Omar Ghanem, co-founder of GAM3S.GG, turned early frustrations in esports and gaming into a mission: get more gamers into web3. After building a career at the intersection of brand work and competitive gaming, Omar saw firsthand the friction and missed opportunities players face around identity, access, and ownership. 

In this conversation, Omar shares how blockchain can solve real problems, why community always comes first, and what “gaming identity” means for the future of web3. 

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

OpenSea: How did you get into gaming and web3 – and which came first?

Omar Ghanem: Sure. Gaming came first, for sure. I studied marketing, and my first job out of college was at L’Oréal. Super boring. I quit after six months – just didn’t enjoy marketing cosmetics.

I ended up moving into agency work, which was way more fun. I got to work with brands like Visit Dubai and Dubai Tourism – handling festivals and events in the city for a couple years. Also worked with Emirates and some other exciting names.

But I always wanted to find a path into gaming professionally. I did some work with big names on the esports side in the MENA region. We organized Ubisoft and Nvidia’s Rainbow Six MENA Regionals. We did League of Legends tournaments with Red Bull and Riot. We also ran influencer content campaigns with Epic Games Store and Fortnite. So I got a lot of exposure to the gaming scene.

Why I got into web3 is a bit different. Seeing esports from the inside – back in 2015, 2016, way before Saudi money started pouring in – there were a lot of issues. I remember a 16-year-old Lebanese player who won a prize pool, and getting him paid was a nightmare. The money had to go through his bank, the central bank, our bank – and it raised red flags. Why is this random kid getting so much money? 

It would take months, and that was normal. That’s when crypto first clicked for me – solving problems like that. And then I found out there was a corner of crypto focused on gaming, which really drew me in.

I’ve had my PlayStation account since the PS3 – maybe 2006 or 2007. I’ve played over 400 games on that account, but there’s nothing to show for it – except maybe a screenshot. Even when I was working professionally in games, nobody offering early access codes on Steam looked at my profile. It just showed Counter-Strike with a bunch of hours, nothing else. They didn’t see the PlayStation side of me.

That idea of a unified identity through blockchain really stood out. That’s part of why I’m excited about what we’re building now – especially with the PlayStation integration we announced.

The last piece – and the one everyone talks about – is the chance to make money doing what you love. I played a lot of FIFA, spent money on Ultimate Team packs, built a great squad. But when the new FIFA came out in September, everything became worthless. You couldn’t do anything with your old team.

The game might cost $70–80, but with coins and packs, you’re easily spending multiples of that. And you can’t resell anything – even at a loss. That never made sense to me.

So yeah, a few reasons brought me here. But to your original question, definitely gaming first, and then crypto gaming as a niche within a niche.

OpenSea: It sounds like you were deep in gaming, saw the problems, and realized this tech could solve them.

Omar Ghanem: Exactly. That’s why the passion hasn’t faded, even when markets go up and down. People ask, “Is it dead?” but the core problems are still there – and I believe in the solutions. So even four years in, my conviction hasn’t changed. If some game shuts down, it doesn’t matter. The principle stays the same.

OpenSea: That makes total sense. I was going to ask what problems you were aiming to solve, but you already answered that. It’s such a direct connection – seeing the issues firsthand and finding a solution.

Also, I always think about how Vitalik started Ethereum because he lost everything in World of Warcraft. Gaming feels like such an obvious use case for web3 – for NFTs in particular.

Omar Ghanem: Yeah, absolutely.

GAM3S.GG was actually born out of frustration. When I got into the space, winter 2021, there were very few games. Most were Axie copycats. You’d jump between Discords, download .exe files, and just hope things worked.

Crypto is already filled with anonymity. That wasn’t the experience we wanted, so we built the platform to fix it. Our mindset was: “If not us, then who?” Because outlets like IGN and Kotaku weren’t going to touch web3 for years.

It was also tough when I’d recommend a game to someone from my esports background and they’d find something terrible. If no one’s calling that out, it hurts everyone’s credibility. We wanted to be the trusted source. If a game’s bad, we’ll say so. We might upset some teams, but at least people will trust us.

So if we say a game’s a 3 out of 10, you’ll know we mean it. We’re gamers too – we’re not just spinning fluff.

OpenSea: How has your vision evolved since launching? Are you solving different problems now than when you started?

Omar Ghanem: Definitely. The vision is the same – we want to onboard as many gamers as possible to web3. We believe it solves real problems.

If gamers start demanding more from developers and publishers, they’ll have to respond. That hasn’t changed. But the way we package things has.

Early on, we were very focused on being the biggest in web3 gaming. We wanted to be the hub – top of the niche. But we hit a ceiling. You can’t onboard new users if you’re only speaking to the same 50,000 people on Discord and Twitter.

So, we changed our approach. We needed to be on Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube. We needed a podcast, a newsletter – ways to reach gamers outside the bubble and actually bring them in.

Just flexing that we’re the biggest in the niche wasn’t going to move the needle. So we shifted toward short-form content, and it worked.

Some of our videos went viral. Old high school friends would message me saying they saw a GAM3S.GG video on Instagram. That kind of reach made us realize we were on the right path.

More recently, with the PlayStation integration, people asked, “What does this change?” For us, it’s about opening doors. Web3 can be so insular – are you in this Discord? Do you hold that NFT? It becomes gatekeep-y.

But if you want to onboard people, you can’t close doors – you have to open them. That’s been a big shift.

That said, a lot hasn’t changed. I’ve been working with almost the same team for four years, which is kind of crazy. They believe in the idea and the mission.

The real change is in the approach. Early on, we were solving onboarding. Then it became about showcasing an AAA game. Now it’s about creating a sustainable ecosystem.

The focus evolves, but the mission stays the same – getting more gamers into web3. And every user who signs up to GAM3S.GG is already onboarded. They get a wallet through account abstraction. They’re in the ecosystem.

If we win, the whole space wins.

OpenSea: So who would you say is your core audience – gamers or web3 gamers? I know there's overlap, but how do you think about it?

Omar Ghanem: Definitely just gamers.

“Web3 gamers” feels limiting. I’m not an AWS gamer or a Google Cloud gamer – I’m just a gamer. I play League on PC and single-player campaigns on PlayStation.

There are a few subcategories we look at:

• Gamers who are tired of how things are and want change.
  
  
• Gamers who are happy as-is but want to discover new content.
  
  
• Crypto speculators who get curious about gaming applications.
  
  

We serve all of them. Some come for the tech, some come for the games. Maybe someone shows up for Spider-Man 2 and ends up discovering MapleStory on-chain. Everyone’s journey is different.

OpenSea: Let’s talk about community. You've mentioned Discord and social, but how important is community to GAM3S.GG, and how do you interact with them?

Omar Ghanem: Community is everything. You live or die by it.

We’ve been lucky to nurture ours for a long time. A lot of our most active Discord members – some of whom are now mods – have been with us for over three years.

Our communities across platforms are different – Discord isn’t the same as Reddit or Instagram – but they all matter. If you’re not building for someone, what’s the point?

Unfortunately, in early crypto, a lot of teams would raise money, build something, then try to force it onto a community. We did the opposite.

We built the community first. Then, once we understood the pain points, we built the product around what the community actually wanted. Only after that did we raise money to scale it.

That sequence made all the difference.

We get excited about real engagement. When we put out a new guide, we track: how many people find it? How many sign up? How many join Discord? Those are the metrics that matter most to us – not just numbers on a dashboard.

OpenSea: That’s so thoughtful. And you mentioned going out into the world to meet people – tell me more.

Omar Ghanem: Yeah, especially early on, most of our community came from places like the Philippines, Brazil – developing countries that were really open to crypto.

So we went to them. We hosted our Game Awards in Manila last year because that’s near the heart of where web3 gaming started, with Axie.

You can’t overstate how important community is.

OpenSea: Let’s talk about partnerships. You mentioned PlayStation – tell me more about that. And more broadly, what does a meaningful partnership look like for GAM3S.GG? Is it with studios, chains, brands?

Omar Ghanem: You grow through partnerships. It really depends on the goal, but for us, it’s always about win-win.

If we can open doors for each other, we’ll work together. We’ve partnered with ecosystems like Arbitrum, Avalanche, Ronin – they’ve all been meaningful.

We help get more visibility and distribution for their games, and in return, we get co-signs, branding, access to their dev teams – real support.

One I’m especially excited about is the OpenSea partnership. We’re bringing the OpenSea experience into GAM3S.GG. Users won’t just browse games or read reviews, they’ll also see items like skins, items, etc, and be able to purchase them directly.

OpenSea: Love that. As someone at the forefront of this space, where do you see web3 gaming going in the next year? And then five years? What’s your hope? Are we heading toward ownership models or more play-to-earn incentives?

Omar Ghanem: Big question – but a good one.

In the short term, this year’s been rough. Probably the most web3 gaming studio shutdowns we’ve seen – at least the most public ones.

That’s normal, though. If you know gaming, you know 99% of games fail.

Even big ones – XDefiant had 8 million players and still failed. Splitgate 2 went back to beta recently. Game studios shut down all the time. The difference is that negativity is louder. You feel the losses more than the wins.

But I have more conviction than ever. We started with a site listing 30 decent games. Now we have over 500 web3 games across 30+ chains. That number’s only going up.

Will the investment come back? Maybe. That depends more on macro trends – finance, economy, the broader gaming market.

But from a tech and adoption standpoint, I’m optimistic.

If – and I do think it’s a matter of when – a major player like Rockstar includes digital items in something like GTA, that changes everything.

I’m not saying they’ll use crypto or tokens, but something like what PlayStation did with the PS Stars app – digital collectibles you earn through gameplay. That kind of mechanic opens minds.

We already know Sony has NFT patents. Others are working on this too. If GTA drops in May 2026, with multiplayer a few months later, that could be a pivotal moment. It would show people the tech’s real potential. They don’t think about what the tech can actually solve – ownership, portability, being able to send money without a bank, proving your progress, and more. Once people see it in action – especially from a trusted brand – they’ll start to get it.

So for the next 3 to 5 years, I’m really excited. Ubisoft already has three games in web3. MapleStory is a huge IP doing it. Pokémon’s even dabbling with Sui for collectibles.

I’ve got zero doubt the tech works – and that it’s needed. But like anything, change is hard. It takes time. Even if the market booms again, and everyone gets hyped and jumps back in, I’ll still say: remember why you’re here.

If it’s just for money, there are easier ways to make money. But if you’re here because you’re tired of how things work – tired of studios deciding when to release the next FIFA, tired of sinking money into games and getting nothing back – that’s a reason to stay. And that stays relevant no matter what the market’s doing.

OpenSea: That’s such a thoughtful, grounded perspective. I really appreciate it.

Omar Ghanem: I try to stay level-headed. Internally, we’ve got two schools of thought. Every time a studio shuts down, someone says, “Oh no, not again, there aren’t even any games left!”

Then someone else goes, “Dude, just open the site. We’ve got 500 games. We’re fine.”

But yeah – negativity always sounds louder.

OpenSea: One final thing – anything you want OpenSea readers to know? Either about the space or about GAM3S.GG?

Omar Ghanem: Yeah – one thing I’d highlight is the gaming identity layer I mentioned earlier. That’s what excites me most.

There’s never been a way to have a full gamer persona across platforms. Everything’s so fragmented – Xbox, PlayStation, mobile, Steam. Microsoft’s tried with Game Pass and cross-device access, but it’s still disconnected.

What we’ve been building is a way to unify your gaming identity – and then open doors with it.

Like I said, I play Counter-Strike on Steam, but single-player games on PlayStation. A new single-player Steam game should still know to target me.

Having that data helps developers, brands, and publishers target better – but also helps players discover games across platforms. That’s what really excites me.

The PlayStation integration was my favorite announcement in four years because I could finally get XP on my own platform from the trophies I’ve earned. That’s the kind of experience we’re building.

OpenSea:Well, Omar, thank you so much. This was a pleasure.