AI could fuel a wave of short-lived crypto games

AI tools have reduced the time and cost of producing crypto games to a few days and about $1,000, according to Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick. He expects as many as 100,000 short-lived “meme games” to launch within a year and attract speculative traders.

Warwick said some games could be designed to last only a few days, giving their creators time to generate profits before players leave. He compared the potential developers with people who repeatedly launch memecoins to attract short-term trading activity.

The forecast follows the memecoin boom of 2024, when platforms such as Pump.fun made tokens easier to create and launch. The combined market value of memecoins reached $150.6 billion in December 2024, according to CoinGecko, before falling nearly 69% to $47.2 billion by November 2025.

Warwick said crypto games could give traders who make short-term bets on digital assets another market. “You’re giving them a new venue and a new shiny wrapper” for gambling, he said. He also warned that some traders could suffer heavy losses when the games lose users and liquidity.

Warwick said a wave of short-lived games would probably not benefit crypto gaming over the long term. He supports games that use blockchain-based ownership and offer lasting gameplay. Illuvium’s flagship Overworld game has been in development for more than six years, with a revamped full release targeted for the first quarter of 2027.

Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands, said games that require little time and effort to produce were unlikely to become a lasting category because player retention is central to the gaming business. He compared AI development tools with the growth of mobile gaming around 2010, when lower costs and faster production brought more studios into the market.

Yung said a larger number of games could give consumers more choices across different quality levels. He added that the crypto gaming market has relatively few titles, making it difficult to determine whether weak demand results from the use of blockchain or from a lack of enjoyable games.

Corey Wilton, co-founder and CEO of Mirai Labs, questioned whether a sharp increase in the number of games would create enough demand. His company released six or seven games, he said, and found that demand in the Web3 market was insufficient.

DappRadar data showed $232.2 million in total value locked across 2,356 gaming decentralized applications. The top 50 gaming tokens had a combined market value of $3.8 billion at the time of the data.

AI is already being used in parts of crypto game production. In the Blockchain Game Alliance’s 2025 survey of 506 industry professionals, 32.8% said their companies had implemented or tested AI for game design and content creation.

Developers of Yield Fields, an upcoming Web3 farming game on the Robinhood chain, raised an estimated $8.3 million by selling digital land plots as nonfungible tokens on Oct. 14, 2025. The game was scheduled to launch later that month.