The gaming lesson from Off The Grid and Telegram? Put blockchain in the background

The following is a guest post from Leo Li, CVO and Chief Growth Officer at CARV.

Off The Grid could be the mainstream moment we’ve been waiting for in web3 gaming – not because it flaunts blockchain features, but because it doesn’t. The major console release integrates NFTs and blockchain in the background, letting gameplay take center stage. The game is the main appeal, while the blockchain is a bonus that furthers trading, ownership, and expression.

Much like Telegram, which is quietly slipping crypto wallet functionality into hundreds of millions of pockets, game developers realize that simplicity is vital. Hitting gamers over the head with painful onboarding and crypto-heavy concepts can alienate potential players. 

The next gaming bull run will not be driven by blockchain games—it will be driven by great games that happen to use blockchain.

The quiet revolution in blockchain gaming

Off The Grid is causing a lot of noise for a game that’s not officially out yet. The cyberpunk battle royale from Gunzilla Games – only available via early access on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X – is getting plenty of attention for its tongue-in-cheek violence and gritty visuals from filmmaker Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium).

“Part schlocky satire of streaming culture, part sendup of gamers, all shrewd self-aware storytelling: Off The Grid is a fun time,” CNET wrote in October.

It’s a fun time, indeed, that’s entirely on the blockchain. Blink, and you might miss it, but Off The Grid is a native web3 title built upon an Avalanche subnet. This enables crypto capabilities alongside gameplay, including a forthcoming token and the NFT minting and trading of in-game weapons and skins on OpenSea. The best part? So far, players aren’t obligated to engage with these features. The blockchain and the game are separate yet complementary, with the former intended to enhance the latter rather than override it.

It’s a similar story over on Telegram. Players are flocking to the simplicity and engagement of clicker games inside the chat platform. Thanks to endorsing The Open Network (TON) as its official web3 infrastructure and integrating wallet functionality, Telegram makes it easy for gamers to embrace crypto without knowing it. Gone are complicated onboarding and clunky interfaces. Telegram’s mini-app gaming occurs automatically inside the known and trusted chat platform.

The successes are impressive across the board. TON clicker Notcoin and its eponymous token rose to a market cap of more than half a billion dollars, and BANANA earned 12 million players just over a month after launch. Meanwhile, Off The Grid is also gaining serious traction, with millions of wallets created during the first week of early access before becoming the top free game on the Epic Games Store. The numbers tell a clear story: mass adoption follows when blockchain integration is invisible.

The lesson for blockchain game makers

Since the sector’s inception, we’ve been waiting for the blockchain gaming “mainstream moment.” The one-two punch of Off The Grid and Telegram suggests we’re inching closer, but their wins hold essential lessons for developers.

First, arming your game with blockchain isn’t enough. About 400 crypto games stopped development last year, and since 2018, more than three-quarters of all blockchain games have failed to gain traction and been discontinued. The reason? Games weren’t fun enough, and blockchain features weren’t compelling enough. Going forward, game makers must start with both the game and the blockchain use case before working backward. Without a good game behind it, the blockchain elements never have a chance to take off.

The second lesson is about accessibility. One-quarter of web3 leaders agree that the learning curve for blockchain technology and the lack of user-friendly interfaces remain significant hurdles to adoption. Solutions like CARV ID are instructive here, uniting gamer profiles under one banner to improve interoperability and showcase achievements across games. This new crop of games shows that we need to start with great gameplay, make it easy to access, and bake blockchain into the foundation. This is the best way to make both sides of “blockchain gaming” work together.

In my view, it’s time to think of blockchain gaming like cloud computing—something consumers seldom encounter, but that drives the backend thanks to invisible integration. Just as we don’t think about cloud computing when using Netflix, players shouldn’t have to think about blockchain when inside our games.

Balancing gameplay and blockchain in 2025

Heading into the new year, blockchain gaming is better positioned to break into the mainstream. AAA studios are taking us seriously, and gamers are coming around the idea of blockchain features that further the play experience.

However, there’s a fine line between creating a great game and ensuring meaningful crypto synergy. Neopets Metaverse, an NFT-powered game based on the massively popular 1999 pet simulator, was in development for roughly two years before it was abruptly canceled. The reason? The CEO said gamers “didn’t care“ about blockchain, with the title intended to repurpose it as a regular mobile game. Clearly, the game needs to be good, and adding blockchain needs to make sense, add value, and improve the ecosystem.

Here, understanding the audience is crucial. Gamers trend younger and want better ways to express themselves, own their identities, and make money online – all things blockchain can enable. Therefore, making these features accessible and meaningful with blockchain will drive the next web3 gaming bull run.

This is the challenge for our sector in 2025 – making blockchain relevant to the game, invisible to the player, and powerful enough to drive adoption. It’s now up to us – the developers – to get there. Off The Grid and Telegram are showing us the way forward – put blockchain in the background and let the games lead the charge.

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