Play-4-Fun → Tap-2-Earn → Pay-2-Earn → Play-4-Fun

🚸 Attention, tik-tok'ers — long-read

Can games on Telegram be purely about fun and great design, or are they doomed to be just another drop-hunting grind? 🤑

🗣 History

Over the years, there have been several attempts to bring high-quality gaming experiences to Telegram. At least, that was the intention.

On October 3, 2016—long before countless projects began flooding Telegram with tap-based "games" designed to extract money from users—Telegram introduced Gaming Platform 1.0:

We know you love Telegram because it’s lean and efficient. This is why the new Gaming Platform requires 0 bytes of disk space and won’t add a single byte to the size of our apps. The only thing we're adding today is countless more fun moments in your chats.

No mention of drops, farming, or earning. Just pure fun. That was the original idea — until money came into play (pun intended). P.S. Check how similar this concept is to today’s Mini Apps.

For a long time, only a few developers took advantage of this platform. Among the most notable was @gamee, which Telegram even highlighted in their release notes.

🥳 The hype and recession

Then came Mini Apps. Then the 💎 Notcoin hype. Then an avalanche of copycats, exploitative projects, and outright scams. What followed? Market saturation and degradation.

Yeah, it's obvious — the global situation isn’t great. But for those closely watching TON’s development and price action, it’s no surprise that it's underperforming compared to other blockchains 📉

The Aftermath? Hate, frustration, and disappointment 🤨
When you jump into something purely for the hype, expect that 90% of those who got in before you are looking to take advantage of you.

😕 Conclusion

Do we have any hope that games will become games again?

Visually, TinyVerse has been around for a while, but it hasn’t really evolved — aside from some flashy renders and mock-ups reposted by major founders and influencers.

Meanwhile, new games from Major are borderline unplayable 🥴. They wouldn’t even get a passing grade on a high school project.

But there’s hope. Games like 🐱 Catizen and the newly released 💣 Void (try it out) suggest that the tide may be turning.

Because let’s be real:
— No one wants to grind for months in yet another P2E "game" 🤪
— No one wants the stress and disappointment that comes with it 😡

It’s time to just have fun. Play smart. Play for enjoyment. After all, they’re just games.

👾

#games #p2e #t2e #p4f #notagame