Looking at key trends in the blockchain gaming industry, the Q3 2024 edition of the Big Blockchain Game Report has been published, showing continued sector decline, albeit at a slower rate than in Q2.
Some of the key trends highlighted show
- During Q3, the prices of the majority of game token prices continued to fall.
- Only three of the top 10 tokens have seen their prices rise during 2024.
- Sector investment during Q3 was $128 million, down 57% compared to Q2.
- Pixels remained the most popular blockchain game in terms of daily onchain activity.
- One bright spot was the growth of Telegram games supporting the TON blockchain.
- However, the post-airdrop issues of Hamster Kombat and Catizen demonstrate the weakness of many of these initial experiences.
With one exception, most blockchain game sector metrics declined in Q3. That exception was the adoption of Telegram and its adjacent TON blockchain as a key opportunity for the viral marketing and distribution of airdropped tokens based on players’ activity in mini-games.
Following on from the launch of NOT – TON’s first gaming meme token – in Q1 2024, notable games such as Kombat Hamster and Catizen hit the headlines, citing extremely high user numbers; 300 million and 30 million respectively.
Even assuming a very high proportion of bots, these games clearly had managed to generate strong social engagement from lightweight gameplay; something which caught the attention of many blockchain game developers, who were otherwise struggling with declining crypto sentiment and a lack of commercially-viable paid marketing options.
The result has been an explosion in Telegram mini-games and, specifically in terms of this report, Telegram mini-games that support the TON blockchain in some manner.
In terms of raw data, 265 TON games were announced during the quarter, taking the total from 120 at the start of Q3 to 385 games by the end of the period.
Of course, this sort of velocity is only enabled as most of these games are currently very simple experiences, in many cases also being hypercasual games ported from other social media platforms. Their ephemeral nature quickly became apparent too, with both Hamster Kombat and Catizen experiencing sharp falls in user numbers – as well as some community disquiet – following the eventual airdrop of their promised tokens.
Notably, both the HMSTR and CATI tokens experienced continuous drops in their token price post-launch.
Also demonstrating fast-diminishing returns of the initial Telegram mini-game plus TON integration playbook, the Animoca-backed Gamee’s WAT protocol only managed to attract a few million users. Its WATcoin experienced a larger price decline post-launch than Hamster Kombat and Catizen.
However, with Telegram now claiming around one billion accounts, many commentators are convinced this is just the start of blockchain game developers’ attempts to leverage what they believe is a massive new opportunity.
Obvious examples include releasing more complex experiences as well as multiple games with interoperable assets and metagames to extend retention.
Developers are already releasing Telegram mini-games, which link back to blockchains other than TON, with Tatsumeeko’s Lumina Hunt requiring users to log in through their Ronin Waypoint wallet to claim rewards and Boomland similarly invoking Immutable’s Passport wallet.
Check out the full report, which also covers:
- most popular games,
- token performance
- investment trends, and
- ecosystem trends
>>here<<
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