Inal Kardan — How to Create a Game with Millions of Users

My name is Inal, and I am a partner at TON Ventures. Before that, I worked on games at TON Foundation, where I led the gaming division. I have been fortunate to observe and participate in everything related to gaming in TON since May 2023. That’s why I’ll share best practices, not only in gaming but beyond. Many of the concepts I’ll discuss today apply to Telegram Mini Apps (TMA) in general. So, this talk will be useful not just for game developers.

What is TON Ventures?

We are a traditional venture business. Our $40M fund launched in August 2024. We invest in projects within TON Ecosystem at a fairly early stage. Most projects are related to Telegram, but not always.

The presentation is called «How to Create a Successful Game with Millions of Users». I have a very simple guide. Take Notcoin and copy its mechanics. That’s it. I’m done. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer.

If we’re being serious—when you develop a game (and this applies to other TMAs as well), you need to consider three key aspects:

1. Social interactions
2. Rewards for users
3. Interactions between teams

Social Interactions

When working on a product, I want you to always start with these questions:

Who is my player? What is their age? Where are they from? Even gender is often important. What are their habits? And most importantly: Why do your players play? What is their motivation?

From a game theory perspective, there are four main types of players:

1. Killers – They want to win. They are motivated by leaderboards, rankings, and the desire to be at the top.
2. Achievers – They care about earning rewards, like in-game achievements. Status is very important to them.
3. Social Players – They play games to interact with other people. For them, social interaction is key. They love in-game friend lists and chat features.
4. Explorers – They enjoy solving puzzles and earning achievements, but only for completing more complex challenges.
5. Airdrop Hunters – People who join only for financial gain.

When designing games or TMAs with gamified mechanics, it's crucial to understand your target audience. Most of the time, you should focus on one or two categories. You likely won’t be able to cater to all of them, as different types of users require different game mechanics.

Currently, social mechanics work really well in Telegram because Telegram itself is a social platform. Leaderboards work great—especially for Killers.

Referral Systems

Notcoin demonstrated how referral systems can be highly effective:

94% of Notcoin users joined through a friend’s invitation.

How do invitations work?

1. Simple Text Invitations (with a link). This is how it worked in Notcoin. Very easy to share, but with a lower conversion rate compared to the second option.
2. Bot Mode with TMA Opening. This option has a higher conversion rate because when the user clicks, the mini-app opens immediately. In contrast, with the first option, the bot opens first, and some users drop off when they need to take an extra step—opening the TMA manually.

Which option do you think is more effective?

Right now, I recommend using the first option. Yes, the conversion rate is lower, but since sharing is easier, the overall number of attracted users is usually higher with this approach.

Referral systems must reward users. If your referral system doesn’t provide any rewards, it most likely won’t work.

What does «reward» mean? There are many options. It can be as simple as a number in the interface, your future token, or anything else.

User Rewards

There are two main types of rewards for users.

1. The first case is Notcoin. Notcoin provided a reward for inviting friends. They had a single-level system. That is, you invite a friend and receive 2,500 Notcoin for a regular friend and 50,000 Notcoin for a friend with Telegram Premium. And you receive this only once.
2. The second case is The Pixels (a project team created a seasonal and quite successful game,peaking at more than 5 million users).

The Pixels used a multi-level reward system. That is, you invite friends and receive coins. In addition, you also receive coins for the friends they invite. Moreover, even a third level was included: the friends of your friends—you also received some kind of reward for them.

So, in Notcoin, the rewards were one-time, while in The Pixels, you received a percentage of what your friends earned.

Which system works better?

The first option works better. Because, in reality, people want to receive a reward immediately, rather than wait for something unclear, at an uncertain time.

The ideal scenario in terms of rewards is to create a mix. Give an instant reward as soon as a user’s friend joins the game, and also provide a percentage in the future. This is the best way to implement it right now.

Leaderboards

From a game design perspective, leaderboards are a part of good game design. Usually, they increase retention, meaning that people return to your game more often. They also work great for small groups. In Telegram, there are groups where a rather niche audience gathers to play against each other. For this, Telegram Games exists—it's a relatively old gaming platform that opens in full screen directly within Telegram. It is still available today. On the Games platform, there was a native API specifically for leaderboards. You could send data there, and Telegram itself would generate the leaderboard. And although, in general, we no longer recommend this platform, there may still be cases where it might be worth using not the TMA platform, but the Games platform.

Competitions

The Fanton case is Fantasy Football on TON, where users had the ability to create their own tournaments. That is, a user could create a tournament and invite friends to compete against each other. The player who performs best in the game wins a prize pool. Essentially, they pool their money, and the winner takes it all.

Fanton is probably the only case so far where custom tournament creation has shown significant results. But personally, I think this is an interesting concept. It would be great if someone continued testing and experimenting with custom tournaments in new games. After all, this mechanic helps attract highly motivated users. They will play a lot and for a long time. And most likely, they will bring in a lot of money. Again, this works particularly well for small groups.

Team Interactions

Notcoin introduced the concept of squads—competitions between communities. It's important to understand that squads are not made for players but for bloggers. Our main goal is to attract bloggers, because if we have bloggers, the players will come too—brought in by those very bloggers. For bloggers, this is super interesting because they can gain new traffic from the game. For example, if their channel is at the top, people see it, check it out, and subscribe. That’s valuable for them. The second reason, of course, is rewards. In Notcoin, bloggers earned a lot.

About PvP

I can briefly say that PvP in Telegram is very difficult to implement, especially online PvP. First, you need matchmaking, meaning players have to wait for an opponent to join. Second, the gameplay itself usually involves turns—one player moves, then the other, which again requires waiting. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work well in Telegram.

Take the Gatto team case—they shared their stats: If a match didn’t appear within 7 seconds, 92% of users dropped out. Telegram has too many distractions—notifications, messages from channels, and more. Most users will just close the game quickly because they don’t want to wait. So, if your game has a moment where users have to sit and wait, you’re likely to face problems. This applies to any feature, but in PvP, it’s especially critical.

A Few Non-Obvious Things You Should Do in Your Mini-App

1. In the bot, there is an option to pin a button. This button gives 4-6% better conversion from opening the bot to opening TMA. So, with this simple action, you get more users.
2. Just an emoji—gives an additional 2% conversion.
3. Telegram itself now shows the number of monthly users at the top. But you can display not monthly active users, but, for example, the total number of users on this button. The number on this button also increases conversion. People really want to know they’re not the only ones playing this game. Social proof is important.

About payments in games

Formally, according to Telegram and Google rules, purchases in TMA cannot be made for anything except Telegram Stars. But we haven’t seen cases where this led to a ban on Android. On iOS, we do know TMAs that were blocked for violating this rule.

Mechanics to Increase Retention

Lucky Wheel (Wheel of Fortune)

The user logs in every day, gets a chance to spin the wheel, and receives some kind of benefit. The numbers here are just insane—people started regularly opening the catalog just to spin the Wheel of Fortune. This works everywhere, not just in catalogs, but for some reason, catalogs use it the most. The only thing—don’t break your game balance.

No one knows your economy better than you. But don’t forget that giving away too much can also be a problem.

Streaks

Streaks are incentives that you give people for logging into the game regularly. Streaks also increase retention.

Who has used Duolingo? Who is being held hostage by that owl?

The owl that terrorizes you—if you don’t log in today, you lose your streak, and that’s it, the world ends. But this mechanic works. In reality, Duolingo is a great app because they ran tons of smart experiments and figured out what works best in terms of gamification. So, look at Duolingo.

Badges

I want to share the experience of The Pixels—they gave a badge just for logging into the game every day without skipping. After implementing this mechanic, seventh-day retention increased by 18%. These are huge numbers. People get really attached to this, even though the badges didn’t affect anything in the game itself.

Random Time-Appearing Challenges

Notcoin had an Earn section where people could complete tasks and earn coins. The trick was—nobody knew when the next task would appear, so people kept checking back. These kinds of non-obvious mechanics can unexpectedly boost retention.

Funny lulz

Don't forget about notifications with funny GIFs. Everyone loves GIFs. Also, don’t forget about great branding.

Community

I wanted to highlight the importance of community engagement. I love the Gatto team for how they interact with their community. It’s probably the most lively, most active community in the TON ecosystem—maybe not the biggest, but the most engaged. Because they constantly work with their community.

And finally, FOMO. Fear of missing out.

This is what Notcoin nailed. They managed to create FOMO for all players—everyone wanted to play because if they didn’t, they would miss out on something. How do you do this? I have no idea. So if you figure out the secret—let me know.

• Link to the source
• Link to the presentation