How to Evaluate a Web3 Game (Judge It as a Game First)

Every Friday on the stream we play blockchain games and ask the question the trailers avoid: would anyone play this if there were no token? It is a surprisingly hard test to pass. Plenty of Web3 games are spreadsheets with a soundtrack, and plenty of players found that out after the rewards dried up.

Here is the framework we use, adapted so you can run it yourself before you spend money or months.

Step 1: Play it like a normal game

Ignore the wallet for the first session if the game allows it. Ask the questions you'd ask about any game:

• Is the core loop fun? The thing you do every minute, whether that is fighting, farming, racing or building, needs to be enjoyable on its own.
• Is there meaningful progression? Do you get better, unlock new options, or face new challenges? Or do you just accumulate a number?
• Does it respect your time? Long timers that can be skipped with a purchase are a monetization design, not a gameplay design.
• Does it run well? Lag, broken logins and stuck transactions are part of the experience, not an excuse.

If the honest answer is "this is a chore I'd only do for money," you have learned most of what you need to know. Games that are only fun when they pay become unfun exactly when payouts fall.

Step 2: Measure the wallet friction

Count how many steps it takes to start playing: wallet creation, network switching, signing, bridging, buying a starter NFT. Good Web3 games increasingly hide this behind email logins and embedded wallets. That is a real improvement, but check what you're agreeing to. An embedded wallet created for you is still a wallet, and you want to know whether you can export the keys, and who controls it if the company disappears.

Friction is not just annoying. It filters out normal players and leaves the game populated mostly by people who are there to extract value, which changes the economy.

Step 3: Ask what "ownership" actually means

"Player ownership" is the main pitch, so examine it:

• What do you own? Usually an NFT representing an item, character or plot of land. Check that it actually lives on-chain and can be transferred outside the game's own marketplace.
• What can the developer change? Most games can rebalance items, change drop rates or shut down servers. An NFT of a sword is less useful if the sword gets nerfed or the game ends.
• Is there a real market? Look at marketplace volume and how many unique buyers there are, not just the floor price. Thin markets make "ownership" hard to turn into anything.

Ownership is a genuine feature when the items are fun to use, scarce for a gameplay reason, and tradeable on an open market. It is a marketing line when it's a receipt for a purchase you can't resell.

Step 4: Follow the economy

Every game economy has faucets (ways resources enter) and sinks (ways they leave). In a token economy this matters more, because the faucet is often the token itself.

• Where do rewards come from? If the token rewards come from a fixed pool or from new players buying in, the system depends on growth. When growth slows, rewards fall, sellers outnumber buyers, and the token price drops. This was the play-to-earn boom-and-bust pattern.
• What are the sinks? Crafting costs, upgrade fees, repairs, entry fees and burns pull tokens back out. Strong sinks that players want to use are a good sign.
• Who is selling? If most players sell rewards immediately, demand has to come from somewhere else. Bots make this worse by farming rewards at scale, so look for anti-bot measures.

Step 5: Check the token like any other token

The game token still needs the usual checks: supply, allocation, vesting and value capture. Our guide on reading tokenomics covers the full list. Game-specific points:

• How large are the team and investor allocations, and when do they unlock?
• Is the token needed to play, or only to cash out? A token you only touch to sell has one direction of demand.
• Is there a separate soft currency? Many games use an off-chain currency for gameplay and keep the token for premium actions. That can stabilize the economy, or just move the inflation somewhere you can't see.

Step 6: Look at the people and the roadmap

Check how active development is: patch notes, events, and how the team responds to players. Look at the community. Are people talking about strategy, builds and events, or only the token price? A Discord where the most popular channel is "price-talk" is telling you what the players think the game is.

The five-part test, summarized

1. Fun: would you play without rewards?
2. Friction: how hard is it to start, and who controls the wallet?
3. Ownership: what do you really own, and can you sell it on an open market?
4. Economy: are there real sinks, and where do rewards come from?
5. Token: supply, unlocks and whether the token is needed to play.

A game does not need to ace all five. It does need to pass the first one, because the other four only matter if people keep showing up.

Catch the live versions on DeFi Gaming Friday on the live page, or browse past streams in the archive.

Educational and entertainment content only. Not financial advice.