When there are no game tokens in the top 100 by market capitalization, it’s time to rethink the narrative

1.847 0 5

Orijinal çeviri: TechFlow

According to CoinGecko data, there are no gaming tokens in the top 100 kriptocurrencies by market capitalization after Immutable (IMX) fell out of the rankings on Monday. Although CoinMarketCap s rankings still have a few gaming tokens at the bottom of the list, the conclusions are almost the same: the performance of top gaming tokens continues to be sluggish.

Although crypto games have reached a peak in the mainstream market and player base in the past year, related tokens have quickly receded and newly issued tokens have found it difficult to gain attention.

According to the Wayback Machine, only a year ago, there were 6 gaming tokens in the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap. At the time, the total market cap of the gaming token category on Coingecko was $29.3 billion. However, despite the launch of more tokens in the meantime, this figure has now plummeted by 68% to just $9.24 billion.

Ethereum gaming platform Immutable was once the last holdout, but its token IMX has fallen sharply over the past year.

According to CoinGecko, in December 2023 , IMX was the 31st largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. At the time, investment firm VanEck expressed strong confidence in Immutable, predicting that IMX would be among the top 25 in 2024. Even one year ago today, IMX was still ranked 34th.

However, IMX has since plummeted 87% over the past year, driven by factors including a cooling of the crypto gaming market overall and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Değişme Commission (SEC), which Immutable recently said had concluded.

In the past week alone, IMX has fallen 29%, compared to Bitcoin’s drop of nearly 10%. IMX became the coin with the biggest weekly drop in the CoinGecko Top 100 list until it slipped off the list and currently ranks 103rd.

Other major gaming tokens that were once in the top 100 have also suffered heavy losses over the past year. For example, Gala Games (GALA) is down 80% (including 19% this week) and Korumalı Alan (SAND) is down 64% over the same period (16% in the past 7 days).

Those once-glorious old game tokens have fallen sharply since their peak in 2021. Even the recently launched large-scale game tokens have not escaped the plight. The Pixels (PIXEL) token launched last year has plummeted 98% from its peak, Coin değil (NOT) has fallen 94%, and Hamster Dövüşü (HMSTR) has also fallen 68%.

Last week, Gunzilla Games’ hit game Off the Grid and its Çığ L1-based GUNZ network launched the GUN token , the largest game token offering in months. However, even though Off the Grid has not yet integrated GUN into the game, the token has fallen 62% from its peak.

Better games are emerging

Off the Grid was named the Best Blockchain Game of the Year in 2024 by Decrypt. The game became a hit last fall, boosting the markets positive view of the quality of current crypto games.

This is in stark contrast to the Play-to-Earn craze of 2021, which was typified by the simple monster-battling game Axie Sonsuzluk .

“The crypto gaming market in 2021 was completely narrative-driven, with almost no real products, with a few exceptions like Axie,” the founder of Ağaç Evreni Games, who goes by the pseudonym Loopify, told Decrypt. “And now, a few years later, there are indeed more products, but they still need time and have not really entered the mainstream market.”

Axie Infinity was the most popular game at the time, but its in-game economy, token value, and player base took a hit in early 2022. Today, a host of higher-quality games are on the market, some of which have attracted millions of players—although popularity and word of mouth don’t always go hand in hand.

Hamster Kombat, for example, attracted 300 million players last summer through its “Tap-to-Earn” Telegram game, despite simple, repetitive gameplay. But after launching its token in September, players left in droves due to price concerns , and the development team was slow to launch subsequent seasons .

Off the Grid became a rare success story last October, with its public launch becoming one of the most successful in the blockchain gaming space, topping the Epic Games Store free games chart , even surpassing Fortnite . In addition, farm management game Pixels and card battle game Paralel also received positive reviews from players and attracted a growing audience, while survival game Crypto: The Game became a niche hit thanks to virality.

“I actually think the current state of crypto gaming is pretty solid,” Jaxie , a community manager for crypto gaming team GIA, told Decrypt. “We have some great games coming online right now that have the potential to introduce millions of players to the crypto ecosystem.”

But there are mistakes

Making a good game takes time – just look at Rockstar Games, which has spent seven years developing Grand Theft Auto 6 , with a huge team and funding behind it. This also explains why, although the crypto game craze started several years ago, we are only now starting to see some results.

However, crypto games that rush to success often end up failing. The Illuvium series is a typical example. According to Coingecko data, Illuviums token (ILV) was first launched in 2021 and quickly soared to a peak of $1,749, which aroused great expectations for the project in the market. However, when the team launched three interrelated games in July 2024, the results failed to meet expectations.

Illuvium’s actual performance has been disappointing, with co-founder Kieran Warwick admitting in February that criticism of the gameplay was “ justified ” and that he planned to overhaul the game. Today, the price of the ILV token has plummeted 99.4% from its historical peak to just $10.60.

The core question of crypto games: games or tokens?

99% of crypto games are not fun, said a member of the crypto game Memecoin MLG team who goes by the pseudonym Munnopoly in an interview with Decrypt. They look more like tokens first and games second. I feel like they have been struggling to bridge the gap with Web2 players.

The various failure cases in the crypto game industry show that the research and development of high-quality games requires time and patience, and those projects that are launched in a hurry and lack depth will only disappoint players and cause the value of tokens to plummet.

Deadrop , which was once highly anticipated, seemed to be expected to bridge the gap between traditional gamers and Web3. Developed by former developers of Call of Duty Ve Hale and well-known streamer Dr. Disrespect , the game attracted the attention of mainstream players. However, due to a falling out between the development team and Dr. Disrespect over allegations of inappropriate conversations with minors, the studio announced its closure in January this year after running out of funds.

“I think the cancellation of Deaddrop is a major setback for the space,” said content creator Mayor Reynolds . “This game was one of the few projects that had the potential to stand on its own as a game and integrate Web3 functionality in a way that gamers could understand.”

However, it is not uncommon for gaming projects to cease operations due to running out of funds. Recently, blockchain gaming ecosystem Treasure announced a large-scale restructuring and layoffs due to financial problems. And as Blok işleri reported last week, Shrapnel developer Neon Machine is also facing the dilemma of running out of funds.

The development team of the Ethereum game The Mystery Society suspended the development of this social reasoning game in February this year. Its co-founder Chris Heatherly bluntly stated that the blockchain game industry is full of destructive behavior.

“Greed and stupidity are killing almost every player in this space before they can prove themselves,” Heatherly told Decrypt. “We need to focus on building healthy on-chain business models instead of continuing this ‘token issuance is a Ponzi scheme’ fallacy. Every Web3 game founder I know is frustrated, exhausted, and doing everything they can to survive, but the real belief is fading.”

Reshaping the narrative: Investors’ attention shifts

According to Loopify, part of the recent problem with gaming tokens is that investor attention has shifted to crypto assets that are more likely to make quick profits. He noted that since the last gaming token bull run, investor interest has moved through memecoins, social finance (SocialFi), and most recently, artificial intelligence.

With each wave of investment into new asset classes, gaming tokens have seen a gradual decline in attention. These tokens continue to show high volatility in the market, but the recent decline has been more dramatic.

“The narrative of crypto games has long disappeared, and there are fewer investors willing to pay for it, because the crypto industry essentially follows trends,” Loopify said in an interview with Decrypt. “Even if these games are higher quality and provide low-priced investment opportunities in the form of NFT'ler, tokens or equity, the market cannot effectively price them immediately. This takes time to reflect.”

Jaxie raised a more fundamental question: Do crypto games really need their own tokens? He believes that what players really care about is owning their own skins through the blockchain, not game-specific tokens. Although these tokens can bring speculative enthusiasm to the project, once the token collapses, the negative impact is enough to shake the community and create expectations that are difficult to achieve.

“Most games shouldn’t have their own tokens at all,” he said. “Launching a token is more of a marketing tool or a way to please existing users – don’t get me wrong, I’ll also take advantage of airdrops – but it’s not a real useful game utility token.”

Recently, there has been a wave of token issuance for tap-to- earn games, where each game requires tokens to incentivize players to keep clicking. However, these tokens often lack practical use after issuance, causing their value to drop rapidly. From Hamster Kombat to Kedi Ve Zoo , similar stories have been repeated time and again.

Ek olarak, the play-to-airdrop trend that was popular last year once again distributed tokens to players, but players had little incentive to hold these tokens for the long term. Like the early Play-to-Earn craze, this model attracted a lot of attention and enthusiasm in the early stages, but the final collapse was equally painful for the project and players.

“Most Web3 players are just speculators in the crypto space, and their goal is to make money,” Jaxie said bluntly. “Most crypto games have a lifespan of only 90 days, after which the number of players drops significantly — so why contribute to an economy that you know will shrink significantly in three months?”

This article is sourced from the internet: When there are no game tokens in the top 100 by market capitalization, it’s time to rethink the narrative

Related: One-week token unlock: ENA will unlock 67.5% of the circulating supply

A total of 8 projects will be unlocked next week, and ENA will usher in a huge amount of unlocking, with the unlocking amount accounting for 67.5% of the circulation amount. Ethena Project Twitter: https://x.com/ethena_labs Project website: https://www.ethena.fi/ Number of tokens unlocked this time: 2.11 billion Amount unlocked this time: Approximately US$849 million The algorithmic stablecoin USDe launched by Ethena Labs currently relies on collateral BTC, stETH and its inherent income, while creating short positions in Bitcoin and ETH to balance Delta and using perpetual/futures funding rates to maintain anchoring and provide income. That is, using the income from spot to hedge the loss of one short order to achieve a balance, but you can harvest ETH pledge income and short order funding rates. Next week, Ethena will conduct two…