New play-to-earn firm quickly growing in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Bengga, a new Filipino-developed play-to-earn firm, is staking its claim in the rising billion-dollar gaming industry by bringing a vast selection of tangible rewards such as digital goods and cryptocurrencies to every player.

“We just want Bengga to be the platform that allows people to get rewarded by having fun because time and effort is scarce,” Bengga’s head of games and rewarding experiences Troy Serafica said.

Serafica is also the founder of the Effort Economy, the blockchain project that Bengga is using.

“Video games are already a fully integrated part of our lives, so we’re not really reinventing the wheel. We’re just letting people make the most of what’s already a huge part of their daily business.”

With Bengga, users do not need to be highly-skilled e-sports players to win monetary prizes, as the free app allows users to win real-life rewards while playing a vast selection of games.

Bengga players are awarded coins that they can exchange for money and rewards of monetary value. The concept is similar to the Grab App Rewards Center and streaming app Kumu, where frequent use earns more rewards. With Bengga, however, you get treated to its constantly updated library of hundreds of mobile games.

The games in Bengga fall under the umbrella of hyper-casual games – the genre of games designed to be simple, easily playable, and massively engaging due to the low learning curve required to play. The app ran a public beta last May 2, following its private beta testing stage. During the public beta, Bengga was able to grow its userbase by 5,611 percent with zero advertising spend. Each user spends an average of 40 minutes daily playing games in Bengga. The app’s user base is also quickly surging, evidenced by a Top 45 Lifestyle App ranking in the iOS App store and a Top 65 Social App ranking on the Google Play Store last week.

Enzo Serafica, head of business development and partnerships, said Bengga also hopes to promote NFT and cryptocurrency technology to build game-centered economies, that can then be leveraged to increase brand engagement, revenue and exclusive access to various items.

“Crypto play is both the present and the future,” he said. “All we want to do is lead Filipino gamers to it.”