TON/Telegram Games: a narrative that's here to stay?
GC ALPHA 04
GC Alpha is a new newsletter format exploring P2A events, SocialFi, market narratives, and alpha more in-depth (GC on Monday | Newsletters on Wednesday).
Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets that are spoken of in this newsletter.
(P2A) EVENTS & SOCIALFI
GAME7
Game7 announced that P2 of their P2A campaign in partnership with Mantle kicked off, with a (max) prize pool of 2M $MNT.
To become eligible for $MNT Lootbox drops you must complete the required quests in week 1. Additionally, the more players join, the larger the prize pool becomes.
The campaign lasts 5 weeks in total, and every new week will unlock new quests.
By completing these quests you increase your multiplier to receive LootDrop Boxes, plus you will earn XP (to rank on the leaderboard) and can earn NFTs
LEGEND OF ARCADIA (LOA) S2
LOA’s S1 concluded, and now the P2A campaign continues with S2. It lasts from June 28 to July 29.
In this season you get access to the game, and earn Gacha Points by completing milestones (obtaining Heroes, completing missions, clearing certain lvls, etc.)
You also get free Gacha tokens every day, which you can insert into the Gacha machine to get extra points
Gacha Points determine your leaderboard ranking, and most likely determine your airdrop size.
The only way to acquire the token ($ARCA) in the game is through Synthesis, a process that requires White Ore (gained from mining) and Obsidian (distributed based on leaderboard rankings).
FABLEBORNE ADVENTURES
Access to Fableborne (the actual game) is finally launching today (July 1st), and as one of the best Web3 mobile games, this is a P2A campaign to be excited for
Remember: completing in-game events and competitions is the way to earn Gold Essence (the 2nd most valuable type)
Last week, Fableborne also introduced and announced the Power Protocol: Web3 live-ops infrastructure.
This means Fableborne is becoming an ecosystem, translating to more value accrual to the token (all powered by redacted)
FLASH EVENTS
The Wild Forest game release and P2A Season 2 are coming soon
Mojo Melee Pride of the Past event with new content and weekly tournaments
Nifty Island Wave 3 is coming, with new partners, features, and integrations
Paradise Tycoon Beta 3 is now available (S2 of the P2A campaign)
MARKET TALK
MORE OF TELEGRAM/TON GAMING
It wouldn’t be another version of GC Alpha without discussing Telegram/TON gaming. Today, I want to address some interesting research and takes on the topic.
Firstly, there’s this piece from JACL, including great insights:
Social hubs make for great gaming hubs (e.g. Facebook and Farmville)
TON is a great top-of-funnel UA platform, but it can also monetize well
TG/TON is the best non-CEX on-ramp for normies and Stars play a huge role in the onboarding process
Also, read his piece for the bull/bear case scenario
Secondly, there’s this question from Jonah about whether TON games are making revenue
Catizen made $12M within 3 months, although it seems one of the outliers in terms of monetization here + little data is available so far
Folius Ventures believes there’s a significant upside in monetization for Telegram, with less competition than WeChat
Furthermore, Folius Ventures believes the Chinese developer base is set to king-make the Telegram Mini App Ecosystem
Former WeChat leadership that’s pivoting to the TON/TG ecosystem (like CatizenAI) = gold
POINTS, POINTS, AND MORE POINTS…
Even though we cover and play many SocialFi and P2A campaigns in this newsletter, it seems necessary to visit their current problems. In my belief, this segment of Web3 gaming is facing the current challenges:
There are too many campaigns, and all projects are competing using the same incentives: airdrops
The product or game becomes the main differentiator to how users value the worth of a campaign, although “time-rich” users will maximize the number of campaigns they participate in
Most campaigns incentivize and reward the wrong (extracting) behavior, meaning post-airdrop and after the TGE, the farmers take their money, sell, and leave
Campaigns last too long and are too time-intensive, and the more time your campaign requires, the higher the expected returns become
It doesn’t have to be like this, as illustrated by The Beacon, which slowly dripped new quests every day
P2A and SocialFi campaigns are not “sustainable” UA tools, they can be successful at bootstrapping an initial player base, however, it’s not a scalable marketing solution that brings the player bases that make games last
All-in-all the players are seeing their expectations not being met, and the studios are not seeing the results they aim for (in most cases). So, who’s here the shape the next meta?
THE BEACON MINTED OUT
The Beacon minted out last Friday and raised a small $4M through an NFT sale, a “beacon” of hope for the Web3 gaming, and specifically the NFT space I’d say.
So, is the Beacon a catalyst event when it comes to changing the perception of the NFT space and how poorly new mints have performed? Maybe.
One thing we talked about last week, is how it’s technically an alternate way to distribute your tokens. Because many TGEs have performed so poorly, this could become the new standard…
However, Sparkc did point out the potential legal implications of this approach
The most important takeaway from this all: “giving people a taste of what they are going to mint/speculate on works”
There’s still appetite from players to get involved with token launches, as long as the game is of quality
And there are still high-quality (esp. mobile) games on the horizon that haven’t TGE’d yet
ON THE RISE
Travel Frog - an upcoming AI adventure versus game on TON (alpha from Elisa)
Got a tip to study the breadcrumbs of Startale Labs when it comes to Sony
Gc alpha is top notch
Raiden cooks again