Literally exactly this is what I keep trying to tell my (mostly former at this point) friends who are super into blockchain gaming. The fact that some silicon valley suit put $x million into a project doesn't mean that it has any viability to gamers, who are the most fun-seeking users in the universe. No one wants to "play to earn", no one wants to "invest in their game", they just want to play and have fun.

I think Decentraland is a great microcosm of this problem, as TFA states, but there are a thousand other examples of blockchain gaming where the blockchain integration is the main selling point, not the fun of the actual game. And when you talk to these weirdos, their understanding of gamers and the gaming industry is completely detached from reality. Most of the games in Decentraland are at best idle clickers that would have taken normal game developers a weekend of $SUBSTANCE-induced haze to develop, and yet they're getting millions of dollars of investment from two sources: ghoulish VCs who think that gamers can be reduced to skinner box robots, and crypto speculators who know equally little about gaming but a lot more about the human behavior of other crypto speculators. The whole thing just makes me sad, because gaming is a fascinating industry that I am privileged to be a part of, and I believe there is still a lot of innovation to be had in the space. But VC-driven nonsense like this is not it.