‘Pixels’ Creators Plot More Crypto Games—Maybe on Telegram Too

Pixels has been one of the hottest crypto games all year, with its late 2023 migration to Ethereum gaming network Ronin and February’s token launch propelling the social farming game in front of millions of players. And now the developers are exploring other games in the same universe.

In a recent interview around the Pixels Chapter 2 gameplay launch, founder Luke Barwikowski shared with Decrypt’s GG that the studio is working on other games in the Pixels universe, and that it is teaming up with external developers to explore those franchise expansions.

Barwikowski said that his internal team, which numbers about 19 full-time employees, is setting the high-level direction for these Pixels universe games and then handing them off to external studios to develop. He added that his team will then add blockchain elements and user acquisition elements before launching them to the public.

“There’s some fun stuff coming,” he teased. And that may include a Telegram-based game, too.

“We’re looking at maybe kicking off another one on Telegram,” he said. “That’s maybe some alpha—but that’s like a side experiment. Telegram’s an interesting ecosystem… we might dip our toes there.”

Telegram’s crypto gaming ecosystem has seen explosive demand in recent months, after the tap-to-earn game Notcoin attracted 35 million players this spring—and then launched the biggest gaming token so far this year via The Open Network.

Hamster Kombat has since pulled a massively larger audience, purportedly over 200 million players, even garnering so much attention that Iran officials were concerned it would distract citizens from voting in last week’s presidential election. Other rising Telegram games include Yescoin, Catizen, TapSwap, and PixelTap.

Whether or not the potential Telegram riff on Pixels becomes a reality, Barwikowski said he’s keen on expanding out the IP they’ve developed. Now that Pixels has a sizable player base and a larger in-house team, they’re currently developing an in-house lore bible that will help set the stage for other apps and experiments ahead.

“That’s going to build the base for some of these other experiments that we’re running around IP expansion,” he explained. “We’re working on a few mobile apps right now, and that’s going to be the next line of distribution that we’re working on. We’re going to try some cool stuff with incentivized downloads—like, kind of play-to-earn on iOS and Android.”

Along with IP expansion, the recent Chapter 2 overhaul to Pixels is designed to not only show that a play-to-earn crypto game model can work and be sustainable in 2024, but also that Pixels can be the studio leading that charge.

“We want to be the play-to-earn company, and this feeds into that,” Barwikowski affirmed.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.