Axie Infinity: How NFTs Defined The Play-To-Earn Economy
NFT’s have paved the way in allowing people to earn a living while having fun
Note: This story was lost in the archives and was dug up recently.
Welcome to the new economy where earning money has never been so enjoyable — stay at home, be your own boss and own a few adorable little creatures called ‘Axies’ to help you earn.
If you spent most of your childhood in the late 90’s you will probably remember this game played on consoles like the Nintendo 64 and the Gameboy where you pick one out of three monsters that you have; to fight in a match and come out a winner. Remember Pokémon? Pokémon was a phenomenal hit throughout the 1990s and 2000s after hitting the North American market.
But, the Pokémon games didn’t just end on consoles.
In 2016, a new Pokémon game was launched on mobile, ‘Pokémon Go’. The objective of the game was to find, battle, and capture as many Pokémon as possible and battle them. This game became a sensation within six months of its release, bringing in over 200 million users per month and raking in over USD 206 million in its first month. However, the game didn’t make anyone rich or able to earn money for a living. It only made the developers of the game, rich. The game wasn’t built on the Ethereum blockchain or had Smart Contracts.
Axie Infinity has entered the room
Similar to the original Pokémon games on Nintendo 64 and Gameboy, Axie Infinity is a game where people own creatures of their own called ‘Axies’ and battle against other players. In addition to this, owners of the Axies are able to customize and make upgrades to their adorable Axies, the new blockchain-enabled game started in 2018 and had recently taken off due to the insane price of its token (AXS) skyrocketing to USD 70 at the time of writing. More and more people started to get on the platform in order to play-to-earn.
The hype around Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity is unlike any other online game out there in the market. Developed out of a Vietnamese game studio, Sky Mavis — Axie Infinity is an NFT-based cryptocurrency game where players are able to earn SLP tokens when completing a battle with another player. These tokens can then be used to breed Axies, use in the games marketplace, and converted into fiat to spend in the real world.
The hype around Axie Infinity has not only been the excitement and joy of earning and playing on a virtual game. However, the in-game characters shed a lot of emotions within players as well. They’re adorable and can be worth a lot of Ether in the future. At the moment
When the pandemic hit in 2019 and worsened in 2020, many people became unemployed and struggled to keep up with daily expenses. The hardest hit were obviously the developing countries. However, communities in these countries realized that there were other ways to earn money and live off of playing games and cryptocurrencies. Axie Infinity was at the forefront of this. The Philippines recorded the most number of players playing the game by a landslide with Venezuela coming in second.
Who knew, such adorable creatures could allow players to rake in some income for them.
Axie Infinity’s daily active players grew from 30,000 in April to 1 million players as of August this year, which is about a 3,200% increase (those are incredible numbers). Of course, Pokémon Go completely dwarfs the numbers of Axie Infinity’s player figures. However, keep in mind that at the time of Pokémon Go’s release — it was available on IOS and Android phones for downloading and easy to use UX/UI following simple steps to get started.
The Axie Infinity game took the world by storm when unemployment took a toll in developing countries like the Philippines and Venezuela. People lost their jobs and were not able to have a sustainable income stream to support their families. Axie Infinity couldn’t have come at a better time as the global pandemic hit hard in many countries affecting millions. This polarizing game went from NFT-crazed individuals earning money for fun to helping unemployed individuals feed their families during a time of crisis in a matter of months. Although, the intention of Sky Mavis was essentially not to “help the unemployed”, the ethos of the game enabled people to find opportunities of earning a living virtually. Zig Ziglar, a famous author, and motivational speaker once said:
“Stop selling and start helping”
Not to mention, with Axie Infinity being an NFT blockchain-based online game, and only accessible on the desktop; there are many obstacles for a regular Joe to get started with the game. At the moment, the blockchain and cryptocurrency space are faced with these challenges in order to gain mainstream adoption due to accessibility into the space. Hence, the number of players between Pokémon Go and Axie Infinity should not be the key telling sign to differentiate both games.
Looking into the future of NFTs and play-to-earn
NFTs has taken center stage in the past year. The largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea has recorded a total of USD 4.01 billion in sales since its launch in 2017 and USD 3.05 billion in the past month. The majority of the volume is seen to be coming from Axie Infinity, CryptoPunks, and Art Blocks sales which have skyrocketed in the past month making up just a little over USD 2 billion in sales.
So, will NFTs become a thing of the future?
Non-fungible tokens will become a huge part of the future, and this is not only limited to the gaming and the art industry. An exponential demand in the fashion, sports, and entertainment industry are expected (but today we’ll talk about gaming). Gaming is currently a USD 175 billion industry in 2020 and is expected to be three times that figure in the next 6 years. The industry is massive and has a large growth rate in the future.
We have seen how NFTs can be integrated into gaming. This synergy has enabled players to do more than just receive in-game rewards and not be able to take that offline to benefit rewards in the real world. With evidence from games like Axie Infinity making headlines for being the first NFT project to hit USD 1 billion. Gaming studios are looking at this space where NFTs and gaming can co-exist together.
Final Thoughts
Axie Infinity remodeled how gamers can earn in the virtual world. Instead of earning in-game rewards and only having the ability to use those rewards within the game — gamers can now cash out and make a living out of playing games (apart from tournaments, of course). The NFT space is growing and there will always be a demand from this new asset class. NFTs will become part of organizations to come.
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