OpenSea double downs on its gaming-NFT strategy:

GAMING CHRONICLES 120

Raiden

and

Memento | Oscar

May 21, 2025

Gaming Chronicles focuses on curating the latest web3 gaming news every week.

You will find the latest news, educational content, and game reviews.

TLDR :

Mongraal x OpenSea
Tatsumeeko discontinues Lumina Fates
Angry Dynomites raises $5M

🗞️ NEWS

MONGRAAL JOINS OPENSEA

This week, Mongraal announced he joined OpenSea (OS) as their first global gaming ambassador. A sign that OS continues to see value in the gaming market as a path to NFT adoption
Mongraal is a gamer with a history and went pro in Fortnite as a teen. His competitive spirit also got him interested in Dookey Dash in 2023, taking the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place on the leaderboard, granting him the Key NFT
- He ended up selling the Key on OS for 1,000 ETH to Adam Weitsman
- Mongraal has a large audience, and I remember people posting about this putting a large spotlight on crypto gaming (including myself lol). But, surprise, it didn’t move the needle at the time
In the article, he speaks of how NFTs still have a “negative brand in some gaming circles”. Whether Mongraal can improve the connotation of NFTs among his audience of traditional gamers (Fortnite fans) remains to be seen
- I don’t think his audience would serve as an acquisition channel per se
Oliver Maroney, the head of BD and partnerships at OS, is a big gamer himself and likely played a large role in OS continuing to invest in gaming
- A couple of days ago, Mongraal and Brycent streamed Off the Grid together on the OS account. In the past, some of these gaming streams have been very fruitful for OS’s BD strategy
Gaming remains one of the best industries with NFT PMF (think digital items). Also appealing from a business perspective for an NFT marketplace, due to the high potential trading volume, leading to royalty revenue
Overall, OS deserves praise for reclaiming the crown in NFT volume this year. And I assume that they bet that hiring gaming ambassadors helps them to continue to stay top of mind among the crypto audience

ANGRY DYNOMITES RAISES $5M

Just today, Angry Dynomites Lab (ADL) announced they raised $5M in a round led by 1kx, Makers Fund, and Rockaway
- ADL is part of a studio called Voya Games. Its first title, Craft World (similar to Factorio), is a dinosaur crafting game, which has been live on testnet for the past year. The game is fully launching this summer
- Furthermore, the team plans to launch a new title soon, called Project Voyager, a metagame that lives on top of Craft World
ADL’s founding team comes from Kolibri Games, the creators of Idle Miner Tycoon (100M+ downloads). The studio was founded in 2018 and sold to Ubisoft in 2020 for ~$160M
The focus of Voya Games’ titles is on creating an interconnected ecosystem of games with a player-owned economy
- In Craft World, all the resources are generated through gameplay and live onchain. All supply and demand for resources are coming from the players
- And they have been improving this economy weekly over the past year, building up from the ground with the blockchain in mind
Craft World is available on Telegram, web, and the app stores, and doubled down on simplifying the user experience by removing all Web3 complications
- The game onboards non-crypto players through traditional performance marketing and “guides” them into the Web3 experience
- Craft World has attracted a MAU of 50,000, combining both Web2 and Web3 players, and generated 1.1 million in-game swaps without direct airdrop incentives
I spoke with rev0 a few weeks back and can tell they have a couple of exciting things in their pipeline for their GTM strategy…

TATSUMEEKO DISCONTINUES DEVELOPMENT…

In more unfortunate crypto news, TatsuWorks shared they’re discontinuing the development of Tatsumeeko: Lumina Fates (the flagship game, the long-form RPG)
- “…the end results didn’t give us the confidence to move forward in a way that would be sustainable”
- Not to be confused with Lumina Hunt, the Telegram mini-game
This doesn’t mean the studio is closing, as they’re returning to their core ideas in line with their earlier creations Tatsu.GG and Tatsugotchi. Project: Wander (PW) is the studio’s new project, integrated directly in digital third places, like Discord
- Development of PW has already started and will ship as soon as possible. With a new development approach of more frequent updates and building transparently with the community
In terms of the studio’s assets, everything remains the same, and Tatsu will continue to support the NFTs, as they have in the past
0xiandao, the head of ecosystem at TatsuWorks, shed more light on the decision:
- “We pivoted because we still believe in what we set out to do: to build something fun, social, cozy, bold, lasting, and meaningful. But better to reset now than keep pretending it’s fine and end up stuck with something that is not quite right.”
- Furthermore, he adds that the team is moving faster now, is more aligned, and has a much clearer vision of where it is going
- Lastly, he adds that Project: Wander will ship a feature called “Chat to Earn”
Been a holder for a while myself, and Tatsu giving up on their flagship is disappointing. I hope they can find success in this new approach of more lightweight Discord-native experiences/games
- However, many on CT didn’t take this decision lightly. Holders and players have been waiting for a while for any updates from the team, increasing the “expectation debt” and putting more pressure on Tatsu’s execution