#DERCArmy | DeRacers (🔮)

Web2 game design? Your Web3 game is dead. Degen game design? Your Web3 game will never be mass-adopted. Lets talk about how to fix this 👇🏻 🐺 Written by WolvesDAO member @MariaFuzzyland from @fableborne - Establish a business thesis to anchor decisions. - Define the target audience with a T-shape approach. - Live in the target audience's skin. Establish a Business Thesis Why are you building in Web3? a) You believe you can achieve Web2 gaming revenue with minimal marketing spend by building degen games for degens. b) You believe crypto innovates design space and user acquisition, to compete with Web2 gaming for their TAM with significantly reduced marketing spend. c) Another thesis, it's for you to define. What is your business model? This could be a whole thread on its own. How will you generate revenue, grow it and defend it? You can only define your target audience and shape product decisions by having a clear business thesis to anchor you. Or you can get lost in the decision forest, and bleed runway forever. T-Shape Target Audience Humans are multi-faceted. We don't sit in a single bucket. You are leaving money and retention on the table if you target a single player segment. Now add in crypto financialization and your audience segments have multiplied. You have in-game power whales, financial gains whales, and a very small overlap between the two. Which one do you prioritise? If you want to satisfy both equally, you will have to build two games in one. ONE segment will be your decision lighthouse. Additional segments will grow your business TAM and diversify the product's monetisation - but ensure they are prioritised. Focus split is the little-death that brings total obliteration. Live in Target Audience Skin You defined your target audience, watched some videos, and wrote a nice looking persona document - you're ready to go. WRONG. If you're not a degen and you approach Web3 with a traditional game design you've already failed. Your creative mind is restrained and you don't understand the audience to design without chasing metas. You're stuck behind the train, eating its dust. It's not enough to read about it, crypto is about feelings and psychological narratives. It's impossible to learn this without experiencing it yourself. Set yourself a personal development spend cap, and go spend it on mints, tokens, and memes on different chains. Trade, stake, and farm to grow your liquidity. Maybe make some gen wealth. If your business thesis isn't 100% crypto audience and you go full-in degen then you have also already failed. Crypto has a severe PR problem, and it's not unfounded. Jump into a memecoin telegram and you have immediate evidence why. Mass market isn't proud to be labeled a degenerate. Today, we are a sub-culture. Excellent studios are bridging this divide with innovative cross-culture game design and marketing. It's a divide we must embrace, understand and intentionally bridge to succeed.