Helika Ventures Director: Telegram’s Gaming Accelerator Isn’t About Rebuilding Play-to-Earn Credibility

• Roughly one-third of Telegram’s 900+ million users have played one of its P2E gaming titles.
• Telegram games caused significant spikes in TON Network activity but failed to retain half of the players following their airdrops.
• The global gaming industry generated over $183 billion in revenues in 2023.

Telegram’s Web3 play-to-earn (P2E) gaming push has drawn hundreds of millions of players to its numerous titles. Now, Helika Gaming is building the Telegram Gaming Accelerator (TGA) in a bid to evolve its ecosystem and keep players coming back for more.

However, two big problems stand in the way of this aspiration: Long-term sustainability and low player retention.

A Level Up

In early July, Telegram, Notcoin (NOT), and Helika Gaming teamed up to launch the accelerator amid surging popularity around the promising Web3 P2E, or tap-to-earn (T2E), games.

Speaking with CCN, Ilya Abugov, Director of Helika Ventures, explained that the initiative is a bid to upgrade Telegram’s gaming ecosystem into one with more complex and engaging offerings:

“The Telegram Gaming Accelerator is a 10-week program designed to help teams to actively test their products with gamers and iteratively improve their games. We [Helika] offer traffic, analytics tools and mentorships to guide teams through this process.”

So far, there seems to be considerable interest:

“We have already reviewed a lot of applications from all over the world [North America, Europe, Asia], and they range from the idle tap games, that many have grown accustomed to roguelike and real time strategy games.”

Notcoin, the idle-clicker game, was the first to kick off the trend with its 80 billion NOT token airdrop, which it distributed to tens of millions of players in April. Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) launched in March and became the most popular Telegram game, attracting 300 million players.

That said, its 100-billion HMSTR airdrop was poorly received due to some controversial last-minute changes to token allocations, as well as a lock-up period for a small percentage of coins.

As Abugov notes, the TGA isn’t there to “rebuild the credibility of P2E titles.” Instead, it’s about getting studios to bring “the best of traditional gaming” and merge it with Web3 tools to make fun and engaging games.

“We look at play to earn as a wonderful UA tool that studios may utilize. When used properly, it can hypercharge the growth of a player base. However, when it is mismanaged, for instance, with unrealistic expectations that player base can quickly evaporate,” he shared.

Following the Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and Catizen (CATI) airdrops, players began dropping out of these titles en masse, despite promises of additional developments and Season 2 airdrops.

The decline in players also saw TON network activity fall off a cliff, suggesting that the T2E airdrop model is already played out. Abugov adds:

“It is one thing to get users to try your game, it is another to get them to stay and spend money in your economy.”

The Space Needs High-quality Content

Airdrop incentives aren’t enough to keep players coming back for more, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is because, according to Abugov, Telegram’s iteration cycles “tend to be shorter, and the userbase is easier and cheaper to acquire.”

This gives developers a relatively easy means to test their proof-of-concept, engagement, and retention rates and, therefore, adapt their game loops in hopes of successfully monetizing their titles. But none of that matters if players aren’t having fun.

“We believe, if the content is good and it is presented in the right way, gamers will engage with it in a long term sustainable manner. When we look at the examples of early idle tap games on Telegram, we see them as successful proof-of-concept, some of which have since evolved,” Abugov elaborated.

The “success” of Telegram’s gaming push throughout 2024 is debatable. While they were able to tap into Telegram’s 900+ million userbase and draw hundreds of millions of players to their games, they still experienced a significant dropoff in players. But it’s still early days.

Abugov continued, saying, “Even though the [Telegram] ecosystem is young and is dominated by mostly simple games for now, we are already seeing examples of teams with solid fundamental gaming knowledge building out positive unit economics.”

“The early entrants have validated key hypotheses that suggest Telegram is viable as a new gaming platform. Now, the incoming gaming studios need to take the next step, and we are so excited to be able to help them with that,” he noted.

Abugov highlights that gaming revenues exceeded $183 billion in 2023, and WeChat mini-games have pulled around $2.3 billion in revenues by the end of H1 2024. But, the space “needs quality content and the right positioning.”

What Players Want

The blockchain crypto-gaming space is heating up. It’s no longer contained to mobile games, as AAA console and desktop Web3 gaming titles, such as Gunzilla’s battle-royale shooter Off The Grid, compete for players’ attention.

“The ambition is to create a gaming ecosystem that engages and retains gamers, allowing studios to sustain profitable business models, so that they can continue to supply new content to gamers. In practice, what this means is a range of games from hyper-casual, mid-core and hardcore that are able to retain users over long periods of time with sustainable spending patterns,” said Abugov.

Games with the “AAA” branding have huge budgets, superior graphics, and gameplay, which are a big draw for mainstream “gaming” audiences.

That said, revenues from mobile games in 2023 accounted for at least half  of the global games market share, and so Telegram’s offerings stand to win big if they can give players what they want.

Ambitiously, it would appear that Telegram is setting itself up to compete with deeply rich gaming experiences, such as Genshin Impact, Call of Duty: Mobile, Subway Surfers, and Candy Crush Saga, all of which are among 2024’s most downloaded  mobile games.

But that’s also an uncertain factor, as it appears that a majority of Telegram’s Web3 gamers want one thing: the airdrop and incentives.

For now, Telegram’s gaming airdrops will continue rolling out. As Abugov mentioned, this is to develop their monetization models and become economically sustainable projects.

However, long-term success may only be found if players are—first and foremost—interested in playing the game, not earning from it.