Axie Infinity

An amazing & passionate community, and a game with strong fundamentals that has lots of room to grow!

Preface

From the Axie Infinity Whitepaper:

Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-inspired universe where anyone can earn tokens through skilled gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem. Players can battle, collect, raise, and build a land-based kingdom for their pets.

All art assets and Axie genetic data can be easily accessed by 3rd parties, allowing community developers to build their own tools and experiences in the Axie Infinity universe.

Although Axie is still in early access, Axie is ranked the #1 Ethereum game by daily, weekly, and monthly active users. It has generated over 6,400 ETH in revenue (2M+ USD) so far.

While Axie is a fun game, it's also taken on characteristics of a social network and jobs platform due to the strong community and play to earn opportunities that have come from its early success.

The key difference between Axie and a traditional game is that Blockchain economic design is used to reward our players for their contributions to the ecosystem. This new model of gaming has been dubbed "play to earn". Axie has attracted thousands of players from developing countries in the pursuit of a new income stream during the Covid pandemic. Many of these players are fathers, aunts, and even grandparents who have never used Blockchain technology before!

Players can earn by:

• Competing in PVP battles to win leaderboard prizes.

• Breeding Axies and selling them on the marketplace.

• Collecting and speculating on rare Axies such as Mystics and Origins.

• Farming for the love potions that are needed to breed Axies. These can be sold on exchanges such as Uniswap and Binance.

• Starting in 2021 players can earn a governance token, AXS, which represents a real slice of the game universe as it has governance rights and fee sharing built into it. Since players can earn this token by playing, a Ready Player one type quest emerges where players can actually earn part of the universe. However, these quests are not winner takes all and rewards each player based on their effort and skill.

The Adventure Begins

Lots to unpack here! I’ve known about Axie Infinity for some time, and by known, I mean I have been aware of its existence. Before this week, I didn’t really take the time to get into the game and try it out for myself.

I’ve always been more of an intuitive gamer. Doing what feels right, as opposed to taking the time to study every possible aspect before jumping in. As with every approach, there are pros and cons.

I jumped in, head first and bought a Beast, Reptile, Plant team (without watching @ElijahCTG’s video on how to get a good starter team 😂). Playing PvE was fun and gave me a taste of what the game felt like, but it wasn’t until I jumped into PvP that I noticed the nuances in Axie Infinity.

My First Beast Axie!

Different body parts, how they determine the actual look of the Axie, and the concept of pureness in Axie. Pureness goes from 0 to 6, where 6 means an Axie has body parts belonging to the same type. In the image above, my Beast Axie has 1 Beast part, 2 Bug parts, 2 Plant parts, and 1 Aqua part.

Cards, conserving energy, using the right card combos.

The Move Set

Remembering The Goal

This is a really cool game! There’s tons of strategy involved, unique builds, breeding tips, and lots more. I’m learning a lot from Elijah’s Axie on the Moon YouTube Channel, and would definitely recommend it if you want to learn more about the game!

My goal with this newsletter is to document my journey through the world of blockchain games, and to try and keep up with all the awesome projects in the crypto-games space. The ultimate goal, as I stated in my first post, is to try and create a game that embodies the principles of blockchain.

I’ve certainly found a lot of the things I was looking for in the Axie Infinity Community. A strategy game with strong fundamentals, a passionate community that’s growing fast, NFT collectables that have built in scarcity, and an ecosystem that allows players to earn real money by playing.

This documentary from PLAY-TO-EARN is worth checking out!

What’s Next?

A day in, I started an Axie Scholarship program. Onboarded the first “Games on Chain” Axie scholar and I’m building two more teams for the second and third scholarships. I want to be a part of the community, and see it thrive, as I continue my quest to try out all the blockchain games I can. This seems like a good way to stay engaged with the player base and get to hear their stories! 😊

I’m sure I’ll be posting a lot more about Axie. I am amazed by everything I’ve seen here so far!