In summary
- Gaming on Telegram has been one of the biggest hits in crypto in 2024, with Hamster Kombat attracting 300 million players.
- The tap-to-earn model has been compared to the play-to-earn model, which faced challenges after Axie Infinity.
- Tap-to-win games, such as Captain Tsubasa: Rivals, offer a lower barrier to entry and greater accessibility, but face criticism for their simplicity and lack of depth.
Gaming on Telegram has been one of the biggest hits in cryptocurrencies in 2024. Hamster Kombat attracted 300 million players before this week’s launch, and Notcoin launched a token that touched a market capitalization of $3 billion.
This all revolves around the tap-to-win mechanism, a simple concept with a growing list of variations and permutations. But has this model really evolved on the frenetic play-to-win craze that dominated the last bull cycle before crashing and burning? Or is touch-to-win doomed to the same fate of sneers and shrugs from the masses?
In 2021, the Pokémon Axie Infinity-style play to earn game reached almost 3 million monthly active users. Players were required to purchase or borrow three Axie NFTs before they could start playing, with an initial cost of $600 or more at its peak, and could then start earning real Cryptocurrency tokens by competing.
This model was so popular that people in low-income countries began playing the game as a full-time job. At one point, 40% of P2E players were from the Philippines.
Axie was the spearhead of a promised revolution that would benefit gamers for their time, lift people out of poverty, and redefine modern work. And many other games tried to imitate its model. Instead, Axie’s economy deflated and all of its tokenized assets plummeted in price, effectively curbing the growth of the play-to-earn model.
In many ways, tap-to-earn games are similar to the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming craze. Players are asked to tap their screens and play simple games in exchange for in-game coins or points, which are eventually converted into cryptocurrency tokens sent via airdrop.
So how does tapping to win represent a breakthrough for the industry?
“Tap-to-earn games offer a promising improvement over traditional play-to-earn models thanks to their simplicity and accessibility,” Immutable gaming network CEO Robbie Ferguson told Decrypt. . “These games significantly lower the barrier to entry, especially for newcomers to the world of cryptocurrencies. This approach aims to create more sustainable economies from the start, potentially avoiding some of the challenges faced by ‘play-to-play’ models. earn'”.
Most ‘play-to-earn’ games required players to invest in the game before they could start winning. You had to have a real investment in the game. Tap-to-earn games don’t have that requirement; you just need a smartphone that runs Telegram, a simple messaging app.
The lower barrier to entry so far has also been met with a lower ceiling in gameplay depth and complexity, resulting in typically shallow and repetitive experiences.
“Tap-to-earn is the shiny new object driving a surge of interest, but they often fail to maintain long-term user engagement,” Andrew Saunders, director of marketing and growth at Skale Labs, told Decrypt. . “To truly revolutionize Web3 gaming, developers must fuse the instant gratification of tap-to-earn with deeper, more engaging experiences, ensuring players remain enthralled long after the novelty wears off.”
It is true that most games on Telegram require very little to no skill to succeed. Hamster Kombat, for example, simply requires you to repeatedly click on the screen and select the best upgrades to passively earn tokens; This is the basic loop that most tap-to-win games employ.
Some players don’t even touch the screen themselves, finding clever ways to automate the game like using a massager, or employing custom software scripts that may or may not get them kicked out of airdrops. Many play to earn games were also considered shallow, but even so, something like Axie Infinity is dramatically richer in gameplay than Hamster Kombat.
“The play to earn model, on the other hand, involves engaging in full gaming experiences,” Rob Wolff, an avid cryptocurrency player and owner of Digital Asset News, told Decrypt. “This is more fun, as it offers challenges, strategies and skill development, which keeps the game interesting over time.”
However, this can also be seen as a drawback. Casual games are the most popular type of video game in the US with 63% of people surveyed saying they play them regularly, according to Exploding Topics. There are more gamers today than ever, but many of them play simple games. “Tap to win” games fit that bill perfectly.
This broader audience, combined with a lower barrier to entry, may explain why gaming on Telegram appears to have attracted such large crowds. For example, X Empire claims to have about 45 million players, and Notcoin reached 35 million being the first to hit the market. Almost anyone can join and play, almost immediately.
Players who had invested a considerable amount of money in valuable NFTs now had almost worthless assets. Those who had turned to Axie as a career had to start over. Some alleged that the game was a ponzi scheme, and the Philippine National Police warned citizens about play-to-earn games. This is still present, but distrust in the model spread throughout the industry as a result.
Axie was the biggest example, but not the only one. In another notable case, the Stepn game got hot in early 2022, selling NFT sneakers that allowed people to earn valuable cryptocurrency tokens by walking and running in the real world. But the hype was short-lived, and both NFTs and tokens fell sharply in value, hurting some investors in the process.
The tap-to-win model hasn’t been around long enough to show any serious downsides, although boring gameplay and smaller-than-expected airdrop allocations don’t seem like such a big deal when you haven’t spent any money to start playing. The tap-to-win model is more about participation than monetary investment.
“The tap-to-earn economic model is completely different and based on advertising, as simple as that,” Alena Shmalko, ecosystem lead at The TON Foundation, told Decrypt. While play-to-earn games rely on new entrants to keep the economy running, as explained in the Axie Infinity whitepaper, tap-to-earn uses ads to fund its model.
This is a more sustainable way to pay for something – advertising revenue is how many companies pay for their operations. But the problem arises once the initial distribution has been made. Will there be any reason to stay and continue playing? Will the token maintain its value in the long term?
“Every application needs to create ways for token holders to extract more value, and make sure they are ready to pay for it,” Shmalko added.
Notcoin, for example, has partnered with other gaming projects amid its ambitions to become a sort of Netflix for launching new cryptocurrency games. Hamster Kombat is following its own plan which includes expanding outside of Telegram and releasing more games as well. It’s too early to say whether these types of moves can keep players around for long.
“Time will show how tap-to-earn games manage to create new economic models that prove sustainable after the token generation event,” Shmalko told Decrypt, “Otherwise, they will face the same fate as play games.” -to-earns: once the excitement has passed, there will be no demand for the product.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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