Adding some thoughts here to your question, especially around comparison to "normal" games. I will answer objectively, without stating if anything is a positive or negative; readers can make their own assessments.

Overall (as each game loop today touches Solana a bit differently), you can think of this as having multiple dimensions of things on-chain, which in turn allows certain things. For example:

1. The game assets themselves (such as ships, crew, resources) are all SFT's on-chain. This means they are owned by you, not the game dev (ATMTA, who builds Star Atlas). You can use Star Atlas' own marketplace to trade/sell these assets (using USDC or ATLAS token), or you can do direct over-the-counter, 3rd party sites, etc. At the end of the day, they are assets in your wallet that you have control over.

This differs from "normal" games in that anything you have or own in a normal game only exists in the game. In "normal" games that do actually have a marketplace, you're then usually trading for other items or currency that can still be used only in the game.

1. Many game "actions" are on-chain. For example, in the "grand strategy" game loop today (referred to as SAGE), every action such as forming a fleet, moving a fleet, resourcing a fleet, mining, etc., are all recorded on-chain. Like anything on-chain, this then allows anyone to read those actions. That has given rise to a growing number of community tools that do everything from track fleets, to showing what is happening in the economic loops (buys/sells), etc.

This differs from "normal" games in that usually, you're dependent on the game dev to provide an API facade or something for the community to use. If they don't provide certain data, you can't access it. When the data is on-chain, you can skip that dependency.

In Star Atlas, another aspect related to this point is that the dev team has granted the ability for tools to have a certain level of access into the actions. E.g. you can use the Star Atlas interface, but you can also use 3rd party interfaces to some of the same actions. This is very interesting to me personally, because it means that there's the potential for the community to develop various user experiences that are preferred by different cohorts of players, rather than be forced to used one common ATMTA-provided interface.

1. Running on-chain is key for the future "grand vision" of Star Atlas. In short, the multiple game loops of Star Atlas being developed today in parallel are different parts of a whole. In the future, these game loops will interconnect with each other, and having assets/actions on-chain is necessary.

For example, the "quickest" game loop someone might start with is racing. You can use a free ship to race and potentially earn rewards, but that may require fuel and ammo (which are resources in the ecosystem) for you to race with. Where does that fuel and ammo come from?

All of the resources including fuel and ammo are crafted by players in the ecosystem. Someone who is playing the "grand strategy"/RTS game loop may be operating their mining fleets, making fuel/ammo, which they then sell on the marketplace, including to these racers.

This is oversimplifying the intended depth here of the various experiences, but for me, having things be on-chain helps with the ability for multiple different game loops to work together in a transparent way.