Last year, the click-to-earn game Notcoin on the instant messaging giant Telegram sparked a gaming craze. This game, with its viral spread, attracted over 30 million users in a short time, and its Token NOT even reached a market value of billions of dollars, becoming a landmark Web3 game of 2024.
However, as the market hype subsided, Notcoin's founders began to question the future of this model.
Notcoin Founder: Tap-to-Earn Game Model is Dead
According to Cointelegraph's report yesterday, Notcoin co-founder Vladimir Plotvinov stated at the Token2049 event in Dubai that the tap-to-earn game model might have reached its end. He explicitly pointed out:
We will see different types of games because tap-to-earn games might be dead, and they are not sustainable.
Meanwhile, Notcoin co-founder Sasha added that although Telegram games showed explosive growth in 2024, player behavior demonstrated a clear "game-hopping" phenomenon, immediately switching to other games after "mining" resources in one project.
Sasha commented: "Users who come to mine resources are only motivated to earn something. However, for games, it's more important that I find it fun, I want to play with friends, I want to play in a community." He candidly admitted that Telegram currently lacks "real games".
Notably, in this discussion, NotGames design lead and product manager Uliana Salo analyzed the market potential, pointing out that Telegram's market environment is similar to Facebook and WeChat, both of which have mature game ecosystems.
She stated: "We believe in the opportunities we have because we already have a platform similar to WeChat and Facebook, which have their own game ecosystems, and this is a huge market. The user numbers are almost the same." Therefore, despite Telegram's current game environment lacking major publishers and investor funding, she anticipates that Telegram games will achieve exponential growth. She further added that their team is working to engage players through the game's inherent fun, not just token rewards:
We are trying to add an extra part, like fun, so people play for themselves, not just for money.
AI Assists Game Development
Regarding game development, Vladimir Plotvinov also added that the combination of AI and Telegram makes game development more efficient. He said: "It saves time. My delivery speed has become faster. I write code faster than before because I've saved a lot of time on other simple tasks."
However, he also cautioned developers to be careful when using AI, emphasizing the importance of professional knowledge: "You must be very careful, have professional knowledge and experience, because you need to understand how APIs work, how they interconnect, and how they operate under high load and with a large number of users."
