The best web3 game of this cycle wasn't a traditional "game". It was @pumpdotfun. It has all the DNA of a successful games-as-a-service title, just wrapped in financial markets instead of fantasy worlds. 1/12
Think about what makes online games work:
Player vs Environment (PvE) mechanics ✅
Emergent social dynamics ✅
Natural clan/guild formation ✅
User-generated content ✅
Monetisation pathways ✅
has ALL of these. 2/12
PvE? It's you vs the market. Instead of raiding dungeons, you're launching tokens. Instead of farming mobs for XP, you're farming attention for liquidity. The environment is the brutal, unforgiving market itself. It makes the Wilderness in Runescape look like child's play. 3/12
The social layer is INTENSE. Watch any token launch and you see tribes form in real-time. Diamond hand "guilds" emerge. FUD raiders coordinate attacks. Influencer "clan leaders" rally their followers. It's WoW raiding, but with money. 4/12
The UGC aspect is genius. They took the complex, gatekept world of token launches and turned it into something anyone could do in minutes. Like Roblox letting kids build games, Pump lets the most "monkey-brained" degen build financial instruments. 5/12
Consider the parallels to Fortnite's UEFN:
Creators make content (tokens/memes)
Players consume & interact with that content
Best creators get rewarded (bonding curve graduations)
Platform takes a cut of everything It's the same model, different wrapper. 6/12
The "gameplay loop" is addictive:
Browse new launches (exploring dungeons)
Ape into promising tokens (joining raids)
Shill your bags (recruiting party members)
Take profits or get rugged (boss fights)
Repeat Classic MMO psychology at work. 7/12
What makes this profound is they gamified FINANCIAL MARKETS. They took something abstract and complex (token launches) and made it as accessible as clicking "Create Game" in Roblox. That's an insane achievement in UX design. 8/12
The platform even has "seasons" - meta shifts as new platform mechanics emerge. Each wave brings new strategies, new winners, new losers. Just like how Fortnite refreshes with new seasons and mechanics. 9/12
The most successful "players" aren't even professional traders; they're creators who understand the meta. They build narratives, communities, lore around their tokens. Sound familiar? It's exactly what the top Roblox/Minecraft creators do. 10/12
Pump is brutal PvP disguised as PvE. But from a design perspective, they've created the most engaging, social, creator-driven experience in web3. And they did it without a single 3D asset, combat, and a fraction of the resources other web3 games are using. 11/12
The lesson? The best web3 "games" might not look like games at all. They'll take complex systems and wrap them in familiar, social, creative mechanics that anyone can participate in. proved that. The question is: what's next? 12/12
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