I remember the CryptoKitties project, it was very popular then, I would say that it was a hype. But it seems to me that the problem due to which the project did not become successful was in the throughput of the Ethereum network, since it is not adapted to a large number of transactions per second, and also the commissions are too high for making micropayments. This year, commissions on the Ethereum network have broken all previous records, so I think that the launch of any projects using Ethereum should be postponed until the transition to Ethereum 2.0, then the network bandwidth will be higher and the commissions will be lower, which will have a positive effect on the development of all dApps.
The bandwidth problems of the Ethereum network have indeed caused some projects to fail to grow and scale. Therefore, everything must develop and grow at the same time.