At GamesBeat Summit 2024, the panelists’ answer was straightforward: make a game people want to play first, then use blockchain only where it adds a clear benefit. They also identified two separate hurdles—crypto onboarding and getting games discovered by potential players. These were the speakers’ informed opinions, not a proven formula for mainstream adoption.
What did the GamesBeat Summit 2024 panel say?
GamesBeat’s panel recap, published May 30, 2024 and updated June 18, 2025, covered a discussion with Dan Nikolaides, CTO of Studio 369; Canaan Linder, CEO of Stardust; and Joseph Cooper, CEO of Earn Alliance. The article framed the discussion against a decade of Web3 gaming without a widely recognized “killer app,” while noting that investment was beginning to produce results. That is the recap’s framing, not a quantified measure of the industry.
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The panel’s central recommendation was to prioritize the game itself. Blockchain should serve a compelling design, rather than being treated as a substitute for one. Linder’s concise advice for designing amid changing technology was: “Design for that.” Read GamesBeat’s panel recap.
How can Web3 games attract players who do not care about crypto?
Make crypto complexity optional or unobtrusive at the start, the speakers suggested. Nikolaides said that approaches such as “web2.5” and free-to-play-first design had addressed many user-experience barriers in his view. But he also described reaching Web2 skeptics as an ongoing challenge. His assessment was made at the 2024 panel; it was not an independent usability study.
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This points to two distinct jobs for a developer: reduce friction for someone who simply wants to play, and give that person a reason to care about blockchain features later. A smoother wallet or NFT flow cannot, by itself, solve the separate problem of reaching players or persuading them that the game is worth their time.
Why are Web3 games hard to discover?
Cooper identified discovery and go-to-market support as problems for developers. He said mainstream game storefronts did not offer a way to filter for crypto games, and summarized the issue this way: “Discoverability is one of the key things for the go-to-market.” This describes his characterization during the 2024 discussion; it should not be read as a current statement about any specific storefront’s policies or features.
For a studio, the practical implication is that onboarding improvements and player acquisition need separate plans. A game can be easy to try once a player finds it and still struggle to reach an audience.
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- Nintendo Switch 2 plays compatible physical and digital Nintendo Switch games.***
Should a game put NFTs or tokens into its design?
The panel did not establish that token ownership or tradability is necessary for mainstream success. Its more useful test is whether blockchain enables a meaningful player or creator benefit that the game could not deliver as well otherwise.
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Potential benefits the panel discussed
- Permissionless contribution: Cooper saw potential in letting users participate in creating content without needing permission from a central gatekeeper.
- Open economies: Nikolaides suggested that developers could consider understandable rules for player economies instead of treating all secondary trading as something to suppress.
- Durable design: Linder’s advice was to make a game that can remain compelling as technology changes, rather than building its appeal around a particular technical moment.
Where uncertainty remains
These are proposed advantages, not demonstrated outcomes. Linder cautioned that most game tokens would not find product-market fit, though some could. The panel offered no tested comparison showing that blockchain features cause a game to succeed with mainstream players.
A developer assessing an NFT or token feature can use these questions as a practical, panel-informed checklist—not as a validated scoring system:
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- Is the game compelling without blockchain?
- How much wallet, token, or NFT friction does a new player encounter?
- Does blockchain create a clear benefit for players or creators?
- Can the intended audience discover the game, and can the studio explain its appeal?
- Are the economy and trading rules understandable and sustainable?
What do the Last Remains and Monopoly Go figures show?
GamesBeat’s recap reports several figures attributed to Cooper. They are claims recorded from the panel, not independently corroborated measurements or current benchmarks.
| Figure | What the recap attributes it to | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| A quarter million players | Cooper described Last Remains’ Epic Games Store audience and said the game had no marketing. | Anecdotal example reported in 2024; the recap does not provide a measurement methodology. |
| 70% of users | Cooper described the share of Last Remains players who had extracted and collected NFTs. | Attributed panel claim; it is not an independently validated adoption rate. |
| $1,700 | Cooper described the sale price of one top character. | A reported individual sale, not evidence of typical item value or broad demand. |
| $2 billion over the last nine months | GamesBeat reported Cooper’s comparison to Monopoly Go revenue. | The recap does not provide a full measurement method; it should not be presented as an independently checked figure. |
Those examples do not establish a market-wide adoption rate or show that NFTs or tokens caused mainstream success. The recap supplies no rigorously documented statistic or study proving a causal path from blockchain features to wider game adoption.
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What should a studio take away?
The panel’s recommendations are best treated as design and go-to-market principles to evaluate, not as a guaranteed recipe. Start with the game’s appeal; make crypto onboarding as unobtrusive as the experience allows; plan discovery independently from onboarding; and include blockchain only when its benefit is clear to players or creators. The discussion leaves open which designs, economies, or tokens will actually find product-market fit.
For general game-design reading, Routledge lists Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Third Edition. It is a general game-design book, not a Web3-specific guide. See Routledge’s book listing.
Quick Recap
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