It's no secret that distribution across all major gaming platforms is virtually inaccessible to all but the most deep-pocketed developers. The go-go days of being able to bootstrap a studio or raise a modest amount of funding to grow and scale a title are long gone, and there have been very few emerging platforms that show outsized promise.
But is that about to change? Telegram games have exploded onto the scene over the past few months. Top titles like Hamster Kombat, with deceptively simple yet surprisingly deep gameplay, can attract hundreds of millions of players in a matter of months - or even weeks! How and why is this happening? Could Telegram be the next "big thing" for gaming, a truly new platform where cost-effective user acquisition and effective distribution are once again possible?
To find out, your host, Niko Vuori, sits down with Simon Davis, Founder & CEO of Mighty Bear Games, a studio that grew its own Telegram title, Goat Gaming, to 2 million players in a matter of weeks. Simon drops some major alpha about what is driving adoption among developers on Telegram, who the player base is, retention and engagement metrics, how these games are bridging some elements of web3, and much more.
We’d also like to thank nSure.ai for making this episode possible! In the gaming industry, protecting revenue from fraudsters is crucial. That’s where nSure.ai comes in. As a proven industry leader, nSure.ai provides scalable payment fraud prevention that’s not just effective but tailored specifically to your needs. To learn more, visit https://www.nsure.ai/contact
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
Niko: Hello and welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Niko Vuori. Today, we have a very special episode for you.
We are going somewhere where many of our listeners probably haven't ventured yet, but it is absolutely a place that you should know about. We are talking about one of the fastest growing distribution channels for games out there. And that is Telegram. You've probably heard about the controversy around Telegram and the arrest in France recently of its founder, Pavel Durov, for not sharing information with the police about criminal activity on Telegram.
And it is absolutely true that Telegram is an unpoliced, unmoderated, hotbed of all kinds of illicit activity where drugs are sold openly, pornography shared, and crimes are planned in plain sight. But one of the unique features of Telegram, which is the ability to create absolutely massive. Broadcast groups and it's very open nature that is unpoliced is also a potential opportunity for game developers for mass distribution, cheaply and easily.
And since just about all mass distribution channels for games are totally tapped out these days and wildly expensive. This is not an opportunity to be overlooked. So to learn more about Telegram Games and the opportunity for game developers, I've invited someone who themselves has a hit game on Telegram.
I think 2 million users in a matter of five weeks. That's what's possible there. So he's going to tell us about the experience of building there and what the opportunity might look like going forward. It's fast evolving. This is fairly new stuff. So without further ado today, I'm excited to welcome Simon Davis.
He is the founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Games to the show. Simon, welcome to the pod.
Simon: Thank you for having me, Niko. You’re fulfilling a year's long ambition of finally making onto Naavik, so, uh, there you go.
Niko: Hopefully, uh, we're going to have a good chat today. We are definitely gonna have a good chat.
We have a lot in common. And I think we have a similar worldview on, on some of these things. We were just chatting about stuff before the pod about what this opportunity looks like and what the historical pattern recognition might be compared to. So, okay, with that out of the way, let's get into today's episode.
So Simon, I always like to start with the background of our guests, especially ones who are doing interesting things and have been through the trenches, which I know you have been with both Mighty Bear Games and throughout your career. So tell us more about who you are and your journey through the games industry.
Simon: Yeah, so, I've been making games professionally for 20 years now. I think like most gaming CEOs, my background is something, something totally different. So I have a four year music degree. I'm very proud that I have a first class honors degree in professional musicianship, which is certainly well in my current role. Did that for a few years before I realized that my time as a working musician had run its course. And so I decided I'd go all in on games. And so, I'm fortunate enough that I come from a multilingual family. And so I used to work for a company called Babel Media, which today is Keywords. Applied for a job there doing localization.
I actually ended up doing QA. And so the very first game I worked on was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Azkaban on PS2, 2004. And over the years, you know, I moved from that into doing design, being a producer, product lead. , I made my foray into online gaming in 2009, 2010, working at Big Point, which was a big German browser gaming company.
Ironically, I think that experience probably has the most in common with Telegram today. So I was a product lead for a game called Dark Orbit, which had its peak was, you know, doing, upwards of 50 million euros a year. Top line revenue with a team of 20 guys working on a flash game on a flash MMO, from then I went on to work at Ubisoft.
So I was, one of the product and design people in charge of Ghost Recon Online, which was Ubi's, Ubi's kind of big foray into games as a service. And so a lot of the lessons that fed into Rainbow Six and Skull Bones came from that. and then I was lucky enough to join King. And so I was part of the team of the King Singapore studio.
That was called Nonstop Games. Unfortunately one day in 2016, Nonstop stopped. And so at that point I decided I would depart with, , some of the best and brightest there. You know, we had the opportunity to continue within King and move to Europe. But I had a thesis around the emergence of South Southeast Asia as a mobile gaming powerhouse and market.
In 2016 and actually we're starting to see it now. It's only taken eight years Through Telegram web3 as well And so it's been a very interesting three years as a founder both The very first game we built as a studio was an MMORPG. So I was drawing on my browser gaming experience , I had hair when we did that So I don't really recommend building an MMO with nine people But it did lay the foundations for everything we do today on the infrastructure side and back end , then we did a couple we did another free to play game We did a couple of games with Apple on Apple Arcade We were one of the first and best performing games in Apple Arcade with battle royale, which is a food themed Battle royale we hit people with baguettes and there's a tsunami of butter.
We did a game with Disney And then 2021 we were like, okay You We're going all in on web3, because as you mentioned in your intro, distribution is completely saturated. We had a merge game which had like incredible day one metrics and Within a very short period of time our cpis went up by 7x post IDFA And I was like if I keep playing this game, we're gonna Basically end up closing the studio in 18 months.
And so I pivoted and you know, the studios that persisted with that game, a lot of them have closed in recent years. So that felt like the right move. , first web three game we released was mighty action heroes came out late 2022, , beginning of 23. And you know that game won best, , best mobile web three game of the year last year.
The game three awards, which is really cool. But again, like we're on that game we realized that Distribution is a challenge and distribution is destiny. If distribution is destiny, you have to go where you have the biggest leverage, right? And you can impact the largest number of users. And early this year, we realized that those two things, firstly, , skill gaming with a financialized element.
So we have a mode of mighty action heroes where you go head to head and you pay an entry fee. There's a roulette wheel. The roulette wheel determines the size of the payout and their players compete to win that payout. And that mode like completely outperformed everything else we'd ever done because of the variable rewards and the chance to win a prize.
And also Telegram was the place where you had the most leverage in terms of. Reachy users. And so Goat Gaming, which is what we've relaunched today or more recently is a platform which incorporates many of these games with these elements and then is being distributed by a telegram. You know, we've achieved a scale in five weeks and none of our previous products have ever done it.
Yeah, it's been, , it's been somewhat of a roller coaster and we're learning a lot like so early,
Niko: I mean, listeners, I wasn't kidding when I said Simon's been through the trenches. Um, he really has, as you heard there. , and, you know, as game developers who've been through the trenches know, it's those experiences and those failures along the way and the challenges that actually, Open your eyes to the opportunity that then is in front of you that others may not see that's what I'm saying.
I think many listeners of this podcast, despite being game industry professionals may not. I mean, I've obviously heard of telegram, but may not know that it's actually pretty exciting and rocket ship growth. , Platform for games right now. Now, these games look very different to what, , your traditional air quotes game, game industry insiders might say.
So Simon, tell us a little bit more about what are these games? What is, uh, there's going to be a lot of questions here. So let's start with just what are these games on telegram? How are they getting distributed? What types of gameplay are you seeing there and what is unique about the Telegram platform as a distribution channel and also as a form factor for playing these games?
Simon: Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of questions sometimes. I know, I know. I'm, I'm, I'm dying to dig into all of these things though, so I just out there start with distribution and light form factor. So distribution method is very simple. You know, telegram is like any other messaging service. You think of it like WhatsApp, and imagine that within WhatsApp you would launch a.
Basically a self contained browser window and there'd be a game running in HTML5 or WebGL. So if you can build it in browser, , chances are you can build it in Telegram. And so from a form factor perspective, that actually gives you a lot of scope. The early games that have done very well have been, you know, if you have a curve, if you have like a scale of complexity, they've been at the very far end of accessible.
You know, there's nothing really that looks like a 4X game or a hero RPG. , that's performing on telegram today. So the very first games that did well were. Basically idle games where you could tap just like banana on steam, right? And the the financialized element of these was that they promised a future airdrop So they were going to release their own cryptocurrency but you know depending on your score you'd get more or less of that currency dropped to you when the game launched and so You know not coin and hamster combat probably the two biggest ones helps to combat Is involves zero fighting, uh, you have a hamster avatar, which ostensibly is the CEO for cryptocurrency, uh, trading platform.
So you could choose to be the CEO of finance in hamster form, and then you're just tapping and collecting your profits. But, you know, in web too, like you go all the way back to cookie clicker, right? What was that? 2010. Like these games have form, they're proven, like they've taken proven mechanics of clickers and they've adapted them and, , the top performing Telegram games, , allegedly, you know, have over a hundred million users.
So it's, there's clearly a market for this stuff. Like Telegram is a billion consumers and 200 million games today. And so it makes perfect sense that the first way we're going to be the most accessible games. But, I mean, as you and I discussing. Prior to the chat, right? The games that eventually emerge will look very different to what we're playing on mobile today on social networks And so i'm already starting to see like hybrid casual games emerging.
I saw a game today that riffs on monopoly go , i've seen some games that look like coin master with a twist , and so you're already starting to see that shift towards like I guess the casual end of mid core. Challenge is that you know geographically sharing a little bit of alpha here But a lot of our users are based in developing markets And so I i've never had a product that had as many users in like india and nigeria and latin america as we do today So I think the notion that you can take existing proven web 2 games and just package them for this audience Is that?
Probably false. I think their taste will be somewhat different and the smart developers will ship games very quickly So I mean contacts got gaming we have a rule that we don't develop anything that can't be shipped in three to four weeks There's longer than that. We just don't do it And then if it does well, we can add on to it and expand on it.
I speak to some teams that are spending three, four months building games and like, , I wouldn't say they're on drugs, but like, it's incredibly risky and like, not very well thought out plan because Telegram moves, , moves super fast. It's probably not quite as fast as Crypto, but But the taste and the matter, , telegram changes really from month to month right now.
So I wouldn't overcommit anything that takes too long.
Niko: Yeah, I mean, again, so much to unpack here. And I have so many questions because these are the kinds of opportunities that I mean, who knows what will happen with telegram and whether this is truly a, you know, a new platform. But I'm always very, very excited about these moments.
And, uh, , you know, as a long time listeners know I always like to drop it in our episodes. I was at Zynga, early Zynga, and I have to say this feels to me as if this could be another like early Zynga moment where Facebook opens up. Their APIs to developers, you get these really simple, casual experiences.
You remember the poke and the super poke and, you know, uh, games like slide, uh, were, you know, with really huge name founders were basically creating like kind of my spacey style, like really simple, not even game experiences, but those led to something like Farmville, which of course was the. Developed very quickly and very, I mean, I wouldn't say not great production values. They were good production monies for the time and for the platform. , but today we'd look at that and say, Oh, like why was anybody playing that? You know? And there was a cow clicker parody that itself got huge amounts of traction, which was kind of ironic because the developer of that was trying to make a point about how stupid these games are.
And it actually ended up being like a big hit. So, , That's what's interesting to me. I, what are the, what are the circum, I mean, Telegram has been around for quite a while now, right? I mean, it's, it's a, what, a decade plus old? Like, so it's not, this is not a new, it's not new. And I mean, Pavel Durov famously founded Vcontact, you know, which was the Facebook clone in Russia and then did Telegram, um, from Dubai or United, somewhere like that, so that he wouldn't be, , chased by, by Moscow, by Putin.
But, but Telegram is not. New and yet telegram games are new, right? So tell me a little bit about what gave rise to this current wave, this explosion almost of, of gaming on telegram. How old is it? And what did they do? What did telegram do to open it up?
Simon: I mean, I'm not an expert on this, but based on my limited knowledge.
there's two big things that happened. Firstly, I mean, I spoke to some of the team about this. So I have kind of, you know, firsthand info. some people associated with Telegram made a conscious effort to incubate and support these projects last year. And so there was like a incubation program, that was supported distribution and advisory and technical stuff.
You also have the integration of the wallet natively, which made Apple and Google. Some were irate and they had to introduce kind of other forms of third party payments. So they had an inbuilt crypto wallet, which was just natively accessible by your mini apps. You could just do payments around the app stores.
Unfortunately that's not, not so viable today, but that was running for a few months. and then they overhauled the, , the way the apps work. So they, they created a framework for developing your own mini apps. It wasn't just like a casual browser window. So it's a combination of like infrastructure support.
And also just giving people the tools to distribute these games. And then, you know, when you think like you've had NotCoin, Hamster Combat, and Cataclysm. And the smallest one of the three is Cataclysm with about 30 million players. We'll take off in the last few months. I mean, that's a great proof of concept for everyone else.
And so we were early ish, like we decided in February, March this year that we were going to go all in. , and development will go start in April and the bot was ready in August and we already have multiple games in the pipe and my only regret is actually we didn't start this at the end of last year and start sooner, but yeah.
Niko: Well, there's sometimes such a thing as too early and sometimes there's such a thing as too late and sometimes the difference is.
A mere matter of weeks or months, especially when you have a new platform. Same exact thing happened with, Facebook platform, you know, you had to be one of the very first, uh, ideally you had to be Zynga, in order to be, , a viable winner. And then, once the virality goes away, which by the way, we'll talk about that, like, it's, it's amazing for right now, but how long will it last?
And, you know, when will, if ever will Telegram start monetize, but we won't talk about that. That just yet, we'll, we'll, talk a bit more about, , your game now, because I want to hear about the experience as a game developer. What is it like to, to build on Telegram? It's, it's new, the tools. and you've got these interesting features such as the, the giant broadcast feature, which is one of the things I mentioned in the intro that makes Telegram unique.
You know, where you can broadcast things to hundreds of thousands of people in these big groups, um, which is not possible with Telegram. , on technically even possible, , because of the, the encryption standards. I'm no technical expert, but, , hard fork, one of my favorite New York times podcast.
Uh, they, they cover this in quite a bit of detail when the, French arrest came. So I recommend everybody go listen to, to that episode and read up, uh, listen up on, uh, listen up. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Read up, listen up, , on, on what, uh, what makes Telegram, technically interesting because that actually is not as secure, , as most people think it is.
But that is actually the thing that makes it possible to reach so many people. So talk a little bit about as a developer, what are the things you've had to learn and unlearn from your other development efforts, for building on Telegram?
Simon: We were actually quite lucky because Mighty Action Heroes initially launched on browser.
So it was our very first browser game as an independent studio. And I took the decision in 2022 to launch on mobile. That the lead platform for mighty action heroes would be browser rather than mobile which was kind of a contrarian bet But I was concerned by what Apple and Google might do on the Web3 side.
And I wanted to make sure that we had the maximum flexibility for the product. Just get the product right before we move it to mobile. , and so with that experience in hand, when we started building on Telegram, like it was basically React plus Telegrams and libraries. And so on the React side, we've built out a lot of that stuff before on the Web3 side.
So it's a combination of their own technology plus React. So do the core bot and then the games themselves, you know, there are different things you can do because essentially it launches in a sub window. We build most of our games in unity actually using a webgl wrapper, but , you can also do an h5 So, like, we also have games on Code Gaming, which are built in HTML5, and they're very, you know, being very candid, they're probably preferable, but, you know, a studio like ours has got almost 10 years worth of assets and code already in Unity, and so, we'll reuse those as much as possible.
If you're starting from fresh, I'd recommend probably doing HTML5, just because it loads faster and it's, more lightweight. I think the thing to remember as well is, When so many of your users are playing in developing markets, I mean, we've seen that some of the data on the devices that you're using, you know, you're seeing like 12 year old Android, , processes on some of these phones.
So, if you're casting fancy shadows and kind of 3d objects and your telegram game, then maybe, you know, a very small percentage of your potential player base that should be able to enjoy it.
Niko: Right, right. Interesting. so that that's an interesting factor, actually. Why is it that it's in large part, or larger percentage developing market or emerging market?
You mentioned India, Nigeria. is it the crypto component here? Are these play to earn games to a certain degree? What's what's explaining that?
Simon: I think it's a combination of both the things you just said. Actually it's kind of three things. So developing markets tend to be more future forward.
So I've been living in Asia now for 12 years. And so now people in say Europe and the U S don't have issues with payments, right? Like you want to do a payment by PayPal, go to bank, like it's pretty low friction, low countries, that's just not the case. Like maybe you live a hundred miles from your nearest bank and you don't have the right documents to open a bank account.
Um, I don't know. It's, it's not, you can't get a credit card. And so for a lot of these people, like crypto has become the default. , Telegram does make crypto payments and interactions very easy, but it's kind of like I said, it's built natively into the product. And so I heard some incredible data points around, , USDT, which is, you know, stable coin usage in Nigeria and how people just use Telegram and USDT for a lot of their daily stuff now.
Because, you know, they have currency issues and banking is a challenge and whatever else. , I also think people in Southeast Asia and the developing markets are. Less entrenched in the existing messaging systems, so they're more willing to try out something like Telegram rather than like, oh, you know, my parents, my grandparents and my school buddies are on WhatsApp or whatever, or the USI message.
So I think it's those two, I think the play to earn component also helps, like, if you look historically, a lot of the skill gaming platforms have done very well. Southeast Asia and India. And so this chance to win, even if it's just a small amount of money by beating other players, , resonates very well in these markets.
So, you know, skills is obviously a huge business in the U S but mobile Premier League in India is a household name, but the average American consumer has never heard of skills. Maybe, you know, some people that are into sports betting or gaming may have, but like MPL is really like everywhere there.
Niko: Interesting. Yeah. That's often the case. We hear that a lot. I think, um, you know, our podcast hosts on Naavik in general is mostly based in U S in Europe, um, in those two specifically. And I have to say that, , I, I certainly have some blinkers on. About what's emerging. You know, I try to look to see what's going on, especially in Asia, Asian markets.
I think they are very future forward. I mean, it was always the case that in free to play mobile, you know, it was always the case that like China and Korea were, you know, quite a bit ahead. Japan quite a bit ahead of where the Western markets are going to go and Western tastes were going to follow. And, , it was always a case of looking to see what's top grossing from Tencent.
Um, and then seeing, okay, what of that can we take and adapt, , and adopt for, for Western tastes. Let's talk more about your actual game. , you, you mentioned some stats and, , you know, gameplay. How do you monetize? Where are you getting your users? Like, how have you gone to 2 million players and how are you measuring players by the way?
From, you know, five weeks ago to now.
Simon: Well, yeah, I'm not going to divulge too much of the secret sauce, but, , I mean, the game has strong social mechanics. So if a player refers, we took the Facebook playbook plan, the player refers a certain amount of users, there are certain rewards available. We have raffles and competitions where you have to, you know, refer five people to qualify.
, there are certain communities we've partnered with as well. So just like in web three, you can exchange player bases and say, okay, we're going to promote your game. You promote ours. I think a famous example of this is a clash of clans in Japan. I think they partnered with Puzzles and Dragons, if I remember correctly, back in the day.
Um, was one of the few Western games to do that in Japan. And then there's, you know, you can do bits with Paid UA as well. So we've been doing experiments with different platforms, natively within Telegram too. It's early days. The, uh, Existing tools are not fantastic. Like you wouldn't compare them to, to Google or Metas offerings, but, look, it is what it is.
And the smart teams will figure ways out to either work around the tools or build a, build their own tools or, or find ways to kind of find out for them. So there's lots of different channels you can do, but you have to be willing to get creative and scrappy. If you'll use acquisition team, it's just expecting to replicate, you know, Current Instagram strategy, like you're going to have a bad time.
Niko: Yeah, I mean, and this is the thing with new platforms. It's always, you're, you have to be prepared even to bend the rules sometimes, perhaps even break the rules sometimes, as a, as a scrappy, young team. And that's why the larger incumbents, you know, from the web two or, or traditional air quotes, traditional gaming world, they have such a hard time, uh, cracking new platforms.
And again, TBD, if Telegram is truly a new platform, I think, you know, because it's so early, yes. The adoption. Of these games is crazy, but a lot of it is incentivized. It sounds like, you know, with, uh, with some cryptos and play to earn, monetization, actually, that brings me onto that. How are you monetizing?
If at all, your player base and how are others, if you're not, then how are others doing it? Are they, are you seeing some interesting monetization models, arising that are perhaps very different to what you see in traditional gaming?
Simon: I mean, be very candid with you. Like we've been focused on growth, so I'd say we're not even at the beginning of our monetization journey.
, But if you look how, I mean, some of the numbers I saw around Katizen in terms of monetization, like very impressive. And so people, you know, have been doing the usual kind of free to play monetization. They've been offering season passes, progression, you know, pay to unlock certain items. You have a merge game.
There is a pretty clear playbook. You know, a challenge you have is a lot of these people are in emerging markets. So do you have variable pricing? Do you do bundles? Do you monetize ad reviews? Because some people are now serving ads in these games as well. I saw one game that's basically quite similar to coin master and they were like, you know, if you wanted to have more spins, you watch ads.
Yeah, there are many different ways you can monetize these players. You know, some of these games are doing eight figures in revenue a year now, so it's not a small thing. And if you have that audience, And that player base, like, you can either find ways to monetize those eyeballs or make them pay for content.
And so, like, it's, yeah, I mean, if you've got 20, 30 million users, like, you should be able to build some kind of viable business there.
Niko: I, I think playing devil's advocate though, it sounds like a lot of this is, is growth based right now. There's like a gold rush, so to speak, because it's an, it is a new frontier and the scrappy teams are recognizing like, okay, there's, there's opportunity in them heels, right?
So there's gold to be mined. Now, the key question really becomes and this is this was true for Web 3. I mean, I was there myself. I saw it firsthand. There is an opportunity to grow quite quickly, right? Grow your community, grow your player, air quotes, player base, grow your user base and this may not hold true, but it has, I think, in the history of gaming, you know, retention, retention, retention, that does matter.
Retention and engagement matters. So yes, you can grow very quickly. I mean, I remember very clearly Zynga games, not all of them did well. We had Mafia Wars 2, for example. Bless Eric Bethke, who was the GM of that, that game, I thought did a great job. But we grew that very quickly to millions of DAU.
And then it had terrible retention, unfortunately, and, and it tanked. So what's the, what's the playbook there in terms of retention? Or is it just too early to say, like, are the, the same, Key metrics that hold in free to play gaming, do they hold in Telegram, too?
Simon: Yeah, I mean, retention, as you say, is key, right?
And so, a lot of people, you know, I think it's complicated to draw a direct parallel with mobile free to play because the audience is different, so it's a delivery mechanism. But I mean, you're looking at, you know, your day one, day three ratio, your day three to day seven ratio and day seven to day 30 ratio, and also on a cohort basis.
And so, I mean, look, I'm looking right now, actually, at some of the data, I'll drop you some alpha sort of our longest cohort, which is five week, it's currently retaining at like 22%, which is pretty good. Yeah, that's very solid. Yeah, that's legit. So it's interesting, actually, one of the things we've observed is that, .
The users that hang around are very, very loyal, I guess, because they feel some kind of investment and we have a lot of the social stuff built in, but yeah, , like you say, there's no good getting like tens of millions of users and then expecting them just to retain by the, you know, the, the power of magic.
I guess the only other thing I would say is that you actually raised some point because. Like you, I'm old enough to remember Mafia Wars 2. I actually remember the differences between Mafia Wars and Mafia Wars 2. I actually touched on something you said at the very beginning, and it's like, better production values don't necessarily equate to a better or performing experience with these less hardcore players, and that's true in Hypercasual as well.
And so what I expect to see in the next few months is teams that have spent, I don't know, four to six months building something incredibly polished just getting wrecked because The players are not looking for that. , I remember speaking to someone at Voodoo, like years ago, and they said, yeah, the more polished games just don't actually perform as well.
Yeah. They don't convert as well because players are instant, but less kind of hardcore players are just put off by that. So I always thought that was quite interesting.
Niko: Yeah. And I mean, I think it comes back to something you said as well, which is, Hey, a lot of these players are in. Developing emerging markets and their devices may not be able to handle the graphics.
Right. I mean, that was part of the problem actually, even with mafia wars to, you know, the Facebook canvas just couldn't, it would load really slowly and you know, it, it had hardware limitations. And so that's just something to keep in mind is like the lighter weight it is, the faster it's going to load and the.
Quicker going to get to the actual gameplay, the core loop and get to experience it instead of having to sit there waiting for a loading screen, like spinning, spinning, spinning. Um, if it's even able to handle it, in terms of binary size and what have you. So, so that's a very interesting, interesting factor as well.
Where are these teams coming from, by the way, who are building these things? I mean, yes, they're all going to be scrappy crews. Like they're all going to have maybe some crypto web three experience. Maybe not. I'm making assumptions here. No. Okay. Interesting. My assumption was going to be, this was kind of a, , Almost like an evolution from the web three crypto world, where, you know, maybe some of these web three games were not getting traction.
I'm very similar to mighty bigger, right? Where maybe you didn't get quite where you want it to. And then you see this opportunity like, Oh, okay, let's pivot into that. Right? Who are these teams and where are they coming from?
Simon: Yeah, it's interesting one. So I mean, on mighty action heroes, the challenge we had actually was just distribution.
Yeah. How can we cost effectively put this in the hands of millions of players? And in Web3 today, like, for a mobile app, your options are very limited. It's either you go the pay your way route or you, you know, throw money at KOLs and you hope that that converts into a community or installs or, you know, some other kind of magic.
, and so, yeah. I mean, Telegram was a way to do mass distribution. So, and you're seeing other Web3 studios doing that. You know, there's a, there's a studio I'm a fan of. Um, it's the Everseed Studio. They made a farm game called Farm Friends that I've been playing, which is kind of a cute Farmville-esque slash meets crypto tape.
On Telegram, but then also, and I think this is dangerous as well for reasons I'll explain, but like seeing this massive influx of WeChat gaming developers, because the thinking is, Oh, we've already built successful games on one messaging app. Like we're just going to play the same playbook. And I don't think it's that straightforward.
I think the audience, the audience is fundamentally very different and the behaviors are different. So it concerns me slightly because I just. Like I said, I think the two platforms are actually quite different. So, a lot of people going in with false assumptions. It's like me saying, oh, it's going to be the same as Facebook gaming, which it isn't.
It's its own thing. so you're seeing an influx of players from, sorry, uh, devs from WeChat. You're seeing, yeah, Web3 studios. And then I've also started to see social casino and kind of hardcore mobile free to play guys coming in as well. They're just like, you know what? I don't want to play the idea of a game anymore.
I don't want to be, you know, giving 80 percent of my, top line revenues to Facebook and Google for ads, but let's, let's play it a different game. And so it's a combination of like kind of disgruntled veterans. Yeah. We chat and we're free developers.
Niko: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's funny you mentioned social casino.
I was a social casino. Developer myself in the earlier days of, of mobile, 2013. So not super early, not plate to get early, but, early enough. And, yeah, that's it. You always see that, um, the folks who are prepared to mess around with a casino mechanics and, gotcha and things like that are, are typically one of the first teams to, to go after new opportunities like this.
So suck. Got a little chuckle out of me for her for that. those guys are hardcore, man.
Simon: I have a lot of respect for these guys, but they are, they are probably the best of the best in a lot of respects. Yeah.
Niko: Yeah. Yeah. Could not disagree with that. Okay. So how the, the very top game now you've grown to 2 million in five weeks, but we've got some of the earlier.
Entrance, like hamster combat and the larger ones that you mentioned, the largest one allegedly has a hundred million. How are these numbers tracked? , are there any kind of third party analytics? Is there an app, any, , similar for, for Telegram for, for actually verifying some of these things? Can you?
Simon: Yeah, of course. Yeah So you can just actually go to any given Bob and it will show you how many monthly users they've had. So I'm looking at not quite now. My phone is 8. 5, 7, 6 million users in the last month. It will show you the, like the monthly active. It typically runs on a 48 hour ish delay.
If you're adding users regularly, like it'll be a bit behind, but yeah, I mean, you can see within Telegram itself, how these games are doing.
Niko: Okay. And the biggest ones, how have they gotten that big?
Simon: That's a good question. I mean, I'm looking at Hamster Combat right now. They're 108 million in the last month.
The biggest ones have done it through offering rewards, basically through incentives, but the other thing they've done, which is very smartly is like, Hamster Combat is a great example of this. They've built an incredible social media presence. So their YouTube channel has got an insane amount of followers.
And so these businesses, okay, you could argue that, you just offered incentives to buy users, whatever, but there would be the grumpy web to take, right? , but they've built these massive followings and now they're leveraging those eyeballs that keep growing their business. You know, you're seeing them do partnerships with other games, other businesses, they're selling ads on their social media channels.
I'm not going to share the numbers. I've had some numbers in the last few weeks because there was token 2049 in Singapore last week. So it was nice to have everyone come to us. But the numbers these teams are doing just through the size of their community is just eye watering. So it's a great business.
Niko: Yeah. I know, you know, one of the things I noticed, I, I haven't, I played hamster combat, that's literally the only one I played, uh, and I'll, you know, confess, and this is part of the reason why I think like I'm usually You know, often playing like some of these new things, but it's so new that I, even I haven't had a chance to, to mess around with her much, but hamster combat is, is the one that I heard of.
And maybe our listeners, if they've heard of Telegram games, that's the one they've heard of too. And it's, it is interesting because their social media game is like on fire, right? And it's the incredible, it's not dissimilar actually from, from web three, some of the top collections, um, You know, again, they had to be pretty early, but, you know, um, bored apes, of course, famously, uh, pudgy penguins is a really interesting one because, um, you know, they've been able to kind of parlay their early earliness and the cuteness of their collection into some kind of brand slash social media presence, which is which is fascinating.
So again, TBD, if they're like winning air quotes, um, but they do have large followings and this seems like it's a similar playbook to that where you've, you've got something that's cute and quirky and interesting that could parlay into a brand or could parlay into something along those lines. Is that kind of what you're seeing as well?
Simon: I'd say the pudgy penguin story is a bit different. Because that was a quote unquote failed collection that was then purchased and kind of bought back from the dead. And so it's great. It's like, everyone loves a comeback story. So that's an amazing comeback story. And then the idea is that people are in the IP for their individual pledges, so there's an IP play there.
I think hamster combat as a brand is just a really interesting kind of case study. And I think you're right. The social media game is. It's incredible. , and it's what keeps people hooked with a brand then. Yeah. I mean, there's no reason they can't keep building out this, but the other thing I'd say, you know, people dismiss these games as like mid tappers, but that's just the onboarding, like the meta game around these games is like incredibly deep.
Hamster combat has a lot going on and so it's actually very deceptive like it's incredibly well designed because you start off thinking it's just a casual tapper and it's very accessible and before you know it there's like multiple layers of complexity coming in I you know it's a very spicy statement but I'd say it's like best in class design as far as like idle slash tapper games go and that also plays a large part.
Niko: Interesting, interesting. Okay and who's the team behind hamster combat out of curiosity?
Simon: I'm not pretty sure. I'm not sure they even fully doxed, to be honest.
Niko: I was going to say, because I tried, I looked into Hamster Combat. I actually wanted to have them on the show as well. Because I, again, that's the story I've been following.
And that's initially where I got like clued into Telegram games. And I was like, Oh, this looks interesting. These numbers are quite. Um, and I couldn't really find out much about that team. So listeners, if you know who the Hampshire combat team is, I would love to have those guys on the show as well. , hit me up afterwards.
Nico economic. com. Okay, let's talk a little bit about social right now. Telegram obviously is a social messaging platform. They have this feature that I mentioned a couple of times now, which is the ginormous broadcast channels that makes them quite different from other messaging apps, which can only handle thousands or maybe tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands of listeners slash followers in these channels.
Are developers tapping into the social aspect? You mentioned some of the stuff that you've got going on. , what does Telegram Allow you to do via their API or other tools in order to tap into like true social, not, you know, just like Facebook games and Zynga games were not really social. In many cases, they were just like I could broadcast to everybody on my friend list and get my parts for my frontier building that needed to be repaired or whatever.
Niko: Right? But that's not really social. That's kind of like asking for parts. But Effective, right? , so it curious to hear how the social differs in Telegram games, , and what Telegram is doing and what developers are doing to tap into the unique features of the platform.
Simon: That's an interesting question because I mean, on the surface, it's not that different to what's gone before it.
It's a messaging app. You can share one link with your friends and they can jump into the same metric as you and they can help you and become part of your plan. So I think versus mobile gaming is that's a lot more instantaneous and low friction. You don't have to install anything, just jump straight in.
As a dev, you can have broadcast community channels directly with your users, which is pretty cool. Actually, you could argue that's not very different to Facebook groups back in the day, but it feels a lot more Obviously it's real time, right? You can just speak directly to your community and have a hangout with them.
So it's kind of like a, almost like a mash up between Discord and Facebook back in the day. To be very frank with you in terms of social features, there's still a lot of work to do. One of the things that I would like us to start doing is to Maybe build social features around people owning specific NFTs within the ecosystem as well.
Creating their own kind of like little gated communities, you can token gate them and maybe taking some of the Web3 playbook and doing innovative stuff around that, but it's still very early days. But no one has really cracked anything that's very innovative or kind of groundbreaking on the social front.
It's just incredibly low friction to play with your friends and to share with your friends. And for now, that's good enough.
Niko: Yeah, yeah, early platform stuff. Okay. what are you seeing Telegram doing? I mean, they, they must, they famously have a tiny team. I think they have like 20 employees there. Um, so they don't have a lot of, Presumably resources in order to dedicate to, like platform support.
You know, you don't have like the, the platform team that's like hundreds of people or thousands of people these days at Facebook and other, you know, even in the early days, they had much larger teams than that. So what do you, well, let's put it this way. What would you like to see Telegram do as a developer to make it easier to build on Telegram and tap into more, even more users and more gameplay opportunities.
Simon: I mean, despite the being a small team, there's always a lot of improvements coming. There's also, you know, a foundation around, around Tom, just the blockchain and they, , have helped incubate tooling. And so I think you're going to see a lot of innovation on that front. I think ways just , again, like keep streamlining payments, keep streamlining distribution, keep streamlining social.
It'd be really fun. It'd be really cool if people could have voice chat with their friends, right? Multiplayer. , a unified system. We're probably going to build this ourselves, to be honest. The cross order of Go. But a unified friends list, right? Something that starts to look like Xbox Live, for example.
So that every game developer doesn't have to go off and build friends and clans and guilds. leaderboards, like there's all this stuff that we're building now we have, but obviously if that stuff was out of the box, like it is on Steam or Xbox, then you would start to see a lot more innovation around the social kind of multiplayer side, which is really what gives Telegram a huge edge and would increase it further.
You know, I think for me, I'm not going to make many friends saying this, but one of the, one of the big like fumbles of the last 10 years is just Game center on Apple. So we used to have a friends list. It just disappeared as far as I can tell, or it doesn't really work. There's no leaderboards, like, I guess, cause probably, you know, there's not some privacy that makes it hard, but like, man, there could have been such a huge unlock for mobile game developers if the tools just worked, just did like the absolute bare minimum.
And there is a chance for Telegram to do this.
Niko: Well, I think you're going to make a lot of friends in the developer community saying that. Maybe not at Apple, but, certainly in the game developer, I 100 percent agree. I mean, that's one of the biggest things that would have unlocked, I think, a lot more creativity and, um, the ability to grow to distribution.
Now. Apple maybe doesn't want that, you know, like they don't want the free distribution that social gives you, because if you can access your your friend list, right, that then you do have access to people who are more likely than not to at least click on that notification, you know, if it comes from Simon to Nico and vice versa.
So that's the cynical cynic in me and the cynic in me thinks Telegram might recognize that too. It seems like all platforms do at some point. I mean, Facebook famously had, , Facebook and Zynga famously had the Mark and Mark meeting where, you know, Zuckerberg and Pincus would meet literally, I think, on a weekly basis.
That's how important thing it was. And then as soon as, , Facebook had outgrown Zynga and was able to dictate the terms. Of course, free virality gets shut off very handily the quarter after the IPO, which was a very annoying time. And then suddenly the good days are gone. So curious to hear your thoughts on how Telegram might be thinking about these things based on what you're seeing, like the signals, in the mix.
Because, you know, Pavel Durov is an interesting character because he doesn't seem to care about money very much. I mean, he doesn't seem to care about monetizing Telegram particularly. So there is a world in which this could be an open frontier for quite a bit longer than some of these other platforms let the good times roll.
Simon: I mean, look, the clue is in the name, right? TON stands for the Open Network. I can't, I, there were people I speak to there and like the interactions we've had with them have been overwhelmingly positive. I think, I think philosophically just very different to, you know, the legacy platforms, legacy distribution on mobile.
Um, so that's not something we worry about a great deal at this moment in time. The other thing is that, look, this is built in React and HTML5, so it's not very difficult to port elsewhere if, if platform just becomes impossible for whatever reason, or it's not available, or, like, something goes badly wrong, like, it's not like you're locked into, I don't know, like a iOS specific app, or anything like that.
So no, like we don't worry particularly about platform risk. Obviously it's always there, right? Platform risk exists no matter what you're doing. if you're building physical goods, you have supply chain risk. , but the people we've interacted with and the interactions we've had with the, the network and the foundation have been fantastic.
And I think we're aligned in terms of vision of just bringing this to, to the world and not having to. It's really nice to be able to re and not have to go through a review process over the, it could take up to two weeks. You know, you get your app rejected and you don't know why you get like one line that doesn't really explain what it was.
And then you can just keep re submitting and hope it's right. Or you can spend the next week trying to track someone down to help you out. It's nice when you just press a button and it's deployed. You can play this. it's honestly just a much, much better developer experience. Thanks.
Niko: Yeah, that sounds nice.
I, I, I envy you. We're going through, um, with our current product, we're trying to integrate Stripe into it and, my God, they just keep coming back with like, they won't tell you what's wrong. They'll tell you what. And so then you just, you're playing guests with them, you know, and, and it's very frustrating.
And of course the Apple reprocess famously, , is, is as well. So no, I envy you and, uh, and your, yeah. Press a button and off it goes into the wild. , love the sound of that. , okay. What are the biggest impediments do you think, um, for growth? Now, the one thing I'm going to put out there kind of as a, as a seed, and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I mean, Telegram does have for the cat, like the casual observer, a pretty bad reputation in terms of what's happening on the platform.
Now I know that's totally separate from the gaming. I know, I know, I know, but I'm just going to put it out there as a seed and I'm going to see your reaction, which was shaking your head, by the way. , Yeah. Tell me a little bit about, is that, is that a risk? Is there like an association risk? , and that could be an opportunity because that means that the big guys with big budgets just won't go there because they're, they're too worried about the, the association with Telegram.
So interested to hear what the biggest piece of that you think is either true or, or false. And if so, tell me why. I don't,
Simon: I don't really worry about it because I'm old enough to remember when people say that about the internet, people saying that about Bitcoin. A Bitcoin was only for criminals and drug dealers and whatever else.
For me, it's just that anything that is kind of new technology that threatens incumbents always gets slapped at this level and these kinds of accusations. And so I don't really lose any sleep over it. if the incumbents are hesitant, like you said, that's an advantage. I'm very happy for them to take their time.
Simon: Also, you know, historically incumbents have been pretty crappy at platform shifts. I, I was working at Ubisoft and they started thinking about mobile in 2012. And they're still thinking about it in 2024. Um, EA never really net nailed mobile, right? I mean, they kind of did a bit with real, with acquisitions.
You know, they're quite fine monkeys in Australia. That's a great studio. Um, but other than that, I haven't done a great deal. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to come into Telegram. but no, I don't really worry about the association. And I looked at some data since we're with the news, but it's still such, you went up, um, so no news is, no news is necessarily bad news.
Right. And so, uh, No, as more people also start to use the app and you know, there's been some statements made recently about, compliance with information requests. I think in the long run, all these things will give us more clarity and stronger footing. So no, I don't worry about it a great deal.
Niko: Okay. A related question is this then, which is, is it venture fundable? , and does it, do you even need venture funding? , I haven't read of any single investment or VC investment specifically into Telegram games now studios. Like I know you've had some venture funding in the past. I think that's correct to say.
So there are obviously studios who have now are working in Telegram who have had venture funding, but I think. Predating the Telegram boom or mini boom, at least for the time being. I'm curious to hear whether that's, that's a consideration. Is that something you're thinking about? Do you know of anything in the pipeline VC mentality?
They can be very risk averse. I mean, the risk taking in some ways, but that can be very risk averse in these types of situations where there is that potential reputation slash association risk.
Simon: You know, I was speaking to a fairly high profile. Gaming investor. Actually a mutual friend of ours looks a bit like Ryan Gosling.
Okay. Alright. And he, he said to me, it is very recently, he said to me, the only game studios I'm investing in or really like, seriously looking at or on Telegram. And so VCs are looking at this very closely and already starting to deploy. I know about at least two studios with Telegram theses that have been backed recently, , because there's.
You know, going back to everything we've recapped, right. If you're going to develop on PC console, like it's eight figure budgets, a multi year timeline, and then maybe it goes to zero, like very good chance it goes to zero, maybe have a hit, but it's incredibly difficult. You know, investing in mobile free to play, like you really probably need an eight figure budget to start as well.
Niko: Right.
Simon: You know, you got to be a scopely,
Niko: you got to be a scopely with them. And I mean, monopoly goes the, you named me another hit game and that one took how many years that they developed? I mean, good, good for them. And it's a phenomenal, phenomenal that there can still be success in such a saturated market, but not for a scrappy nine person studio.
No chance.
Simon: That's right. And so I think early stage gaming investors, uh, basically like looking very, and actually I met one recently that was here in Asia and saying, I'm looking to meet Telegram studios, like who can you introduce us to? , so there's definitely a lot of appetite from the investor community.
But it's not just a case of like building a reactor, but you actually have to spend time in Telegram , i'm just going to pull up my phone and look at screen time just to give you an idea How much time I spend in Telegram every day because it is like quite concerning. , so if I look here I am spending Old man looks on phone.
This is great hearing.
Niko: This is a great segment for our listeners who are listening, which is the majority of our listeners listen on podcasts as opposed to watching on YouTube. So daily average for me is like, , nearly three hours a day in Telegram. Yeah. But I mean, the flip side of that is you need to be Telegram native.
Essentially, it's a developer. That's my point. Like, that's the key here. Right. And, and, you know, if you come from the outside in, and this is why I was asking about the web three component, the crypto component, because Telegram, of course, was adopted heavily, heavily, heavily by the crypto community and the web three community.
, and you, you know, that gave developers, if you were a game developer, like yourself, a. Almost like an edge because you were there and you were like, Oh, this is interesting. Like I can do this thing. So now it may be too late almost to start going in there, which brings me to kind of one of my final questions here.
Before we get to some of the fun stuff, do you think Telegram, assuming the thesis holds, assuming that Telegram can continue to grow, , can continue to, , retain. Do you think like an a Zynga or an EA can emerge something as big as that from, from Telegram? I mean, Zynga did Emerge. Zynga's a pretty big company.
It's not huge, but it's a pretty big company. , it emerged from a brand new platform from scratch. Right. we haven't seen many of those since then. Yeah. Um, and Web3, of course, famously still has yet to deliver any really big, big hits. So, curious to hear if Telegram could be a birthing ground, so to speak.
, for. A big industry giant, which then of course can go in many directions. Once you're big enough, you can then go to mobile and you can go to free to play and you could wherever you want.
Simon: Yeah. I mean, look, you know, our vision is essentially to do Telegram, what we checked into mobile gaming. So it's a really kind of have that.
Level of scale and multiple studios that you're publishing and kind of dominating that space. So it's like a very big, very audacious goal. , and if I didn't believe that was the possibility, we just wouldn't be here. So yeah, we, we're fully into that. I think the challenge for the larger companies is that Telegram really.
It was so fast. I mean, I keep saying it, but we're deploying builds more than once a week. And we're shipping games in under four weeks. And, you know, having worked at big companies, big listed companies, like the ones you mentioned, it's just, I have zero faith that they can ship anything that fast. Like, it takes them multiple weeks just to make a decision.
Shipping two, three updates a week and shipping games in three weeks, like that's, that's the kind of speed you need to operate. I need to be super plugged into the ecosystem. I need to be watching everything that's happening day in, day out. And they need to be checking a sentiment on X and discord and all these other channels and tick tock that requires a work ethic and a level of focus and ability to move fast.
That is basically anathema to most publicly, well, every publicly listed company I can think of.
Niko: I mean, if, if you have to have a green light meeting, , you're moving too slow. Yeah, that's it. Then you're screwed. Say no more. Green light. Just that word alone. That's it.
Simon: It's funny. You know, we had a UEFN team.
I'm just going to digress slightly. The genesis of our Telegram products actually came from that sort of, we were just doing some experiments in UEFN more for R& D and the one restriction I placed on the team was like, you need to ship a new map every week. And they're like, this is mad. We need at least six weeks.
I was like, no, no, no, you get one week. And so you need to rework all your tools to make sure you can do this. And so we built out this map. Pretty much an AI pipeline. We started in 2022. , And yeah, I think that experience actually gave us the discipline to be able to do what we're doing on Telegram today, if we hadn't gone through that trauma.
And so that actually ended up helping a lot.
Niko: You need that kind of approach. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You need to be incredibly hungry and incredibly Incredibly plugged in and I mean, really, you can't have a big team. A big team is going to be a hindrance. I think in this, in this scenario, you need tiny little teams that can just move independently, , you know, supercell style or, uh, you know, just not the big a hundred person, 200 person studio. That's probably gonna hold you back.
Simon: Just on that point, quickly, I sat down with the UEFN team. I'm just going to digress very slightly a few weeks, actually a few months ago. And I said, if you were the CEO today, would you keep building UFN maps? So you just don't go work on Telegram because you think that's a bigger opportunity for the company.
And actually the team decided to disband what they were working on and everyone started working on Telegram. And so we still do a little bit on the side, but like the team themselves took that decision to like maximize their resources and their output. And that's the kind of focus you need.
Niko: I hear you. Well, kind of final question on the, on the Telegram front here. What does discovery look like on Telegram? And, and especially as you get saturated with more and more games, I mean, this is the, the, the challenge, like it's exciting to have a new opportunity, but the new opportunity is a gold rush and attracts, you know, The developers and it attracts the picks and shovel makers and it, you know, it attracts lots of different folks and that just makes it harder for discovery.
And then you start caught. Even if the distribution channels are there, they start getting clogged, right? They start getting very hard to break through in the way that, you know, hamster combat and. And, you know, you guys and some of the early movers have, have been able to do. So, you know, fast forward six months from now, if you can even predict that far into the future with such a fast moving platform, , what does discovery look like?
What do you see happening to the channels that are currently available to you? What do you see happening to some of the tactics? I mean, early web three is a great example of this, or, it was that the tech, there was a playbook and it worked for the early movers, you know, follow me on Twitter, get some crypto, join my discord. There was a Playbook and it worked, right? Like you get some of the early developers got huge, you know, audiences, they were able to reach a lot of people through X or Twitter, um, and Discord and did well from that perspective, TBD, how well they do on the product side. But those channels got completely saturated and that play got playbook got completely overplayed and at that point that that was dead, right?
So yes, of course you can still grow there through other means, but, but like that early playbook, I think I see that happening to Telegram, but I want to hear your thoughts on that.
Simon: Actually, I would have to disagree. There is no playbook on Telegram, but there's a Telegram app center. I just looked at 3.2 million monthly active users, which is a large number, but by Telegram standards, it's not huge. And so. Every app has to figure out its own distribution message on Telegram, and how they can drive referrals and drive community activity and partnerships. There is no playbook for this stuff. You know, it's not like the old days where basically you would.
Go to your nearest Apple representative to their office and you pitch them the game and you show what you're building, you get their feedback, and then you do everything in your power to get featured. And then if you were featured prior to 2017, before they, you know, redid the app store, killed discovery, you were golden, like you had hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of installs. And it was like, basically a whole companies were built for backup featuring. , that doesn't happen on Telegram today, but you just have to go out and find your own audience. So yeah, , there is no playbook that's going to be clogged up anytime soon.
I actually kind of wish a playbook would emerge. They know my dark eye circles wouldn't be as deep because we're constantly trying to find new ways to keep hacking growth, but it's also really exciting. It's fun. Like we have fortune favors, the brave and just get in there and try stuff and it won't work out.
And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, shit. Like we've got so many users in five weeks. I wasn't.
Niko: Love it. Love it. So, I mean, essentially what you're saying is for any developer, um, going out there, you have to go zero to one. Every single time there's, there's no, I can ride on the shoulders of giants kind of thing.
Now, obviously you can kind of look at what you think might have worked for another developer and, , adapt that to your own needs. It sounds like, but, but, uh, zero to one, like you got to have a zero to one mentality going into Telegram.
Simon: I think, yeah, the other thing I'd say is actually like the one thing is shares of crypto.
It's that attention spans really short and whatever playbook worked for that team you're looking at, I can promise you is already update by the time trying to copy out.
Niko: Yeah, yeah, no, that was absolutely, that was the crypto experience I had for sure. , yeah, yeah, the, the meta changed every. Um, if even that long, okay, well, we're, we're at time here.
I've had most of my questions answered, but this, this is definitely a really, really, really, really interesting, , topic for me. I would love to have you back. once you've got some more metrics and we've seen that. The platform evolve, you know, maybe for a few months or so, uh, it may happen even sooner than that.
It sounds like it's moving very fast. I asked all our guests, , what three games are you currently playing or are you most excited about? And these don't have to be on Telegram. In fact, well, I would like to have at least one on, on, on Telegram, because then we have the expert Simon who knows the space better than anybody else telling us, like, what is the game that we should go check out?
Simon: So look, I'm obviously going to self-nominate. I think everyone should go to at play. Sorry at go gaming bot and Play a couple rounds of waifu clash, which is a waifu themed card battler I think farm friends Frens about FE. Sorry F. Sorry. It's really late after midnight F R E N S farm friends It's really fun.
It's a very cute take on the farmer genre. Like I said, mixed in with crypto. I think the guys from Boinkbot, I don't even know them. I'm going to give them a shout out because they've done a very cute, , extremely cheeky, like quite edgy take on Coin Master. And I love the sense of humor with that. The slot machine and all that kind of thing.
Maybe not want to give to your kids. and then, you know, away from Telegram, what am I playing? I'm playing a lot of solitaire games because we may or may not have a solitaire product coming. I've been playing black myth, which I really, you know, I really love those kinds of games. Black myth is a slightly different take but I'm enjoying it and I'm also, play pre-release playing EA FC 25 cause I'm, I was on the beta. So I've been enjoying that as well. I'm just ready, like practicing for when they open the floodgates on Friday, so I can beat the noobs.
Niko: All right. All right. Well, that's more than three. So I appreciate that.
You've, you've given us extra bonus alpha. So anyway, thank you so much, Simon. It was a real, real pleasure. I've learned a ton. I know our listeners will have learned a ton as well. This is a fast moving space. This is a potentially new major distribution platform. You heard it from Simon.
There are definitely some venture opportunities here. If you're looking to start a studio or a race funding, it sounds like that's definitely a possibility. The Telegram thesis is real and is being believed in. It seems. We By the money, the money men and the money women so thank you very much for coming on the Naavik Gaming Podcast. It has been really a joy.
Simon: My pleasure, man. Have a good one.
Niko: Yep. And a big thank you as always to our listeners. We'll be back next week with more interviews, more insights, and more analysis from the weird and wonderful world of gaming and now Telegram gaming, which I'm excited by. So until next time, friends, feel free to send questions, guest recommendations, and comments to me. My email is [email protected].
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