FTX In-Depth Research: What Makes Blockchain Games "Fun"?
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FTX In-Depth Research: What Makes Blockchain Games "Fun"?
Everyone's situation is different; each gamer is an individual with unique needs and motivations.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: FTX.US
DeepTide TechFlow authorized translation and publication
I. Why Are Games Fun?
To determine whether a blockchain game is fun, we must first define what makes a "fun game." However, the challenge lies in this: everyone is different—each gamer is an individual with unique needs and motivations. Game designer Nicole Lazzaro, in her work “Why We Play: The Four Keys to Player Emotional Engagement,” outlines four primary reasons people play video games:
1. Intrinsic Experience:
We play video games to generate new thoughts and feelings. Escaping our worries and trading boredom for joy feels great. Think back to those joyful moments—playing your favorite single-player game for eight hours on a snowy day, spending a summer playing multiplayer games with friends, or mindlessly tapping an app while waiting in line. Video games are like books, movies, or TV series—but more interactive. They project your consciousness into another dimension.
2. Challenge and Achievement:
People also engage in meaningful challenges within video games—chasing higher scores than before. The sense of accomplishment from completing a 100+ hour RPG or ranking among the top 1,000 players in a competitive title often surpasses achievements gained from real-world activities. A good game offers a sense of challenge distinct from the actual or perceived risks present in the physical world.
3. Immersion:
Slightly different from intrinsic experience, immersion thrives on surprise and mystery. One reason many people enjoy gambling (even though most casinos aren't particularly interesting) is the anticipation and unexpected moments it brings. The dopamine rush from each revelatory moment in a game plays a crucial role in determining whether we find it enjoyable.
4. Social Experience:
Many people play primarily for social reasons. In other words, we play video games simply to be with friends or family—not necessarily for the game itself. This motivation has become increasingly common, especially as the pandemic forced many to stay home. With this motivation, the game itself becomes secondary; what matters more is its ability to bring people closer together.
To answer “what makes games fun” more simply: most great games are a perfect blend of strategy and surprise. Chess is a pure strategy game, while most children’s games rely heavily on randomness. Poker sits between the two—players have some control, yet unexpected events occur (i.e., the cards you’re dealt). The human brain naturally enjoys controllable surprises; games that balance player agency and unpredictability tend to be the most fun.
II. Blockchain Games
Now that we’ve broadly covered “what makes games fun,” let’s explore how blockchain technology can make traditional games more engaging. I’ll start with a “traditional” video game example, then show how adding blockchain enhances it.
Case 1: True Ownership of Digital Assets
NFTs have captured global attention because they represent one of the best ways to prove ownership of digital assets, while also lowering and decentralizing the friction involved in buying, selling, and trading assets within an ecosystem. The enabling technology already exists—but the issue isn’t technical. It’s about market interoperability.
Technically, people can already trade items for in-game assets or money through limited legitimate platforms or gray-market exchanges outside the game—though these processes involve significant friction and risk. But such trades are generally confined to a single game's ecosystem, for two core reasons.
First, the buyer/trader market is limited to a closed ecosystem of a specific game, rather than an open marketplace where all game assets can interoperate. This reduces liquidity. Second, although cash can act as an intermediary in transactions across different game systems, it lacks the authenticity and provenance guarantees that on-chain assets provide, creating high fraud risks.
Traditional Game Example
Fortnite: Millions of players are passionate about collecting cosmetic skins in Fortnite, which also serve as a core revenue driver for Epic’s “free-to-play” model. These skins are purely aesthetic and don’t affect gameplay mechanics, alleviating concerns over “pay-to-win.” For developers, this remains an effective and critical design consideration.
How Ownership Makes This Game More Fun
Fortnite skins are a form of social expression. In real life, we wear different clothes in different settings as extensions of identity. Yet we can only wear one outfit at a time, and we often want to discard or swap ones we no longer like. This analogy extends to Fortnite skins—cosmetic variety becomes a form of status flexibility.
Maybe my friend owns a rare skin I want, and I own one she wants. Perhaps we both enjoy trading with each other. But current systems don’t allow such trades. Beyond making skin swaps easier via blockchain, reducing friction in digital asset exchange directly improves gameplay experience. For many, the fun of gaming is social—and in social contexts, “appearance” is a key component of enjoyment.
Higher stakes can further enhance the experience. Imagine a scenario: in a 100-player Fortnite Battle Royale, the top 10 survivors win rare skins. You and your friend both play, and she wins the skin you really wanted. Later, she gives it to you, knowing how much you desired it. That digital asset becomes a small memory between two people—a gesture of kindness and shared joy. This hypothetical scenario isn’t possible today—but it could be soon!
Case 2: Proof of Achievement:
One of the most overlooked opportunities in blockchain gaming is single-player narrative games. Because the crypto space is hyper-focused on trading, most developers build MMORPGs, FPS titles, and strategy games—genres with larger player bases and strong potential for in-game economies. But that doesn’t mean the next “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” or “Horizon Zero Dawn” shouldn’t be built on-chain.
A growing trend last year was the use of POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol). Simply put, these are verifiable assets confirming someone (or a wallet holder) participated in an event. Physical equivalents include conference badges or concert band posters.
Such proofs offer natural cross-platform appeal. If you search social media for content related to a specific game, you’ll see countless screenshots and short clips—because people love showing off their in-game accomplishments. Content might include defeating a major boss, solving a puzzle cleverly, or just doing something funny in-game, like turning the environment into meme art.
Traditional Game Example
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Small games like Wordle make it easy to share achievements, but single-player story-driven games offer hundreds or even thousands of moments to showcase victories—and hilarious failures—along the journey. One of my personal favorites is “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” a modern take on a classic adventure. The game requires exploring a vast world, defeating monsters, and solving frustrating puzzles. Today, players typically post Nintendo Switch screenshots on social media to share these personal moments. The most surprising or impressive ones often go viral, flickering briefly in the ever-growing stream of digital content.
How POAPs Make This Game More Fun
First, when someone shares in-game content, there's no way to confirm if the post was copied from elsewhere. Most of the time, this kind of sharing is legitimate—but 100% verifiable authenticity would strengthen the game’s integrity. Compare this to old arcade games with high-score leaderboards—scores that couldn’t be faked. The player named “AZZ” who scored 1,069,420 points in “Galaga” truly is the best.
Even more important than verification is placing proof of single-player achievements on-chain. On-chain storage transforms solo experiences into competitive ones. Overcoming in-game challenges is an internal achievement; sharing it via screenshot turns it into a social one. Competitive achievements can be further solidified with verifiable blockchain proof.
If your goal is to beat Breath of the Wild faster than anyone else on Earth, a game that tracks, verifies, and publicly displays this data gives you indisputable proof of your title. This doesn’t affect other players nor rely on economic incentives. Blockchain can add purely optional, extra layers of fun. That said, it would be even more exciting to see publishers return a portion of profits to top players who achieve such feats.
Case 3: Game Economies:
Game economies represent the largest area of development, investment, and analysis in blockchain gaming. Mature digital economies have existed for decades since early 2000s titles like “Diablo II” and “Runescape.” Game economies deepen immersion, increase challenge, and enrich social interaction. Blockchain games can revolutionize game economies—but integrating them into on-chain dynamics is also the hardest system to get right. Creating a game economy independent of “real-world” value is already difficult; adding immutability and hard currency to a fictional economy is even harder.
Setting aside technical, regulatory, and competitive hurdles, this type of blockchain game creates an opportunity to seamlessly exchange time, attention, and money as currencies. The biggest challenge in analyzing why MMORPGs are fun is that players have diverse needs. One could argue that all four of Lazarro’s motivations clearly exist in these games—and as demand for digital assets grows, “earning money” becomes an even stronger motivator. A friend once told me, “Value created in a game feels like owning a house instead of renting. When I truly own a house, I feel satisfied investing time, money, and skill into flooring or painting bedrooms. I invest heavily because it’s mine—it’s my expression, my ‘love,’ and a store of value.”
Therefore, the delicate balance required for on-chain game economies is as follows:
Economic incentives must not harm the experience of players who choose not to monetize.
The game economy should reflect the direction/desires of the majority of its community (free players and owners), unless such directives conflict with the first principle.
The game should maximize the value of its various economic units, unless such mechanisms conflict with the first or second principles.
To emphasize: this balance cannot be understated—it’s extremely difficult to establish.
Traditional Game Example
World of Warcraft: Core players become highly emotional when certain game elements are nerfed or buffed. This feeling intensifies when changes affect the entire in-game economy. Beyond the specific mechanics of how the economy works, the deeper frustration lies in *who* makes the decisions, not just reactions to economic outcomes. In “World of Warcraft,” we’ve seen decades of player anger toward Blizzard due to the centralized nature of economic decisions.
How On-Chain Economies Make This Game More Fun
One point to stress: games shouldn’t be designed by committee. The vision of creators matters and should be preserved—that’s why many sandbox games with too few parameters fail to go mainstream. Game studios should lead character, story, and core mechanic development. Even when these rely heavily on the economy, I still believe central creative authority should remain supreme. Blockchain’s role comes *after* the initial game economy is established—that’s where fun increases.
Just as Bitcoin no longer depends on its original creator Satoshi Nakamoto, carefully designed game economies in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft should eventually rely less on their original creators. Just as the real world is slowly but surely moving away from central banks, trustless, player-controlled game economies will inevitably attract the largest player base and maximize fun.
As mentioned, such games incentivize players in multiple ways, rewarding invested value. Today’s traditional games reward time and attention; tomorrow’s best blockchain games will offer opportunities to invest time, attention, and money—carefully balancing the three so none overwhelms the others. Such games won’t just be fun—having the community play a vital role in maintaining balance introduces a new form of enjoyment. Does all this require blockchain? Not necessarily—but studios choosing to use blockchain will have a competitive edge over those simply asking players to “trust us.”
Case 4: Community Ownership and Collaboration
In the past, my friend Zeke used to drive across Pennsylvania for hours to attend tournaments for his beloved fighting game, spending 3–4 hours just to win $50. For him, it wasn’t about the money—it was about seeing his friends in the community. Video games possess a remarkable ability to bring people together and coordinate them—both online and offline.
Traditional Game Example
Super Smash Bros.: There’s a special aspect of the Smash Bros. community worth examining. Top players often favor specific characters because each has distinct strengths and weaknesses. Most players refer to their preferred character as their “main.” In Smash, aligning with a main character is akin to joining a PFP community like Cryptopunks or Doodles. Players love showcasing how powerful their chosen character is and mocking others who pick what they consider inferior options.
How Community Ownership and Collaboration Make This Game More Fun
Because Smash Bros. is a crossover of existing IPs owned and monetized by large publishers, the idea of rewarding players’ communities based on main-character preferences is currently impossible. But hypothetically, imagine Mario, Sonic, Cloud, and Solid Snake were characters co-owned by separate DAOs—similar to the ApeCoin community created for the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Games like Smash depend on careful balance—no character should be stronger than others. This requires central oversight; every good game needs to start from defined rules. Ultimately, these rules *become* the game, not the story, characters, or community. But imagine if a coalition of main-character supporters and owners had governance rights over other aspects—like aesthetics or IP usage. Imagine bounties for recruiting and training new players for specific characters outside the game, or tournament and streaming revenues driven by a character’s popularity in Smash being shared with players. Of course, this is speculative—but blockchain integration would have zero impact on the game itself while offering clear benefits to players.
Case 5: Prize Distribution, Competition (and Gambling)
Humans are naturally drawn to gambling, and blockchain technology can make gambling within video games easier. The viability of gambling in electronic games isn’t debatable—most Western societies already widely accept it in other forms. More importantly, how can blockchain (and traditional) games use this tech to increase fun and fairness?
Traditional Game Example
Rocket League: Rocket League is a fast-paced competitive match where two teams try to score more goals. Players can choose a “casual” mode for relaxed gameplay or ranked scoring. But for top players, there are significant RL tournaments offering cash prizes to winners.
How Prize Distribution and Competition Make This Game More Fun
While Rocket League’s modest rewards benefit participants and organizers, fans are usually excluded. One reason Fantasy Football is popular in the U.S. is that it involves spectators, making the viewing experience more engaging—whether through monetary stakes or bragging rights.
Blockchain technology simplifies and enhances fan engagement in countless ways—these can be “fun” additions layered onto the core game without altering the game itself. Oracles can verify in-game events transparently for all participants, eliminating the need for referees. Layer 2 solutions enable fans to place micro-bets quickly without disproportionate fees, and tournaments can distribute various digital assets as rewards. Unlike traditional fantasy sports platforms that pay out cash for player performance, blockchain-based systems can also reward participants with rare NFTs that grant access to online/offline events—adding utility and excitement.
III. Reminders for Blockchain Game Developers
Over 10,000 new games launch weekly on Steam alone. Are they all fun? Most aren’t—or they’re just copies of successful titles. Not all blockchain games are fun, because not all games are fun. Making games is genuinely hard. When someone asks if a blockchain game is truly fun, talk about mechanics, lore, and art—not blockchain.The biggest mistake I see blockchain games make is showcasing economic incentives and details on their websites instead of gameplay.
Blockchain games don’t need to scale to match traditional games’ player counts, because their funding models allow players to gain value over time. A game’s “fun factor” shouldn’t be measured by player count. Traditional games attract massive audiences largely because most players spend little money. Use or create metrics better suited to your game to onboard players into blockchain’s new possibilities.
Most know economic rewards are a support mechanism—don’t fear using it just because critics may call it “artificial player bait.” The reality is, traditional games spend heavily on user acquisition via ads, referral programs, fan payments, and discounts—they just extract value differently. Ideally, your game attracts players because it’s fun, but don’t dismiss user acquisition costs in blockchain games. Most free-to-play games spend 100% of early revenue on marketing, chasing long-term LTV (lifetime value). Redirecting that spending into players’ hands is actually a positive industry optimization over giving it to advertisers.
Aesthetics and identity are powerful monetization tools in blockchain games. Building game economies is hard because it deeply affects fun. Changing how something looks doesn’t change how it plays. Your studio can do what Fortnite did as a free game—focus on unique game mechanics that blockchain can enhance, rather than forcing it into every corner of the game.
Recall the introduction of this article—make sure you know how to discuss a game’s “fun.” Cultivate your designer mindset: create small games for fun, play others’ games critically, and focus on the moments that bring you the most joy. When someone asks if a game is truly fun, don’t snarkily reply, “How do you define fun?” Instead, use the right mental models to help them reach a reasonable conclusion.
Time to play!
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