For a year, the Axie Infinity community has waited with bated breath. Sometimes, abject terror, for the release of a new game, Axie: Origins. It's a brand new Axie Infinity Game, not an incremental upgrade. All crypto rewards have been moved over from the original game, "Classic" to the new one, Origins.
This is a super important detail for the newcomer, as a huge draw of Axie Infinity is Play-to-Earn. That means a lot of the community is playing the game to earn Crypto. So, some people have a lot to gain--and lose--as the new game is released.
Will it be a cosmic shift in blockchain gaming? The expected arrival has brought hope, upheavals, and blood in the water.
And launch day of Season 1 starts today.
I'm going to give a rundown of what this might mean for Blockchain gaming. The implications for Axie Infinity, and the crypto gaming winter. All from the perspective of a player with skin in the game.
A Small Digital Pet Game's Early Origins
Years ago, a small group of developers met online playing Crypto Kitties. They came up with the idea to create their own game.
This small crew built the game, and called it "Axie Infinity". It was heavily inspired by Pokemon. They launched it in 2018 without much fanfare.
In December of 2019, a cosmic shift came. The developers turned an in-game token into a cryptocurrency. At the time named Small Love Potion (now Smooth).
A community member quickly listed it on Uniswap and created a liquidity pool. Then, the world changed. A cute game with lovely fighting digital pets became a way where you could earn actual money.
Who would have thought this would develop into a multi-billion dollar economy?
So, a group of gamers, devs, and entrepreneurs met online and started playing a cat breeding game. Then, this very small group made their own game quickly.
During the pandemic of 2020, there was a perfect storm. After releasing an ERC-20 token you could earn while inside your house playing the game, the world shut down.
Micro economies developed around Axie Infinity during this fledgling period. People realized they could earn money playing the game. All from home during rolling lockdowns. This was especially appealing in The Philippines. The in-game currency went a lot farther there. Lockdowns were also more strict than in other parts of the world.
Enter 2021: The Crypto Melt Up
In November of 2020, Sky Mavis released the AXS token, at a list price of ten cents, with a $200 cap on what people could buy.
Now, with two tokens, the game was positioned to launch off into the stratosphere. If, say, Bitcoin and Crypto suddenly went mainstream. Months later, Crypto did, with a combination of unexpected factors. Like tweets from Elon Musk about Dogecoin.
Axie Infinity's micro-economy suddenly blew up into a macroeconomy. Billions of dollars of value were traded on their in-game marketplace. There were hypergrowth events.
DAU (Daily Active Users) suddenly launched into the stratosphere (millions).
The way the tokenomics of the in-game currency SLP works sent the value soaring. SLP is used to breed new axies. What happened was a hyper growth of new entrants put buying and burning pressure on SLP.
Demand for axies so people could play quickly sent the price from around 3.5 cents to 39.97 cents, all in a manner of weeks in the Summer of 2021.
But that actually looks tame compared to the summer before, when the price rocketed from just over .3 cents to over 19 cents in just around seven days.
At the time, this extreme growth didn't just fuel people making money playing the game. It created a sub-economy of everything from Axie tech service providers. Axie influencers, profitable gaming guilds, and even near-overnight millionaires.
So what does Axie Infinity: Origins have to do with blood in the water?
The small group of developers saw their lives change overnight. A recent interview highlights perhaps just how much. Een Mercado, a lead for one of the largest Axie Guilds YGG, was interviewing Jihoz, a co-founder, at AxieCon.
Jihoz is currently likely a large stakeholder, being rewarded in what may be millions of dollars worth of AXS for bringing the game to fruition.
Interview:
Een: How much is your biggest loss in crypto in one day?
Jihoz: Well, a lot. But there was one day in March of 2020 where I felt like I lost like sixty percent of my money. And I was living in my parent's basement at the time and I felt like I was never going to be able to move out. I was never going to be able to get married. So, yeah.
Een: Buy you got married?
Jihoz: It happens! Yeah! Now I'm married.
(Credit: Transcript of Video from Een Mercado's Streamer Page)
This kind of exchange is a startling reminder of how very fast Axie's rise happened. The fallout--making millionaires--also ended up leaving other investors with potentially large losses.
Around November and December of 2021, a change in the language around Axie happened. The devs started to try to prepare the community and warn them that a new game was coming. To an outsider, this might not sound so alarming.
Yet the thing was, during those times, there were long periods where each individual Axie NFT was very expensive. Just to buy one mediocre Axie (as in, not amazing at the game), it could be upwards of $200.
To investors who had just sunk money into buying teams, these were alarming times. The uncertainty around the new game's launch may have led to investor and player defection.
Especially because the new game's impending release seemed to go on and on, and no one was clear when it would actually be here.
This defection in turn hurt the price of the crypto you earn while playing, which in turn led to more players leaving.
Viewing some of those exchanges on Twitter at the time was interesting. I both understood the complex game the developers were playing. Trying to fix unsustainable elements of the game that relied on new players coming in.
While creating a new game (the one launching today, more on that soon), that had more of an appeal than earning.
They wanted it to be fun.
However, disagreements between the community and the devs got personal. Large influencers who came up in part through talking about Axie basically left.
A recent Twitter exchange shows some of the turmoil and the personal impact:
I had to re-create this using the google cache because it had been deleted.
But basically, on Monday, an account called "The Axie Intern" with the handle @jihoz_intern, tweeted this. Pictured in the meme are three large influencers, some of who came to prominence with Axie, who seem to have left.
The caption read: "Just intern things..."
CryptoKing_NFT, who was tagged, responded with:
I'm bringing this up because as an outsider, you may not be aware of all the upheavals in the community. Or that they weren't only financial. They got personal.
SLP's value dipped. Some guilds completely dissolved basically overnight.
Many guild owners complained bitterly that their guild members just walked away. Without a word, ghosting them.
It wasn't just that they lost the players who gave them a return on their investment. It hurt on a personal level that these people they'd worked with left without a word, or it seems, a glance back.
"So long, Manager."
So, is this the devs’ fault?
No one really knows. As a game participant, I do want to say one observation. There were times with my guild manager (just before he quit) that we discussed investing in other games for our guild to play.
The funny thing is, despite his complaints, there weren't any other viable games I could find.
I did my own search. I came across many games promising to be the next Axie. In the end, most or all crumbled, and fast. Some functioned more like Ponzi schemes.
Axie Infinity does have an actual game. It has hundreds of thousands of active players, and a dev team that seems to care about the project.
There were also painful moments on Twitter where community members expressed rage. And directed it at co-founders. A huge complaint was the devs not taking their suggestions to fix the SLP price.
But reading the suggestions, many of them would have led to a short-term pump in token value. Yet been bad for the long-term ecosystem. So, the devs weren't in any kind of easy position.
They seemed to be making decisions based on what they viewed as the health of the community. Whether those choices pan out, I think we may know fairly soon.
What do the devs say?
I reached out to Sky Mavis for a comment about what Season 1 means for Axie and the community. Philip La, Game Product Lead who joined Sky Mavis this year (from a high-profile position at Pokemon Go), replied:
"The launch of Axie Infinity Origins Season 1 is a huge milestone for Sky Mavis and our community. Sky Mavis collaborated with the community to make numerous major updates and improvements over the past months. Season 1 is in a great position and is esports ready, as shown at AxieCon. We implemented an entirely new NFT Runes/Charms system, iterated until 1st/2nd turn win rates were even, and made thousands of balancing adjustments. I am super excited for players to enjoy the challenge of trying to reach the top of the Leaderboard for the glory, exclusive cosmetics, and over $1. 5M in AXS rewards.”
So today, Season 1 of Origins is Launching: What's On the Line?
Everything. Everything is on the line.
This has been the game the developers have been nurturing for years. Sky Mavis has been teasing out the release for just under a year.
There are over a million dollars on the line in season 1 in AXS rewards.
They beta-tested the game since before April 2022. They've likely spent millions of dollars on development. As opposed to Axie Infinity: Classic, they were well funded, had as much time as they wanted, and probably a much larger and more experienced dev team.
And they've been hyping up one aspect: they want it to be fun.
What to look for?
One huge question is current community involvement. The upheaval around the change is over.
It's changed.
Axie Infinity: Origins is a brand new game with totally new dynamics. All crypto rewards are gone from the OG game classic (at least for now) and can only be earned in Origins. Axies who were useful before in the arena may be much, much less useful now. They call this the "meta".
New Axies may be super powerful now. Instead of the seismic shift in the meta which just occurred, changes will likely be incremental for the foreseeable future.
Things will likely shift back to standard nerfs and buffs (standard changes to card balancing to prevent a single Axie or team combo from becoming overly powerful) on the off-seasons. Or, at regular intervals.
So, are community members who may have bailed going to come back? That may depend on the value of the tokens--or how fun the game is. The second question is if new participants will find the game--and if so, what will draw them?
In Axie Classic, a huge amount of the appeal was earn. As a player, I actually found that fun at the time. When you would win a match and earn 70 cents worth of Crypto in three minutes, there was a genuine endorphin rush. I believe that game was actually fun, in part for that reason.
But will Axie Infinity: Origins, be fun outside of earn?
That's one very important thing to watch. As the game (in Season 1, not as a beta or “Season 0”) launches this week, I'm excited to see if new players come in to play just for the fun of it.
Unlike Classic, there are now free starter axies, that you can use to play the game, but that won't earn you any crypto.
So, from the standpoint of a player, this is a potentially exciting moment.
Day 1, Season 1 of the reboot.
What does it mean for Crypto gaming?
Axie Infinity has been the OG Play-to-Earn game.
Whatever happens with the Origins release. Whether it's a stunning success. Or it doesn't take off beyond pro-players after the leaderboard rewards. Or somewhere in-between, it's going to impact every single element of Crypto gaming.
There's also an x-factor. On the Axie Infinity Roadmap, there's a huge moment listed for 2022. It is "Mainstream release of Axie Infinity on iOS/Android".
This event has been closely watched by community participants. Currently, you can download Axie Infinity as an APK. But it's not in the Google Play Store or App Store.
Up until now, most or all player growth and downloads have come from word of mouth and been organic.
When Sky Mavis actually does release the game on the app store, it's a big deal. Why? They would also be able to reliably acquire users through mobile download campaigns.
In this way, they could potentially scale the game in ways currently unimaginable.
The real question is though, and it's what makes this moment so stunning--is the new game sticky? As in, once people start playing, do they come back for more and join the community?
Or, was Axie Classic, which has a proven track record of player retention, the real magic?
Right now, we don't know. But I can tell you who is going to be able to tell us. The players.
I'll be keeping a close eye to see what they say!
Until next time friends, stay vigilant!
Photo Credit: Axie Infinity: Origins Official Media Kit