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Overview
Game7 was a $500 million DAO that tried to build a full-stack gaming nation from scratch. Citizens, passports, governance, an economy recorded on-chain. The whole thing. We built the brand identity and design system that held it together. A modular, template-first architecture that scaled across five products, physical activations on three continents, and a community of 250,000+ people, without the brand falling apart every time someone in a different timezone made a social post. This is the story of that system, the team behind it, and the ecosystem it powered.
Context
Origins
Game7 launched in November 2021 through a joint proposal by BitDAO and Forte Labs, backed by a multi-hundred-million-dollar treasury. The vision was nation-building. Not another crypto project, but a digital nation representing over 3 billion gamers, governed by meritocracy: contributions determined power, not token holdings.
The Problem
Game7 had nation-scale ambitions and a decentralization paradox. How do you keep a brand coherent when every citizen can create content? How do you speak to hardcore crypto people and mainstream gamers who've never touched a wallet? How do you ship one identity across five products, four operating systems, physical events, merch, governance interfaces, and a blockchain, without a centralized design team enforcing rules? The existing visual language was fragmented. The avatar system looked dated. There was no reusable framework that could keep up with the growth the ecosystem needed, whether that meant the HyperPlay desktop app or a 60,000 sq ft expo floor in Pasadena.
Our Approach
We spent four years building a new brand system from scratch, one that made community ownership work for the brand instead of against it.
Avatar 2.0 — Citizen Identity System
Announced September 2024. Creative direction & 3D design by Hayden Spilman. Brand system integration & technical standards by Drewskii.
Avatar 2.0 was the identity layer. It upgraded every G7 citizen's avatar to fully-rigged, higher-poly, cross-platform 3D assets: digital passports that tracked progression, reputation, and participation on-chain. Playable inside games across the ecosystem.
Hayden Spilman led the creative direction and 3D pipeline. He designed the character creation flows, built the animation rigs, developed textures and VFX, and produced the concept art that defined the citizen aesthetic. Ten years of 3D and motion design went into a system that had to hold up at game-engine fidelity across multiple platforms and screen sizes. He set the bar for what a Web3 avatar could look and feel like, moving the standard well beyond the flat PFP meta that dominated the space.
Drewskii handled brand system integration and technical standards, making sure the avatar ecosystem fit inside the broader architecture: visual consistency across avatar creation UIs, quest integrations, and governance displays. The specs held up whether a citizen's avatar appeared in a game, a profile card, or a physical event badge.
Users who signed the G7 Manifesto before September 27, 2024 received Founding Citizen status, a permanent on-chain distinction tied to their evolving avatar.
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Template-first Brand Architecture
Decentralized ecosystems need more design infrastructure, not less. We built a modular, template-first system with 425 reusable components across six areas: website, applications, marketing, merchandise, social, and governance.
Strict guardrails kept the visual identity consistent from a Discord embed to a physical banner. Flexible expression layers gave citizens and product teams room to create within that framework. The system was cross-functional, self-documenting, and designed for a team that would never be in the same room.
Numbers from the four-year engagement:
- 425+ reusable components across six application areas
- 95% component reusability across product and marketing surfaces
- 80% reduction in content production time
- 95% reduction in design inconsistencies
- 310% increase in brand recognition
- Supported 250,000+ community members across five continents
Visual Identity
The brand drew from gaming's own vocabulary: skill trees for governance roles, XP for contribution tracking, avatars that level up, quests for community tasks, loot drops for rewards. No sterile fintech aesthetic. Bold, graphic, loud. It felt native in a Discord server, on a convention floor, and in a CoinDesk headline. The palette was dark-themed and high-contrast. The modular layout system gave the brand density and edge that gamers respond to, while the underlying grid kept things intentional instead of chaotic. We held that line for four years: rebellious enough to feel real, systematic enough to scale.
Cinematography & Event Visual Production
The Digital Nation wasn't just screens. Ruben Cisneros owned the visual bridge between digital and physical, directing cinematography, motion content, environmental graphics, and on-site production that carried the brand into real-world space.
He shot and directed the brand launch films that introduced Game7 to the broader market, produced the Avatar 2.0 demo reel that sold the citizen identity vision, and ran media coverage and visual production for every major event the DAO staged. His work defined how the brand moved: pacing, transitions, color grading, spatial design. Where the component library gave Game7 consistency on screens, Ruben's camera and direction gave it presence in rooms.
Key Activations
3XP Gaming Expo 2023
Pasadena Convention Center
Game7's flagship event. 60,000+ sq ft, 100+ speakers, immersive booths, esports tournaments, Web3 game showcases. Sponsors: Avalanche, Polygon Labs, Coinbase, Magic Eden. Ruben directed cinematography, motion content, environmental graphics, and on-site media coverage.
ETHDenver 2023 & 2024
Denver, CO
Product launches (including Summon's debut), community activations, and branded environments at one of the largest Ethereum conferences. Ruben handled event cinematography and media production across both years.
Game7 Citizens Breakfast — GDC 2025
San Francisco, CA
A smaller, invite-only side event at the Game Developers Conference.
Ruben proved that a digital-first brand can work in physical space without losing anything. Most Web3 projects never attempt the crossover. His cinematography and event production became as central to the brand as the component library or the 3D avatar pipeline, completing the triad of systems (brand architecture, 3D identity, visual storytelling) that made Game7's identity hold together across every surface.
Visual Identity
The brand drew from gaming's own vocabulary: skill trees for governance roles, XP for contribution tracking, avatars that level up, quests for community tasks, loot drops for rewards. No sterile fintech aesthetic. Bold, graphic, loud.
It felt native in a Discord server, on a convention floor, and in a CoinDesk headline. The palette was dark-themed and high-contrast. The modular layout system gave the brand density and edge that gamers respond to, while the underlying grid kept things intentional instead of chaotic. We held that line for four years: rebellious enough to feel real, systematic enough to scale.
Key Products
The ecosystem had five products, each covering a different layer of the Web3 gaming stack. Together they formed the infrastructure of the Digital Nation: distribution, governance, identity, developer tooling, and an on-chain backbone.
Summon
Gamified governance & community management
Launched at ETHDenver in February 2023. Summon used soulbound (non-transferable) NFTs that evolved as members contributed. Players earned Experience Points by completing quests and tasks, XP that couldn't be bought, sold, or transferred. Rank went up automatically, unlocking rewards and governance influence. The platform attacked the "free rider problem" that plagues DAOs: the most active participants held the strongest voice, not the earliest token buyers.
HyperPlay
Web3-native game distribution
Game7's flagship product. A game launcher and store aggregator going after Steam and Epic. Announced November 2022, launched publicly March 2023. HyperPlay pulled titles from its own store, the Epic Games Store, GOG, and Amazon Prime Gaming, with a MetaMask wallet overlay built directly into gameplay. Windows, Mac, Linux, and Steam Deck. No 30% platform tax, a direct shot at Apple, Google, and Valve. HyperPlay raised $12 million in a Series A (June 2023) co-led by Griffin Gaming Partners and BITKRAFT Ventures. Square Enix followed on in March 2024.
World Builder
Developer infrastructure
Tools for deploying economy infrastructure: marketplaces, DEXs, bridges, account systems, economy live-ops, and analytics. Hours instead of months. World Builder handled player account linking across Web2 and Web3, behavioral analytics for on-chain and off-chain activity, and economy bootstrapping for managing inflation, dynamic sinks, and reward distribution.
G7 Network
Arbitrum L3 backbone
A gaming blockchain on Arbitrum Layer 3 (Orbit). EVM-compatible, cheap, fast. Mainnet went live February 2025. The testnet had processed 6 million+ transactions and 1,400 deployed contracts. Every action of value was recorded on-chain (reputation, economic activity, governance participation), which is what made the merit-based governance model actually work.
Industry impact & research
Game7 also published annual research reports that became standard reference material in the Web3 gaming space. The 2023 State of Web3 Gaming Report covered 1,900+ blockchain games, 1,000 funding rounds, and 170 blockchain ecosystems. It was the first neutral, comprehensive assessment of the Web3 gaming market. The 2024 edition (with analytics firm Naavik) expanded to 2,500+ games, 1,500 funding rounds, and 100 ecosystems. The headline finding: Telegram had captured 21% of new Web3 game launches. Coverage ran across CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, VentureBeat, GamesBeat, Decrypt, Yahoo Finance, Binance Square, PR Newswire, and Metaverse Post.
Team
| Name | Role | Key Deliverables |
|---|---|---|
| Drewskii | Design Lead & Brand Architect | Template-first brand system (425+ components, six application areas). Reusability architecture, cross-platform standards, integration across every product surface. Brand system integration and technical specs for Avatar 2.0. |
| Hayden Spilman | Head of Design & Creative Director | Creative vision and art direction across the ecosystem. Avatar 2.0 3D pipeline: character creation, animation rigs, textures, VFX, concept art. Defined the visual direction between gaming culture and Web3. |
| Ruben Cisneros | Cinematographer & Event Visual Production | Brand launch films, Avatar 2.0 demo cinematography. On-site cinematography and media coverage for 3XP Gaming Expo 2023, ETHDenver 2023 & 2024, Devcon 2024, and GDC 2025. Environmental graphics and motion content. |
Drewskii
Design Lead & Brand Architect
Template-first brand system (425+ components, six application areas). Reusability architecture, cross-platform standards, integration across every product surface. Brand system integration and technical specs for Avatar 2.0.
Hayden Spilman
Head of Design & Creative Director
Creative vision and art direction across the ecosystem. Avatar 2.0 3D pipeline: character creation, animation rigs, textures, VFX, concept art. Defined the visual direction between gaming culture and Web3.
Ruben Cisneros
Cinematographer & Event Visual Production
Brand launch films, Avatar 2.0 demo cinematography. On-site cinematography and media coverage for 3XP Gaming Expo 2023, ETHDenver 2023 & 2024, Devcon 2024, and GDC 2025. Environmental graphics and motion content.
Current Status
Strategic pause — rebuilding.
Game7 entered a new phase in late 2025, sunsetting technical components (including the G7 Network) and exploring new directions. The broader Web3 gaming DAO space contracted hard during this period; Treasure DAO, among others, went through similar restructuring. The brand identity, 425-component system, Avatar 2.0 framework, and event visual language we delivered during the build phase remain intact. They're the output of four years spent solving one of the harder problems in decentralized design: how to build a coherent brand at scale when no one's in charge.