Welcome to the September edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group.
Does the success of games such as Gigaverse, Fishing Frenzy and Cambria prove the crypto degen community now big enough for game devs to make niche but profitable games?
Gabby Dizon – co-founder, Yield Guild Games
The answer is yes. These games show there is already a strong crypto-native audience that wants to play. Now it’s more about leaning into what is unique about web3, using crypto primitives and integrating elements that this audience likes, and a lot less about trying to target web2 gamers. What we discovered with LOL Land is that building for the people who already value these things allows you to tap an underserved market that actually spends more and stays longer.
Further to that, people in crypto tend to have the capacity to spend much larger amounts than you’d expect from web2 users. So when you make a game that’s highly targeted at crypto degens, it actually creates a viable business with a far smaller user base than you would normally need. You just have to tune in to what they want.
Alexander Goldybin – Founder and chairman, iLogos
These titles do not prove that the crypto degen community is a viable market. They show that a small, loud segment still reacts to hype and novelty. That is not the same as product-market fit.
This is not a mainstream audience. It is a niche. And even within this niche, attention is usually short. The market is still not there. Years have passed and mass adoption is nowhere near. Studios should treat this audience in my opinion as optional, not core.
Jack O’Holleran – Co-founder and CEO, SKALE Labs
Absolutely. These games prove the crypto community has matured into a real gaming market. What’s key is that Gigaverse, Fishing Frenzy, and Cambria didn’t lead with token hype. They built actual games people want to play, then added blockchain benefits.
The degen audience has serious spending power and they’re not afraid to use it on quality experiences. These aren’t casual players scrolling through ads. They’re engaged, financially motivated gamers who understand digital ownership and value.
The bigger shift here is that this community bridges crypto natives and traditional gamers. When you focus on gameplay first and make blockchain invisible, you tap into both markets. The studios getting this right aren’t building niche games anymore. They’re pioneering the future of gaming commerce.
Vibes are just the gravy. Fundamentals are the main course.
Christina Macedo – Founder and CEO, PLAY Network
Building games for niche, engaged communities is a strategic approach to validate product-market fit. The success of titles like Gigaverse, Fishing Frenzy, Cambria, and Monanimal Mayhem (on Monad testnet) illustrates that active blockchain communities, such as those on Abstract, Ronin, and Monad, are eager for compelling apps and games built for those blockchains. These communities often discover new projects directly through their preferred chains, which act as powerful distribution channels.
Rather than focusing solely on the size of these crypto degen communities, the key is their engagement and willingness to spend. Chains like Ronin, Abstract and Monad have built strong communities that are ready to support new games with real money.
For game developers, the critical question is lifetime value (LTV). Targeting a chain’s community can significantly reduce user acquisition (UA) costs while boosting LTV, as these players are already invested in the ecosystem. This makes niche development not just viable but attractive, especially for alpha or beta testing. As blockchains increasingly prioritize community-building, we are witnessing a shift toward a “chain-as-publisher” model, where chains themselves become hubs for discovering and promoting games, offering developers a streamlined path to reach dedicated audiences.
Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Sequence
It’s great to see recent launches find an audience and score real commercial wins, especially given how subdued the web3-enhanced gaming landscape was over the past year. That said, I don’t think these titles reveal anything groundbreaking about the crypto-native web3 gaming base. That cohort has existed for years and swings predictably with macro crypto and NFT markets. Many titles cashed in with modest or major revenues during past hype cycles, fueled by a small set of users who chased financial opportunities in play-to-earn or parked their crypto earnings in new, speculative assets. With the recent market surge, I expect some titles can tap this niche community again, flush with ballooning wallet balances and hungry to spend.
As with any recently debuted game, sustainability and growth take center stage. I’m impressed that these titles posted strong engagement and monetization charts in recent months. That shows off their sharp designs and ability to hook and retain players, which also means a wave of new players could push these games to bigger wins.
At the same time, developers have released only a handful of games in 2025, giving these three an easier competitive field, and the data mirror general ETH trendlines a little too closely to say that we’re looking at standout performance. Still, each of these games has carved a path to harness the current meta—that’s a big win.
The question is: will the interest hold when that meta shifts, and will these games still pull an audience once other studios flood the space, as stablecoins and financial rails push more consumer and gamer spending power on-chain?
For some web2 context: developers published over 20,000 games on Steam last year. Most of them won’t land, but indie titles are stealing a bigger slice of the pie. Look at Team Cherry: a 3-person studio that just launched Hollow Knight: Silksong, crashing multiple game stores. Thousands of small studios and indie devs build loyal audiences and earn enough to keep the lights on. I don’t see web3 playing out any differently: we’ll get our blockbuster mega-hits, the mid-tier games any dev would be proud to own, and a long tail of games that delight and reward small but passionate fanbases. If that’s a core crypto-native crowd, let’s go!
Robby Yung – CEO, The Sandbox
My view is that the games industry is a vast, diverse ecosystem, and the beauty of web/mobile distribution is that indies can (theoretically) find and cater to smaller fan communities in a way that’s sustainable for their business size.
So from that lens, I absolutely think the degen community is large enough to be a target audience, and the determining factor of success has more to do with the developer’s ability to keep down development costs and customer acquisition costs in proportion to how big that community is.
Games like Axie Infinity, Splinterlands and Alien Worlds have been running continuously for more than half a decade now based on passionate fan bases that support their visions, despite the overall fluctuations in the crypto markets, so I definitely agree that it’s possible.
JC Kim – co-CEO, Delabs Games
It is true that many web3 games generate revenue more easily than traditional games, allowing developers to recover initial development and marketing costs quickly. However, it is important to note that from a player’s perspective, much of this revenue often reflects expectations for a future token launch rather than purely organic demand.
The criticism toward early web3 games was not primarily about their failure to recoup development costs. In fact, most of them turned a profit. Instead, the real issue was that players cared more about the long-term performance of the token economy. This means we should move away from evaluating games purely on their pre-TGE business viability and start focusing on their post-TGE sustainability and growth potential.
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