How to Find Good Crypto Gaming Projects Early — 4 Things to Evaluate in a Team
Disclaimer: None of the following should be considered investment advice. Do your own research. More info is located beneath the article.
Gamers are taking over crypto. More and more, we hear about the growth in the gaming corner of the crypto world. And for good reason.
Bitcoin, DeFi, governance, NFTs, and meme coins are all playing a violent game of king of the hill atop the ROI podium. It can be hard to know which coins have what it takes to last long term. The volatility of the charts just complicates it further. By nature, gaming has an active day-to-day userbase, is a gateway to mainstream adoption, and is really fun to be a part of.
As the gaming sector of crypto is growing at break-neck speeds, crypto gaming will yield some of the highest returns. Our project alone has gone up around 3000% in a matter of 3.5 months. Kind of crazy. But then again, who doesn’t want to make money while playing games they love?
At the same time, there’s plenty of fool’s gold in the space. At Quantum Works, we want to make sure gamers have the best transition possible into the crypto-verse. So we want you to know exactly how to evaluate a project before investing.
Thus begins our 4-part blog series that will become the Ultimate Guide for Evaluating Gaming projects. We’ll be taking a look at the key factors to any gaming project:
- Its team
- Its gameplay
- Its community
- Its financials.
We’ll break all of this down, and then we’ll even throw you an actionable rubric at the end of the 4-part guide to help grade different opportunities. Let’s begin.
What makes a good crypto team?
A good crypto team is comprised of transparent team members with exceptional track records whose goals are all aligned to create unique value for their community first and foremost.
To gauge how big of an impact they could have, it’s worth examining their marketing, their goals, and their merits.
🚀 The marketing will decide how quickly the project can pop off.
🎯 The goals will determine if they’re taking it in the right direction.
💪 The merits will determine if they have what it takes to get there.
Evaluate the team’s marketing
I’ll do my best to get you halfway to a marketing degree with a minor in crypto gaming with this section. We’ll start with the basic marketing mix or the 4 Ps of marketing.
These are the four levers that a team can pull to affect their firm’s value in the market. Let’s be clear about something. Traditional marketing and crypto marketing are two very different beasts.
Product:
Does the product exude quality through its features, design, branding, and functionality?
What’s unique to crypto?
The Product has new challenges in using blockchain to invent valuable new features to old systems. On top of that, the value of their product is intrinsically tied to the value of its users. Flow’s NBA Top Shot NFT Project wouldn’t be doing anywhere near $700 million in sales if not for the community of over 1 million users.
Price:
Does the pricing strategy match the company’s goals and align with the sustainable value customers are willing to pay?
What’s unique to crypto?
The Price has evolved to include tokenomics, or the automatic incentives that owning a coin may provide.
For instance, QBIT’s reflections feature distributes 3% of the transaction tax across all the holders of the token.
Promotion:
Does the promotion drive valuable traffic to the brand by providing relevant info to customers’ specific needs?
What’s unique to crypto?
The Promotion has a vastly increased focus on decentralized, community-based growth versus inorganic promotion. This means much much more educational and onboarding content is needed.
(As opposed to low-level relationship promotion like coupons and ads).
Place:
Does the brand find the customers where they are while considering the customer’s entire purchase journey?
What’s unique to crypto?
The Place has been turned on its head.
All the traditional digital marketing channels have been shuffled and replaced in order to foster the changing needs of community-focused marketing.
Do you think that before crypto started growing, board rooms were talking about using Discord and Twitter as their main channels over Facebook and Instagram?
These changes were all catalyzed by blockchain, but they were enacted because now customers are also stakeholders in crypto companies. They invest, develop, and engage with both the product and the community.
(We’ll touch on this more in the community section of this guide, but this is why crypto marketing looks so different).
So these are the areas you’ll want to examine when investigating a crypto gaming project.
Investigate the team’s marketing channels…
Questions to ask yourself (#1):
(Promotion & place) Is the company creating a valuable community with the tools of each channel?
It’s any successful company’s job to find where their targeted consumers are and provide ample value for them in each space.
Early crypto adopters love:
- Decentralization
- Protection of privacy
- Opportunity
So if you’re examining a project that does a good job of that, we can check that off our rubric.
Traditional companies:
- Direct Mail
- Etc.
Crypto companies:
- Discord
- Telegram
- Dank memes
- Twitch
- GitHub
- Clubhouse
- Medium
You can cram people in a room shoulder-to-shoulder, that doesn’t make it a valuable community. The good news is, your average crypto investor is built different.
They just need a vision to rally around… a brand if you will.
Listen for the brand’s rally cry
Questions to ask yourself (#2):
(product) Is the brand inspiring and gamer-friendly?
Traditionally, companies would have a distinct company-to-customer relationship. In the blockchain realm, there are legions of people with NFT and/or anime profile pictures that actually join the core team in realizing a common vision.
We’ll get into how to evaluate the value of the community in the community section of this guide. For now, just think of the “brand” as all of the features that help early crypto-adopters align with the company vision.
That’s a lot of features. We’re not just talking about the logo, but the user experience, the company track record, the company personality, the messaging, the design, etc., etc.
The biggest and best brands are the ones that inspire a vision of the future that:
- Is feasible enough for people to believe in.
- Is crazy enough for people to root for.
Historic examples of these types of brands:
- Tesla — The car company that turns an industry on its head with self-driving and electric cars at a compelling price.
- Nintendo Wii — The video game console that differentiated itself and made a huge splash by introducing a wireless motion-controlled remote.
- Quantum Works (Wink wink) — The video game company that introduced crypto to mainstream gaming with the AAA game, Project Quantum.
And thus…another box to check:
Does their technology work every time?
Questions to ask yourself (#3):
Has their smart contract been audited?
In the blockchain world, where the security of all of its customer’s funds are riding on whether or not the product was coded correctly, this is a must. There are companies out there that extensively and methodically examine a smart contract’s code to make sure it is entirely secure. You want to make sure that your project has had an audit. Big red flags otherwise 🚩🚩🚩
(Our Audit Report was done by CTD SEC and can be found here).
Evaluate their goals (through their actions)
What is the quickest way to build a game that nobody wants to play? Developing it with a profit before fun mentality.
We’re proud of our goals at Quantum Works. We’re building a game that isn’t using crypto to line our own pockets endlessly. Fun is the focus first and foremost. We use crypto to put the power back into the player’s hands to earn — without requiring a ton of upfront cost.
Gaming companies pour their blood, sweat, and tears into development. And they should be compensated well! But plenty of companies prioritize profit over fun.
At best their games are fads that never stand the test of time. When they put profit over fun…
- They allow too many pay-to-win features
- They get lazy in their development
- They don’t respond to community requests.
When they put fun over profit, they end up more successful and more profitable anyway (that’s what we hope for our game).
EA has definitely put out some bangers (I’m looking at you, It Takes Two). But if we compare the video game giant’s Starwars Battlefront II to Stardew Valley (made by a single developer) we can get an idea. It speaks volumes to how much of a game’s success comes down to the goals of the studio — and they both start with Star, so there ya go.
Profit before fun
Starwars Battlefront II had a huge amount going for them juggernaut intellectual property and massive funding…and the pay-to-win aspects of the game almost ruined the AAA title.
- Began with a greedy paywall for core game content
- Grinding unlockable features made the game more like a chore
- They experience enormous backlash from the community
Fun before profit
Stardew Valley had an inspiring creation. Eric Barone developed the game on his own over the course of four years by working ten hours a day.
- He worked tirelessly after the game’s launch to respond to bugs and feedback requests.
- “I want to create a collection of games during my career so that when I’m on my deathbed, I can look back and see that I created all these wonderful things that brought people joy”
- His earnest commitment to fun made the community not only players but fans
- Lauded heavily with awards and nominations
The silver lining is that EA listened to the players and removed the toxic microtransaction features before launch. By a couple of years later, they removed the negative remnants of the grind-to-progress system.
Even though its players were eventually satisfied with a fun game years later, I can’t help but wonder how much more successful the game would have been if it began with fun at its core over profit.
AAA Games can certainly be artful masterpieces like The Last of Us (some of whose talent we have scooped for Project Quantum), God of War, the Witcher 3, the list goes on…We just want you to be aware of how important the team’s goals are for the overall success of the game.
Questions to ask yourself (#4):
Are you confident that the intentions of the team focus on a fun player experience first?
Evaluate the team’s merit
Questions to ask yourself (#5):
Do they have a good track record and rich experience in their field?
If everybody could make a great game well and easily, why wouldn’t everyone make a Call of Duty Zombies map of their neighborhood? (That’d be so hype). It takes years of developing games to even learn how. Let alone to do it well. Think of all the challenges that go into making a game…
How do you perfectly balance the game’s…
Graphics
What are your priorities for graphics and optimization?
Optimization
How are you creating a memorable & rich story that people inspire conversation?
Gameplay
What are the biggest balancing challenges and how are you handling them?
Player Interactions
How are you planning to make player interactions fun & competitive, without creating toxicity?
Customizability
How will players be able to express and represent themselves within your game?
In-Game Economy
How will the in-game economy be worthwhile for players to interact with?
Revenue stream
How does the team plan on incentivizing microtransactions without hurting the player experience as a whole?
Approachability
What does the team plan to do to make it approachable for their target audiences?
How does the team plan on tackling players’ biggest barriers to entry?
Story
What does the creative process look like for creating a compelling story within the game’s universe?
Content Schedule
What does your vision for keeping the game fresh and relevant long-term look like?
Balancing
What are your plans for developing a good balance in the game, and how will you know when there’s a balance problem that needs to be fixed?
How will you decide the game’s meta?
Which of these do you focus most on? How do you make every slash satisfying and every shot special?
Well for starters, a good-ass team.
There’s A LOT to handle. Some of these things, there’s really no way of knowing until you’re able to play the game. But many of them, you can ask the developers themselves. As we’ve discussed, games that are developing successfully will have channels that allow for that kind of interaction — Ask them!
If you’re curious about ours, you can join our Discord or Telegram to chat with the team, catch an AMA with our CEO, or follow our Medium for our weekly Dev Diaries.
Literally, just copy and paste any of these questions and take them to the developers! Or look around until you find the answers that are relevant!
If you’re not a gamer, it can be hard to know where the perfect balance is. We’ll go over successful game design principles in the next section of this guide. But you can also always use the team’s track record as a guide. Which games have they worked on in the past, and how successful have they been?
Safety Check:
Questions to ask yourself (#6):
Do they have a good-sized team so that they won’t be able to just quit when the going gets tough?
Questions to ask yourself (#7):
Do they show original assets and consistent developments?
Lastly, in the crypto space, we hear way too often of rug-pulls and scams. Make sure that the team is large enough that if the developers get exhausted over the long course of building the game, that they can’t just quit and run with your cash.
Be aware that there are plenty of video game asset stores out there for developers that just anyone can purchase and advertise as their own.
The more consistent their developments, the more you can trust that the project is legit. The earlier you get into a project, the more money there is to be made, but make sure there is at least enough developed to inspire confidence!
Conclusion:
Now you know how to personally vet any crypto gaming team! I know it’s a lot to cover. These are projects that can go 0X or 100X. The more confidence you have, the more you can comfortably invest, and the more you stand to gain (or lose — nothing is ever certain).
This is only one piece of the puzzle. If you’d like to go over game design principles that successful games use and all the other things you should check for in a crypto gaming project, follow our Medium! The rest of the guide is on the way.
Who are we?
To gamers who are excited about crypto, Quantum Works is the first AAA gaming company that empowers players to earn real money while playing. It is powered by blockchain, investor-backed, with an award-winning art, game development, and executive team.
If you’d like to learn more about our project, you can click here!
Legal Stuff: Neither the author nor the Quantum Works company is an investment advisor. All opinions are of the author alone. There are risks involved in investing in cryptocurrencies (or anything). None of the information presented here is intended to form a basis for any offer or recommendation or have any regard to the investment objectives, financial situation, or needs of any specific person. Everything here is for informational entertainment purposes only.
