How Telegram Game 'Hamster Kombat' Got 300 Million Users—and the Ire of Iran’s Military

The founders uncover their 3rd inspiration, and this one’s little obvious: TikTok.

“First, determination was Musical.ly, and it astir died,” accidental the founders, referring to the archetypal incarnation of TikTok. Then ByteDance (which acquired Musical.ly) recovered ways to incentivize sharing. “People underestimate the effect of these tiny mechanisms,” accidental the creators. “Sometimes, they tin crook the tide.”

Tiny mechanisms are everyplace successful Hamster Kombat. You gain coins for inviting friends to the game, watching YouTube videos, subscribing to the Telegram channel, and truthful on. “We knew that the lone mode for america to turn was by making everything wrong the crippled viral,” assertion the founders. “We simply didn’t person $50 cardinal for marketing.”

Going viral doesn’t hap by accident. Every day, the founders obsessively travel real-world events and incorporated them into the gameplay. “When Dubai hosted a crypto conference and abruptly got flooded, it was a devastating situation, but you could consciousness the irony,” accidental the creators. “We went and made a paper [in the game] astir this. And past radical conscionable started getting this card, taking screenshots, posting connected societal [media].”

The crippled is profoundly self-aware and packed with crypto Easter eggs. “I tin unfastened Hamster Kombat and spot this wrong gag that reflects what the assemblage is saying,” says Amanda Cassatt, the CEO of Serotonin, a selling firm. “The crippled is fun, and it’s funny.”

When you archetypal unfastened Hamster Kombat, it looks truthful elemental it doesn’t adjacent consciousness similar a game. Tap, get coins. Tap, get coins. “I wouldn’t see it a game. It’s benignant of entertainment,” says Matvii Diadkov, the laminitis of the crypto advertizing web Bitmedia who has created and analyzed crypto games. “It’s adjacent much primitive than hyper-casual games.”

But past thing weird happens. When you research the app, you’re confronted with a dizzying paper of options for scaling your hamster’s crypto exchange, specified arsenic investing successful your UX and UI team, gathering an NFT metaverse (remember those?), oregon obtaining a ineligible licence to run successful Nigeria. These options are heavy cuts into Web3 nerd-dom, often requiring a spot of probe if you’re an outsider. Each enactment has a outgo (in the escaped coins you earn), but investing successful it tin boost your hamster’s profit-per-hour. This tin get addicting.

“I realized that strategy helps prevention clip and amended efficiency,” says Liliya Chumarina, a 24-year-old freelance marketer who lives successful Milan. At archetypal she conscionable clicked, past she watched the game’s acquisition videos (racking up societal media views for Hamster Kombat), past she created a spreadsheet to assistance her optimize yield. Thanks to this automation, Chumarina says, “now I usually walk nary much than 1 hr per day.” (Cassatt considers the crippled not arsenic elemental arsenic tic-tac-toe, but not arsenic analyzable arsenic chess. “It’s checkers.”)

The founders look exasperated by the game’s “hyper-casual” label. “Some radical telephone it a tap-to-play game. It’s not precisely close and dumbs it down,” accidental the creators. “You lone request to pat astatine the precise beginning. Very soon, you get entree to each the passive income streams which rapidly outweigh everything else.”