Exactly and they can generate income. It's just not enough of these kinds of tokens exist and that is why it's a "bubble". It's not because developers cannot create them but because they just haven't. Ethereum or Graphene offer all the tools necessary to create profitable platforms. Steemit honestly isn't yet profitable, but it can easily become profitable. Peerplays also can easily become profitable, maybe even easier than Steemit.
More focus should go into making projects profitable and sustainable for the long term. This requires a different mindset which frankly is not compatible with some of the political idealism we see. To be profitable long term requires targeting the mainstream rather than the crypto-anarchist. It's a matter of demographics, marketing, and then monetization, not so much a matter of politics or fancy cryptography. Without these bread and butter mainstream projects you cannot have a sustainable and profitable ecosystem for the research projects or activist driven projects.