The game was inspired by CryptoKitties, while the collecting, training, battling, and selling of Axies follows a model similar to the game Pokémon Go combined with turn-based elements that mirror Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone.Īn Axie is a nonfungible token (NFT), meaning each is unique and irreplicable. “Everyone I know is trying to play,” he told Rest of World.Ĭreated by Vietnamese company Sky Mavis in 2018, the game principles of Axie Infinity feel familiar.
“At the moment, there are many more around the world than there are in assets to go around,” said Leah Callon-Butler, a director of the consulting group Emfarsis, which has produced market analysis for the Axie Infinity community in the Philippines. Users from these two countries make up between 45% and 50% of Axie’s player base.Ĭombined with exuberance in cryptocurrency markets and the low barrier to entry for mobile gaming, Axie and its play-to-earn peers are riding a wave of eager labor. Workers in Venezuela, the game’s second-largest market, have shifted from finding outsourcing jobs on microtasking platform Remotasks to games like Axie Infinity, Rest of World reporting has found. Lockdowns in the Philippines and elsewhere have forced many into irregular work. Guilds can sprawl hundreds of members managing various accounts, honing Axie characters and churning the value of the Axies Infinity Shard token ever higher.Īxie is both a play-to-earn game and an entire NFT-based economy, and its soaring popularity is partly down to chance. Crypto-denominated earnings are made by cultivating in-game creatures called Axies, which can be battled or sold at a profit to other players. Players like him are often sponsored by managers or guilds, who fund their entry into the game - a high barrier, with current costs that can go upwards of $1,500 - in return for a cut. Not only is Secretario one of over a million players who have flocked to the game over the past year, he is part of an increasingly elaborate outsourcing structure that has sprung up around it. “Axie pays better, and it’s more safe to stay at home.”
“It’s really, really, really hard to find a regular job, especially in our province,” he told Rest of World. He doesn’t question the game’s utility, nor the in-game demand that generates real money for him, calling it a “blessing.” The rest of the time, he looks after his grandmother. Within a few months, Secretario had plunged into a world of brightly colored mystical creatures and daily quests, his instinct for the game’s mechanics quickly kicking in from years of joining role-playing games.Īn hour’s play per day now nets him nearly double the income of his feed sales job - about $2,000 (100,000 Philippine pesos) last month. He was the sole caretaker of his 82-year-old grandmother how was he expected to support both of them?īefore a friend referred him, he’d heard talk of Axie Infinity: an online, blockchain-based game where players can earn tokens and cash out in local currency. As the pandemic stretched on, he grew anxious.
When harsh lockdowns restricted movement, it became almost impossible, Secretario told Rest of World. Things had been hard enough before the pandemic, with agriculture at the mercy of typhoons and floods. These days, though, he makes his living by playing a Vietnamese smartphone game. Here, 31-year-old RK Secretario spent more than two years selling rice feed to poultry farmers. The Philippine province of Nueva Ecija is known for its vast expanse of rice fields, framed by uninterrupted sky.
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