The founders appear exasperated by the sport’s “hyper-casual” label. “Some individuals name it a tap-to-play sport. It’s not precisely proper and dumbs it down,” say the creators. “You solely must faucet on the very starting. Very quickly, you get entry to all of the passive revenue streams which rapidly outweigh every little thing else.”
When requested to elucidate the sport’s cartoonishly easy mechanics, they reply, “Have you ever ever tried Tinder?” They clarified that “trendy apps have spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} studying tips on how to put individuals on board.” The simplicity is a function not a bug. (Issues are much less easy within the US, the place Telegram does not help a local crypto pockets, due to regulatory issues and earlier settlements with the SEC. Technically TON and Telegram are separate entities.)
The massive looming query, other than the creators’ identities, is whether or not the sport might be sustainable. (Crypto tasks get that query so much.) “You can not get financial worth from tapping the display screen. It’s apparent,” says Diadkov. Then once more, the query of whether or not digital cryptocurrency can have “actual worth” has existed for the reason that inception of bitcoin, and you’ll argue that if a neighborhood decides that one thing has worth, it has worth.
That perceived worth, in fact, might be fickle. Axie Infinity, the “play-to-earn” gaming darling from the final crypto bull market, finally flopped. I ask the founders point-blank how Hamster Kombat is totally different from Axie. (One distinction is clear: Axie customers had to purchase NFTs to play the sport, and people might price over $100.)
“First, we’re already worthwhile. We have now a number of income channels,” the founders declare. “We promote advertisements in our sport. We get cash from our YouTube advertisements (we’ve got 18 channels in several languages). We have now the most important Telegram channel, and Telegram shares the promoting income with channel homeowners.”
You’d even be hard-pressed to search out many on-line communities that declare 300 million members. This alone has worth. Even when the Hamster Kombat sport itself is economically unsustainable, that neighborhood might be monetized. And now they’re onboarded into the TON ecosystem.
“It is a pretty genius stroke from the Telegram group,” says David Nage, a portfolio supervisor at Arca, a Web3 VC agency. He views Hamster Kombat (and the opposite video games like Notcoin) as an entrance to a shopping center, and now everybody will watch to see what individuals do as soon as they’re there. “What do they do subsequent?” Nage says. “Do they go to the mini-app retailer? Do they use social-fi purposes? Are there DeFi purposes?”
Hamster Kombat, in a way, is a Malicious program to get individuals into crypto. Telegram CEO Durov has stated it has the potential to introduce “the advantages of blockchain to tons of of thousands and thousands of individuals.” The creators say that is their endgame. It was designed as a tongue-in-cheek meta-classroom for crypto ideas. “We wish to onboard the following billion individuals to Web3, so we needed to present everybody how Web3 really works,” say the founders. “And the best means to take action is thru the sport.”
What’s subsequent for Hamster Kombat? In a just-released white paper, the creators declare its upcoming airdrop shall be “the most important airdrop within the historical past of crypto.” That may reward tons of of thousands and thousands of customers with a “HMSTR” token that has an unsure worth. They will then promote it or use it in a brand new Hamster Economic system. “We wish to construct an ecosystem round Hamster Kombat centered round sport publishing,” say the creators. “That’s what we all know tips on how to do finest. The longer term token shall be on the middle of this ecosystem of interconnected video games and providers.”
Perhaps the token will go to the moon, and a few of these Hamster CEOs will change into precise millionaires. Perhaps the token will crash, leaving thousands and thousands of gamers jaded. Each choices are in play. That, too, is how Web3 really works.
Correction: 8/1/2024, 1:40 pm EDT: Wired corrected the title of The Open Community.
