There’s a rule in web3 – before committing to a project, always do your own research. This is part of that research for an upcoming game called Tap Warrior, a Telegram meme game that has soft-launched in many parts of the world. I write this not as an endorsement of the project, but as someone who has spoken to the founding team, as someone with past experience in building web3 games for the Philippine market, and lastly, as someone with the curiosity of a journalist.
If I was to allude what this game was to me, Tap Warrior is our id. It is the culmination of our unfiltered self, simplified with a tap on the screen that ends up punching someone. In this case, your favorite politician. There’s a lot to choose from. In thirteen second rounds, the player that lands the most punches by tapping the screen wins. You are given a limited amount of fights per day and according to the founders, data says players are willing to pay for more.
And I get it. Back in 2016, before my co-founders built Anito Legends, they dabbled in a social experiment with a mobile game called Vote Clicker. It was a brainless clicker game (or in this case thumb tapping) that was timed to release before the 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections. The objective was simple: the candidate with the most taps won.
That was the popular vote. Oh, times have changed.
Welcome to the anger economy.
Tap Warrior is one of the valves that releases all this pent up rage.
By request, I was able to speak to two founders Vishal Gupta (Head of Development) and Jose Manuel (Head of Sales). Manuel, who has been with the project since the beginning was direct: “We are all getting overheated. It’s like a second kind of global warming. The whole world is divided and anxious about how to deal with an uncertain future.” He shook his head; “Going on social media just makes things worse. We designed Tap Warrior to be a release valve from all that pent-up rage.” Unlike previous tap 2 earn projects, the economics are not based on grinding for income, they are based on one of the largest renewable resources on earth: frustration with political leaders. Players are encouraged to engage without any financial commitments. They earn tokens for free. There is a version for those who want to grind for income, but that is not the majority of users. The game has evolved to include new features like Tap Battles with massive opposing teams engaging with each other. “No debates, no politicking, just punching to get it out of your system. We might be at each other’s throats, but most of us don’t want World War 3. In Tap Warrior, we are divided in opinion, but united in anger.”
That’s how they got to more than 950,000 players in just two months.
I brought up the fact that Tap Warrior comes at an odd time: it comes during the perfect storm of the Telegram-based meta in web3 games, but it also comes right after a failed project of similar caliber called Hamster Kombat (from a completely different team). Nonetheless, Filipino crypto backlash has been clear
To Manuel and Gupta’s defense, Hamster Kombat was a failed NFT airdrop, a commonplace occurrence from the earlier days of Web3 gaming when tokenomics were based mostly on the success of games like Axie Infinity and Pegaxy. Hamster Kombat rode on the hype of a promise of reward that took months in the making, only to end up in a bungled launch that favored content creators, influencers, and alphas.
From the get go, I tried pushing the idea of sound tokenomics to the duo of Tap Warrior and Gupta would always push back saying that this is a game first and foremost and there are no promises of return. Unlike many web3 games out there, you can play for free. They only promise rage bait.
How angry are Filipinos? The world is about to find out.
In an unusual move, Unblock Technologies has agreed to publicize Tap Warrior’s gameplay statistics as supplemental data to election polling. “We think it might be instructive if everyone could see how much ire a leader inspires,” said Gupta. “This will be a local and a global metric. It may not be a scientific measure, but seeing the comparison might put things in perspective.” Future plans include local politicians, celebrities and even historical figures. “Are we being opportunistic? Yes, of course, we are capitalists after all. Are we being sensationalistic: Definitely. But ultimately we hope we are judged, not just on the money or the downloads, but if we help take down the heat a notch.”
Tap Warrior is now currently available. All you need to do is open your Telegram app and search for TAP WARRIOR or grab it here.
