A deep dive into the world’s largest P2E game

Axie Infinity is not only one of the biggest play-to-earn (P2E) games out there – it’s also one of the biggest NFT projects in the entire community, period. In much of the world, Axie Infinity reigns supreme as the most popular NFT. When it launched in March 2018, it gave users an offer that almost seemed too good to be true: the chance to earn real money by playing a game.

However, Sky Mavis’ Poké clone has seen a rough couple of months. The company is still reeling from a March 2022 hack that saw hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from its coffers. Since then, the game has slowly bled, culminating in a mass exodus that saw more than 1.5 million players leave the game in June 2022.

With the odds stacked against it, there’s every reason left to check out what once was the go to games to make money in the market?

Get started with the game

Unlike conventional gaming titles, getting started involves more than buying a copy of the game – or even just downloading it, in the case of free-to-play titles. As specified on Sky Mavis’ website, a user’s first step is to secure a Ronin wallet – which is a crypto wallet on an Ethereum sidechain most commonly used by blockchain players. After loading it with ETH, users can proceed to the next step: buying Axies.

This means that instead of a friendly professor giving you your mons to get you started, you have to buy them first. But it works both ways. You can also breed Axies to sell on the secondary market – and if you’re very lucky, for quite a bit of coin. In November 2020, an Axie sold for 300 ETH, which was worth well over $1 million at the time on the secondary market. However, it’s not just Axies themselves that can be traded in for real money. Through playing the game, users are awarded Smooth Love Potion (SLP) – an in-game currency that lives on the blockchain as a cryptocurrency, which players can exchange for fiat currencies afterwards.

Now that we’ve broken down the “earn” aspect of the game, how does it actually play? As described on the game’s website, the game originally launched with an “idle battler” battle system reminiscent of the mobile game Inactive heroes. Games designed this way are designed to continue running in the background, with minimal player interaction. After a December 2019 update, the game switched to its current real-time card battle system, giving players a deeper gameplay experience.

Each of these battles makes a player’s axes progressively stronger. With stronger axes, players have an easier time completing runs in both of the game’s modes: Adventure, a player-versus-environment (PVE) mode that pits the player against computerized enemies, and its player-versus-player (PVP) mode that pits users up against each other.

Like other online games, Axie Infinity’s PVP mode gives players the chance to increase their matchmaking rating (MMR) for each match, allowing them to climb the ranking ladder with each victory. After clearing various set MMR thresholds, players can expect to receive larger amounts of SLP with each win, at the cost of much tougher competition as they climb the ranks.

A “life-changing” game

In a vacuum, Axie Infinity’s P2E format – with the promise of bigger rewards the better you are at the game – should give players fairer earning opportunities than the current gaming landscape. But the reality of Axie Infinity’s impact on a large segment of the player base deviates from this ideal to varying degrees.

So what better market to investigate than the Philippines – home to more than 40 percent of Axie Infinity’s player base? According to Sky Mavis, several factors enabled the game’s popularity to take off in the region relatively quickly: “high proficiency in English, strong gaming culture and widespread use of smartphones.” While these factors undoubtedly increased the game’s popularity in the Southeast Asian nation, it leaves out the main attraction of the game: money.

In developing countries like the Philippines, where annual household income rarely crosses the five-figure mark when converted to USD, the Axie Infinity seemed like a perfect chance for many to supplement their monthly income. As such, the popularity of Axie Infinity – and NFTs as a whole – exploded in the country, supported by a November 2021 survey conducted by Finder.

During the bull run of the crypto and NFT world through 2021, early Filipino adopters of the game experienced the full potential of the P2E format. In an article from November 2021 about CNN Philippines, the sentiment among the interviewees was primarily optimistic. With the value of 1 SLP equivalent to about 3 Philippine pesos (5 cents for Americans) at the time, local players could enjoy some extra pocket money to spend on snacks at worst – and a life-changing financial opportunity at best.

More affluent users even offered players who could not afford to buy Axies outright the chance to earn through the game via a “scholarship” system. Through this system, Axie owners rent out their Axies to select individuals, and collect payments for these rentals via a percentage of SLP earned during the renter’s playtime.

While a good idea in theory, this setup left the Axie Infinity Scholars in serious financial trouble (and frankly, burned out, to put it mildly). As the crypto and NFT world entered a bear market in 2022, researchers found fewer and fewer reasons to spend hours playing the game. A disgruntled ex-player even spoke up TIME Magazine on his experience, publicly condemning the game and urging others to stay away.

That which lies beyond

Just weeks after Axie Infinity’s multi-million dollar hack, Sky Mavis announced in April 2022 that a much more consumer-friendly version of the game was entering early access, called Axie Infinity: Origin. This experience aimed to offer new and old Axie Infinity players an opportunity to continue playing the game while the team tried to resolve the losses faced during the hack. In addition to various tweaks to the game that should make it a “faster, more dynamic experience,” new players now get free starter axes, essentially making the game free to play.

As the game transitions to free-to-play, the hope is that it will retain its core group of players well into the future. With Axie Infinity: Origin in early access, we might catch a glimpse of the game’s long-term staying power. This is due to the early access build of the game lacking its standout feature: P2E functionality. If Neopets still thriving (albeit run with cheaters) today, there is no reason Axie Infinity cannot do the same.