Intro
Telegram games are gaining more and more popularity with each day. In Galaxy4Games, we’ve dived deeper into the technology and opportunities behind it by porting a few of our mobile projects.
There are certainly some benefits that make the telegram market attractive for developers:
- Commissions. Developers don’t have to pay such big commissions compared to other stores. Of course, the question still remains: what will be the revenue share for every star used as a Telegram currency?
- Cross-platform. One of the main advantages of Telegram games is that they are a universal solution for gaming. No matter what operating system you use, you can play from your PC, on Android, and on iOS.
- Cost per user. The cost per user is lower because there is an instant access to the game without the need to install the application. You just launch and play, and that’s it.
- Retention model. It is easier to retain players as telegram games usually have news channels, and users can get news and notifications through Messenger. Also, many applications are already using blockchain technology (TON)as the rewarding mechanism (for example when you have to play to earn tokens). And it shows an incredible retention rate plus opens the new players acquisition opportunities by making the game interesting for web3 enthusiasts beyond the game’s genre.
- New technologies & broader opportunities. Telegram games are open to the blockchain (TON) and in-app purchases. This makes the area of gamification broader. For instance, there are such mini-applications that are used for mining and airdropping, or there are also light versions of the games created just to catch potential customers and convert them into the full version of the game outside of Telegram.
- Tech stack. Telegram is pretty tech-friendly and even supports games built on Unity as well as a WebGL version. Developers can use other stacks like React or HTML5 to build more optimized applications.
Looks like an interesting market to break into, right? See how we can help you to create your Telegram game or port the existing one here.
Our Contribution
Challenges & Goals
The main challenge in building telegram games is resource management. Our main stack is Unity, and we have a few areas to work with.
- Assets optimization (models and textures)
- Socket (if you use sockets in the game, for WebGL, you need WebSockets)
- Compression setup
- Asset management setup (addressable groups – bundles, on-demand loading)
- Right tools and services for analytics, ads, monetization, etc.
- Memory management (load/unload scenes and resources)
- Bot setup for News channel and game launcher
Solutions & Expertise
First, the team reviewed all the atlases and resources that can impact memory, such as non-pow textures and atlases with pages. WebGL has a memory limitation of nearly 500 MB (it depends, but it is better to have 300-400 MB).
The next stage is the compression format. For example, the DTX5 format is not supported, and it causes memory problems, so according to the documentation, ASTC or ETC2 works well.
After all of this, memory management and cross-dependencies are the swamp of infinite optimization.
Usually, developers of mobile applications build from the perspective of a loading process and do not unload some scenes or assets when opening others to show old ones faster on demand, like when you close the location scene when playing a mini-game.
The situation is different with WebGL (for consoles, it is another story). To optimize memory, you must unload previous resources when loading the new ones. That’s why the method of content loading will be different.
And one more thing — if the game uses sockets to handle stable client-server connections and interactions, the WebGL version WebSockets should be used.
To keep their audience engaged and updated, developers usually create a News Channel and Game Bot to launch the game. This process is simple and takes a few hours.
Value
- Ported existing games – 2
- Porting timing – 1 month per game
