How To Promote Tap To Earn Web3 Games | Video

It’s five weeks of competition here at Coindesk, sponsored by Cain where we take a deep dive into the past, present and future of Web three games. Our next guest says play to earn is dead, while tap to earn is thriving to lead the ecosystem. Elena Schmal joins us. Now, Elena, how are you? Hey Jen, everything is great. Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure. Yes. Well, we’ve been talking about Web Three games all week. This is one of my favorite topics. So let’s talk about the concept of play to earn because that’s really what got people interested in web tri games. This is really what made web tri games steal some of those headlines a few years ago. Tell me a little bit about that journey for people who may not have followed it and how we ended up here where the business model ended up not really working out. Yes, look. So I think like um Plato was probably the first proper manifestation of the game five verticals as such, right? So we’ve all heard of X Infinity and their similarly rising success and then sadly falling. But the thing that brought us uh this first manifestation of game to earn was definitely the true ownership of game assets that players were finally ready to embrace, right? And then certainly all those great opportunities to earn while playing through very simple actions. But the problem with uh play to earn was definitely like a high barrier to entry and then the um lack of sustainability of those models so later, right? Um And so now we can see the whole new narrative of tap to earn which is exactly what I write about in the article in the open ad. Um So yeah, and this new narrative just brought us an opportunity to present something very simple, very compelling and very appealing to the masses and specifically to web two masses, which is very, very important. And the thing that I keep highlighting just because if we really want to achieve mass adoption in games in web three games, we need to focus on the web two audience, obviously which makes tap to earn different from play to earn. Um So I would say the openness again, very low barriers to entry just because you don’t have, you don’t have to have any money in your account, right? You just open the mini app, you start typing or like to engage in different elements of the game and then you get an airdrop from the team as simple as that. And we’ve seen that in the case of none that basically sky dropped, sky dropped, uh, almost 90% of the token supply to the community. And so the average check, the average airdrop per purse was, I think $200 per purse. Like, wow, that, that’s a big sum. You know, without any need to get involved in anything super complex in any def stuff. You were just, I mean, having fun playing a game with your friends. That is exactly the difference. Well, let’s talk a little more about these player acquisition strategies that have been popping up lately. There was a lot of play with airdrops. A lot of airdrops happened. Um do you think they work and are these new ways of getting players to play your game sustainable or are we attracting people who are really just looking for those airworks who really want to make a quick buck and then maybe they don’t really stay in the game ecosystem as long as a game developer or game publisher likes it, look, that’s a really good question, a question that I ask myself every day when I talk to teams and when I does Don work with projects specifically, I definitely think time will tell and we’re still very early to, you know, uh talk about it like uh with 100% um confidence why? Just because those games just came out, right? So the non-coin box appeared in January this year, as properly appeared with already those engaging tasks and as millions of people join the game every day. Ka, they almost launched um in January too I think. And now reaching more than 23 million uh total users, which is wow, an incredible number and cat door is not a chapter that plays to earn or rather a play to drop. Uh which is also a thing you highlighted right? So I think it’s still pretty early, it’s definitely easy to get those like masses of users. Just because the game is super simple again, it’s engaging, you can play with friends, you can get engaged as a community, right? Not just as an individual, which makes it even more fun and even bigger. Um So you just go through those simple tasks, like for example in the hamster fight, you become the CEO of a crypto exchange and then you develop your exchange and you invite friends and then you try to find new codes like new shr, new daily combos, which, I mean, are definitely captivating. And for me personally, because I play this game every day. So again, those apps tend to go viral, which means marketing costs for them are super, super low and they find a lot of synergy with similar projects with the earnings in the Tonico system, which makes it even easier to get new audience, right . So they basically grow very fast. But what happens then is a very good question. So judging by the no corn case, we can see that the team has a very advanced, very in depth roadmap. So they want to continue to launch games, act as a publisher as a game platform where as external des will also be able to start something exciting or they will continue to create something, something fun. Uh, because they have a lot of expertise and experience. And in that of course, then talking about cat, for example, they also want to continue launching games just because they have a lot of experience in wechat, which I think is definitely an ingredient of success for cat as such. Um talk about, I want to talk about that a little bit, okay? Because we have platforms like uh telegram, which is more common I think for you guys in North America, it’s easier for North American audience to understand. But then we have wechat, which is really dominant in the Asian markets and we’re seeing games and ecosystems emerge on these platforms that is the catalyst that will perhaps bring web tri-gaming to the masses. Um Instead of some of the other catalysts that we’ve heard before, I’m curious to hear your thoughts there 100%, I’d say that’s obviously one of the most important factors, just because if we do that as a web by ecosystem, the unique differentiation that we have is this great and huge distribution channel, right? So just like we say, Wechat provides an opportunity for external debt to come and build something and use it. I mean big, super big numbers. At the same time, Telegram offers us that opportunity as a web three ecosystem to come and build and try to attract those 900 million monthly active users that Telegram boasts. So to answer your question, yes, it is, that’s one of the big differences and unique things that we’re working on right now. Now. I want to talk about bringing web two audience to web three. This is something you mentioned a little earlier. But if we’re talking about the game, you know, in hamster fights, to become the CEO of a crypto exchange, and we’re talking about play-to-airdrop campaigns and airdrops. These are very crypt-native narratives. So I’m curious to hear if you were able to discern who came to play um Anton ecosystem games from Web two or why you think a web two audience might be interested in these very crypto native narratives and themes? Yes. So you’re absolutely right that these web three elements, let’s say, are um more or less inherent to the game, right? But I wouldn’t call them main elements of the game. Yes, you do become the CEO of a stock exchange, but that doesn’t really change the whole picture. Um The catch here is that it’s super simple. You just open the app like, I mean, you were most likely invited by a friend. You start tapping on a hamster and then open those cards. You don’t even have to read what’s on those cards. But that’s definitely one of the goals of the team to try to get people on board in crypto, right. Step by step by showing them what happens in our world, which is so different from the world our parents live in or like normal friends. Right? So I would say a mission of all those teams is definitely education as well. And to answer your question, yes, it’s hard to get back at people in any way. But those teams seem to have found a way to do it. Again, we will see how effective and efficient this approach is in the long run. Uh but I would say we are definitely on the right track and taking cat, for example. I mean, they don’t mention too many elements in the game either. It’s pretty much like breeding, growing your cat and of course everyone loves cats. So it’s very much like emotional touch to the game which I think is also a very important ingredient. So there are several ways we can show people that crypto is actually friendly and open to anyone. We just have to experiment with new ways of doing it. I want to come back to what we talked about at the beginning of the interview and that was play to earn. Uh and as anyone who follows it knows when play to earn, uh started taking over headlines. It was really in the Philippines and developing countries when people were at home during COVID and they started to find the source of income which in many areas was more than you could earn in a minimum wage job in those areas. Um Is there any indication of what kind of audience, uh, what region of the world they’re coming from, are using tap to earn? Like, do we have any more information about the players playing? Um and the gamers who make these games go viral. Um Absolutely, I would say it’s more or less the same, it’s emerging markets and that’s the beauty of it, right? Because crypto and judge is definitely all about democratizing different opportunities and specifically like, I mean, earning opportunities, of course, just because those people in emerging markets don’t have the same, let’s say, level of opportunities. like we do in like developed countries right? So judging by the statistics that we get from teams like markets like, for example, Southeast Asia and then Asia in general and then Iran, for example, and then the CIS region, those are the strongest geographies. I would say from that typing to earn games and to earn games and to play games and even mid-core games, right? So we have one Gatto game, which is a mid-core game built on. So they also um they also get a lot of hearing about Iran. It’s not a lot to, I mean, well paying audience, I’d say so it’s very hard to earn it still, probably they’ll find ways. But in short, it’s emerging markets, people from emerging markets who are mostly interested in these very simple opportunities to earn and then get engaged in something exciting. This is such an interesting point to me because the promise of crypto was to democratize finance, right? And in many parts of the crypto ecosystem, I think we’re currently replicating some of the problems, the challenges that we’re trying to solve with crypto. But it sounds like web tri-gaming could be part of the solution. Uh Part of that democratization that is perhaps left out of the conversation. I’m curious to hear your thoughts there. Um I mean look totally uh I believe gaming is probably one of the verticals that’s going to bring like a lot of people if we do everything, right? Um That’s what happened to wechat. Again, they don’t have this story of democratization of everything we do and we obviously have to tap into that, but look, one third of wechat users play games, play mini games, these are hyper casual games that are very simple to play and hug Um So we should definitely like to aim there and you’re absolutely right that we need to democratize finance and then, um all the other principles that our society is built on, we can make an impact here. Elena, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me. Like I said, I can talk about web through games all day if anyone wants to read, uh Elena’s article that’s on coindesk.com and make sure you read all the articles and watch all our videos that we’ll be publishing for games five weeks this week. Thank you Elena. Thanks, Jen.