"The most significant event for the web was the rise of Telegram Mini Apps," said Philip Karmanov from Black Snowflake about the results of 2024.

We continue wrapping up 2024 with gaming (or gaming industry-related) teams and experts. Up next is an interview with the founder and CEO of Black Snowflake, Philip Karmanov.

How did the year turn out for the company? What achievements would you like to highlight?

The year was rich in experiments. We launched both games and non-gaming apps on platforms that were new to us.

Speaking personally, I would like to mention stepping away from operational activities in the service I co-founded, kukushka.io. Over the past three years, it has gone through many pivots and challenges, but now it successfully assists top companies in conducting quantitative research, including attracting respondents from mobile games.

From your perspective, how has the situation in the gaming market changed?

Globally, the demand for games remains at more or less the same level.

It’s worth highlighting the venture winter, affecting investment attraction and, consequently, opportunities for launching long-repaying projects.

How did the year fare for the genre in which you work?

I will write about a platform/technology rather than a genre since we specialize in web games, which have their own distribution features.

Undoubtedly, the most significant event for the web was the rise of the Telegram Mini Apps platform, along with other platforms for web games and applications within native apps. To avoid tautology, my colleagues coined a succinct term for them: Level2-platforms. Level0 is the "hardware," Level1 is the OS for this "hardware," and Level2 is the software for this OS (mobile applications). Accordingly, platforms within mobile apps operate on the "second level."

The long-awaited rise of Level2 is due to:

1. The massive hype around the simplest mechanics with a compelling offer of "earn without doing anything." We’re talking about clicker games like Notcoin and Hamster Combat. At the beginning of the year, such "games" could quickly gain tens of millions of players with minimal marketing investment. However, by Q3, trust in them faded, and there is now a trend towards deeper mechanics. And yes, everything new is well-forgotten old: there’s clearly the influence of VK Coin—a similar clicker from "VKontakte," launched back in 2019 as an April Fool’s joke that caused quite a stir.
2. The newfound application of Web3. Telegram Mini Apps are inextricably associated with the ability to earn internal currency-tokens, which can (as promised by developers) be withdrawn to a crypto exchange. At GDC this year, I also personally observed a significant presence of Web3 companies.
3. The easing of Apple's guidelines (specifically point 4.7) in April, which had strictly regulated the operation of Level2 platforms for almost eight years and limited their development. However, in several points, Apple remained firm: notably, payments in Level2 apps must still be processed only through its payment system, excluding the possibility of payments, for example, with cryptocurrency. Typically, this is addressed by the platform introducing a common internal currency, which is purchased via IAP (for instance, "VKontakte” votes and Telegram Stars).

What trends strengthening or emerging in your niche do you expect in 2025?

The development of Level2 platforms and the emergence of new ones. The market is much less mature than mobile, but it currently offers more opportunities for attracting users without driving the economy into the negative. Large applications and services will strive to aggregate traffic by creating their Level2 platforms patterned after WeChat, the pioneer of this direction.

What are the company's plans for the coming year?

To follow the mentioned trends. In the summer of 2022, when the Telegram Mini Apps platform appeared, we weren’t in a rush to launch on it, as its predecessor, the Gaming Platform, was heavily limited by Apple's guidelines and didn’t show significant breakthroughs. I'm glad we were wrong back then.