Casual gaming has been one of the revolutions of the industry in the past decade and now a Web3 startup, Burn Ghost, has its eyes set on bringing NFTs into the mix, and has raised $3.1 million to do so.

You might scoff at casual games. Boomers tending pixel crops or word puzzles on Facebook, for instance. Well, to scoff would be a mistake. We love to talk about onboarding in Web3, but when it comes to the games industry, there were two catalytic events that onboarded so many new “gamers” that now over one-third of the world’s population play games. The first was mobile gaming and the second was casual gaming. Us traditional gamers have recoiled in disgust at both, yet here we are, mobile gaming having more players than all other platforms combined and casual gaming capturing demographics thought to be uncapturable.

My Grandad saw me playing online poker on Facebook on Christmas day a decade ago. He was pushing 90 but enjoyed cards and had always been keen to learn about technology. I taught him how to play on his tablet and he played daily into his 90s. Television bored him — as it does me — and so having a game of cards whenever he fancied was a savior, particularly after my Grandma passed. He needed something to occupy his mind and those easily accessed games were invaluable to him. If it isn’t to macabre say, he was playing Texas HoldEm Poker on a Samsung tablet I found for him while he laid in hospital mere hours before he slipped away.

Why am I telling you this? Well, casual games are important for numerous reasons, and inducting non-gamers into our beloved sector is one of them, though the business and financial rewards will rank higher to most. However, with regards to Web3, casual gamers represent the final boss of onboarding. If we can create a wallet easy enough for a casual gamer to create and manage, we’ve cracked it; onboarding solved. Casual gamers are a sizable chunk of global players of digital games now and to ignore them would be an error. Many of blockchain’s benefits for gaming can be felt by casual gamers in casual games too.

What Is Burn Ghost?

So, what is Burn Ghost? Burn Ghost is a casual gaming platform that will allow users to win NFTs and use crypto (as well as fiat) for entry fees. The games featured on the platform will be accessible and simple, but with elements of skill that allow for competitiveness. Top performers in each game will be rewarded with NFT collectibles. CEO and co-founder, Steve Curran, told Decrypt that trivia games will be the first to launch on the platform; trivia games are an excellent example of a successful casual games genre.

In a seed round in April 2022, Burn Ghost raised $3.1 million to pursue casual gaming with crypto and NFTs, led by Drive by DraftKings (a VC arm of the famous DraftKings fantasy sports company) and Bitkraft who has been highly active in Web3 investing.

Lead image by Burn Ghost