Crypto and blockchain gaming became a major trend in 2017, right around the time non-fungible tokens (NFTs) also made it into the spotlight, so wondering whether digital currencies truly belong in the gaming world might seem a bit absurd since they’ve already broken into the industry. However, just because crypto games exist doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good idea or that they’re going to last.
A lot of gamers have mixed feelings about them. Some are not entirely convinced that cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology bring any benefits to the gaming space. Looking at the fear and greed index, it seems like investors aren’t really rushing to purchase digital currencies either, as the market has been struggling for quite some time, so the reluctance to embrace crypto gaming is understandable.
But since views on the matter remain fairly mixed, analyzing different perspectives could help us gain a better sense of where crypto gaming stands right now and where it is headed.
From Play-to-Earn to Play-and-Own
Let’s start by remembering how crypto made its way into the gaming realm in the first place and how crypto games evolved in the short time they’ve been around. It all started with the Play-to-Earn movement, which saw developers create games where players could earn tokens by taking certain actions. The concept was simple and catchy: you either had to spend a certain amount of time playing or complete different tasks and you were rewarded with digital assets or tokens that held value within the game’s environment and beyond.
Although very popular in the beginning, this model soon started to lose its appeal because people cared more about earning opportunities than they did about gameplay, causing in-game economies to collapse as new tokens had to be issued constantly and users kept selling them.
As it became clear that Play-to-Earn games weren’t sustainable in practice, developers started looking for alternative solutions, and that led to the development of Play-to-Own games. As the name implies, the focus shifted from earning token-based rewards for financial gain to offering real asset ownership in order to drive players’ interest in the game. The P2O model gives users the possibility to own in-game items, like characters and skins, that they can keep and, in some cases, use across multiple gaming environments, ensuring a more engaging and entertaining play experience.
The case for crypto gaming
Unlike regular games, where the entire project is owned and controlled by developing companies and stored on private servers, crypto games are built fully or partially on a blockchain-based infrastructure. Hybrid crypto games integrate blockchain-powered features, like smart contracts for managing asset movement and ownership within the game, with conventional solutions like centralized servers for running core actions. With fully on-chain games, all elements that make up the game world, including rules, activities, items and tokens, are processed and hosted on a decentralized public network that all users can access.
This innovative architecture offers many perks, starting with the fact that users have more control over their in-game experience and own the items they play with, whether it’s weapons, skins, characters, or other resources that the game provides. These assets remain their property even after they’ve exited the game environment, so they don’t have to worry about losing them or being deleted if something were to happen to the project.
Everything that happens in the game – every action, milestone, and achievement that players earn – gets recorded on the blockchain and can never be deleted or tampered with, which offers an unmatched level of security and transparency and guarantees fairness.
Interoperability is another advantage that crypto gaming is known for, as some in-game items can be transferred to other platforms, enhancing their utility and value.
On top of that, many blockchain games also use Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) that allow players to get actively involved in the game’s development by voting on changes and updates. This level of freedom and autonomy is something that traditional games cannot offer.
The drawbacks
Many early crypto games had a short-lived run, becoming inactive shortly after launch due to various reasons. Data provided by DappRadar shows that more than 30% of the blockchain gaming projects launched during the 2021–2022 crypto boom vanished during the downturns that the market experienced in 2023 and 2024.
The failure rate for crypto games continues to be extremely high, with some reports estimating it at 90 to 93%, which puts the spotlight on the shortcomings that keep these games from evolving. Some of the concerns that gamers have brought up have to do with their inefficient economies that rely heavily on token rewards. Part of the skepticism comes from the fact that many users don’t appreciate that blockchain games focus more on attracting players via monetary incentives than they do on gameplay. That takes away from the game’s entertainment value and reduces the gaming experience to a race to win rewards.
True gamers don’t care about crypto’s investment potential and aren’t looking to get rich by playing. They just want to enjoy themselves, and if blockchain games don’t provide the level of entertainment they seek, then there’s not much in it for them.
The poor user experience (UX) is also a prevalent issue that many gamers point out. Having to deal with complicated setup and sign-in steps, navigating external wallets, or being constantly interrupted by all sorts of pop-ups during gameplay doesn’t exactly make players want to join in.
Some games have absurd requirements, asking players to purchase expensive items to join their ecosystems, and not everyone can afford or is willing to do that.
What to expect next
Although they’re far from perfect, blockchain games continue to be a part of the gaming ecosystem, offering an alternative to standard games that some find quite intriguing and necessary, while others criticize or prefer to ignore. Whether blockchain-based games will thrive or disappear altogether is a deeply debated topic, but for the time being, their future seems to hinge on how they’re going to address sustainability and functionality issues.
