow floor prices. They just want a good game loop, some sense of progression, and the option to dive deeper if they feel invested. That’s where the real opportunity is — not in Web3 as a genre, but Web3 as a layer that disappears behind good design.

Appreciate the clarity in your take — feels rare these days.

— Dmitriy | dimtiks.com