Fire is an ideal medium of exchange and unit of account for on-chain games. But this begs the question, "Why not roll and use your own token?". While the prospect is initially alluring, financialising your game in this way has side effects you should consider when designing your game.

### Negative price movements have an outsided effect on community growth.

Ideally, you want people to play your game because it is fun. This leads to a positive cycle where:

And repeat. Having fun is also market-neutral, meaning that someone can drop into your game at any time and have fun jump-starting this effect. So what happens when you add a game token to the mix?

![](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/B1EdofP92.png)

Let's say there is some value `A` representing how fun your game is to play. When you add `B`, how much fun your game is when you make money, you take a mediocre game and make it fun, and you take a great game and rocket it through the stratosphere.  

It doesn't matter how fun your game is; making money is multiplicative to how fun it can be. You might think this is a good thing, but the problem is the inverse is also true **and** worse.

It doesn't matter how fun your game is; if people lose money, they aren't having fun. And, you've killed the core loop attracting new players. How do you jump-start your playerbase when no one has fun playing your game? You have dug a hole, and you may never get out.

>Note: This is true when the token price globally affects all game players. For example, when the game token is required to play. This is not always true and does not consider the separate problems caused by Play-To-Earn, which should be addressed separately.

### Exceptions

Risk-to-Earn games and games like Poker do not experience this problem because losing money is a local experience. Some people make money (i.e., have fun), and those who lose money *can* see a world where they make money the next time they play. This preserves players returning even when they lose money. But even then, if you tie the ecosystem too closely to your token price, the same pitfalls arise.

### Okay, but what if I still want to use my own token?

You can remove token pressure from your game by using other tokens in your ecosystem. In the simple case, this can mean never launching a token. But a token is also a means for building and aligning a community, so what if you want to do both?

### Separate playing your game and making money from your token.

Whatever the core gameplay loop, use a separate token within it. This isolates the game experience from the market, preserving its "funness" and, therefore, its ability to attract new players.

You can add a community back in by sharing proceeds with the community in some other way. Buying your token with profits or distributing the token to Stakers, for example.


## Some People Just Want to Make Fun Games

Making a game fun is its own challenge and not everyone wants to deal with the added pressures of Token Price. If this is you, please reach out, and we can help you add FIRE to your game.

www.promethios.com
- https://twitter.com/promethios_fire
- https://twitter.com/xGhoul0x