Axie Infinity is toxic to crypto gambling

Axie Infinity, like most cryptocurrency games, provided players with a horrible experience.
Blockchain gaming is only four years old – a toddler compared to the rest of the industry. It has a lot to grow, especially when it comes to money-making games.

I'm a 28-year gaming industry veteran. I've produced 32 titles in that time on everything from Sega Genesis to Oculus Rift. Some of them were great. Many were forgettable. I didn't hear much talk about blockchain games from mainstream developers and gamers until Axie Infinity started to take off. Cut at the peak of 2021, the game had nearly 2 million players logging in daily.

Most people outside of the crypto community at the time were (and still are) extremely skeptical of blockchain's ability to add anything meaningful to games. They see Axie as an example of the low production values and rampant speculation they want to avoid at all costs. Additionally, they see blockchain as a continuation of publisher overreach. However, in 2021, many believed that Axie would prove blockchain gaming skeptics wrong.

It is not. Axie and most other crypto "games" to date have been horrible experiences. They're not even really games. They are more like digital sharecropping, wealthy NFT owners exploiting low-wage gamers. It's superficial gameplay overlaid on a tokenomics model. This was highlighted most recently in October, when the value of Axie's SLP token plummeted due to an impending token unlock.

Related: Crypto Gambling Must Be Fun to Succeed - Money Doesn't Matter

Most players sell their tokens in the crypto market rather than in-game, which means that the number of tokens increases and causes a kind of crypto inflation. The game model relies on a constant influx of new players to sustain it - something this month proved very far from guaranteed.

The value of Axie is primarily driven by this speculation rather than pleasure. The game, if you can even call it that, is literally a grind. Despite attempts to separate it from in-game economy addiction with iterations like Axie Origins, the toxic model of being hyper-addicted to tokenomics prevails. This continues to hurt projects that attempt to mock g...

Crypto Dec 1, 2022 0 65 Add to Reading List

Axie Infinity is toxic to crypto gambling

Axie Infinity, like most cryptocurrency games, provided players with a horrible experience.

Blockchain gaming is only four years old – a toddler compared to the rest of the industry. It has a lot to grow, especially when it comes to money-making games.

I'm a 28-year gaming industry veteran. I've produced 32 titles in that time on everything from Sega Genesis to Oculus Rift. Some of them were great. Many were forgettable. I didn't hear much talk about blockchain games from mainstream developers and gamers until Axie Infinity started to take off. Cut at the peak of 2021, the game had nearly 2 million players logging in daily.

Most people outside of the crypto community at the time were (and still are) extremely skeptical of blockchain's ability to add anything meaningful to games. They see Axie as an example of the low production values and rampant speculation they want to avoid at all costs. Additionally, they see blockchain as a continuation of publisher overreach. However, in 2021, many believed that Axie would prove blockchain gaming skeptics wrong.

It is not. Axie and most other crypto "games" to date have been horrible experiences. They're not even really games. They are more like digital sharecropping, wealthy NFT owners exploiting low-wage gamers. It's superficial gameplay overlaid on a tokenomics model. This was highlighted most recently in October, when the value of Axie's SLP token plummeted due to an impending token unlock.

Related: Crypto Gambling Must Be Fun to Succeed - Money Doesn't Matter

Most players sell their tokens in the crypto market rather than in-game, which means that the number of tokens increases and causes a kind of crypto inflation. The game model relies on a constant influx of new players to sustain it - something this month proved very far from guaranteed.

The value of Axie is primarily driven by this speculation rather than pleasure. The game, if you can even call it that, is literally a grind. Despite attempts to separate it from in-game economy addiction with iterations like Axie Origins, the toxic model of being hyper-addicted to tokenomics prevails. This continues to hurt projects that attempt to mock g...