# Crypto Gaming ## [[Rest of World]] article on Axies 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. 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. Crypto-denominated earnings are made by cultivating in-game creatures called Axies, which can be battled or sold at a profit to other players. Guilds can sprawl hundreds of members managing various accounts, honing Axie characters and churning the value of the Axies Infinity Shard token ever higher. By battling Axies and completing quests, players earn rewards in the form of one of two Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies — in-game token Smooth Love Potions (SLP) and governance token Axie Infinity Shards (AXS). With SLP and AXS, players can breed their Axies to create more (which they can choose to sell) or buy virtual land within the game. Each plot of land is, naturally, an NFT as well. “If you can make more than what you’d make in a BPO (business process outsourcing) office somewhere playing a game, why wouldn’t you?” Rockwell Shah, an entrepreneur who recently moved into the sector by starting his own guild, told Rest of World. As more people clamor to enter the game, the cost barriers have risen. A player needs to first buy three existing Axies, of which there are a limited quantity. Higher-quality teams cost more but yield more SLP and AXS. In November last year, when Axie had only around 7,500 players, it cost around $300 to buy into the game; by this summer, that had risen to $1,500. “I started with three teams. When my first three teams finally generated a good amount of revenue, I started buying more,” he said. Pangindian is business-minded and has already marked his revenue tipping point. He’s invested about $16,000 so far, and predicts he’ll see a profit from his latest six teams within one to two months. For the many who can’t afford to buy into the game on their own, a sponsorship market has developed in “scholarships.” Pangindian, for one, has backed several “scholars” by providing them the Axies for their first team. He now has nine scholars, and manages them for a 50%–60% cut of their earnings as they battle Axies. Manila native Jake Nool, 28, who has been piloting a team for Pangindian for two months, seems incredulous at the profits he’s made from playing. It’s paid for his rent and utilities. “I’ve heard bank employees tell me the game is a scam. But there I was, encashing my SLPs,” he said. “I want to buy my own Axie team or invest the money for other enterprises I have planned.” Pangindian operates on the lower end of industrial-scale player operations, though. At the other end is Yield Guild Games (YGG), a Philippines-based players’ guild managing some 4,700 Axie Infinity scholars. YGG has bought a host of Axies, which it loans out to players to battle and grow; its scholars keep 70% of the in-game rewards and don’t have to front the money to buy their own teams, YGG co-founder Beryl Li told Rest of World. YGG retains ownership of the Axies and the right to breed them. Secretario, the former poultry feed salesman, is among them. “We don’t sell any of the Axies we breed,” Li said. “We save them all to loan out to even more scholars.” Guilds support the game’s seemingly ever-swelling player base, and YGG has sped up its growth by absorbing players with scholar bases of their own. Venture capital fund Delphi Digital has invested in both YGG and developer Sky Mavis. Speaking to Rest of World, Delphi co-founder Yan Liberman described the fund’s investment in the guild as one that ensured a steady onboarding of users, and as a route into the expansion of the whole play-to-earn ecosystem. YGG announced on Thursday, August 19, that it had raised another $4.6 million from Andreessen Horowitz VC firm a16z “to establish blockchain-based play-to-earn as the next major innovation in gaming and dominant business model within the industry.” AXS is becoming a governance token, too, Liberman pointed out, which “allows everyone to be … much more ingrained in the game, in the community.” With these tokens in the hands of players, the ecosystem’s growth can be influenced by Axie’s community in a way few other games can claim. ![[axie-infinity-2.jpg]] Several would-be players in the Philippines and Venezuela told Rest of World they were desperately searching for guilds or managers to sponsor them. In Facebook groups, on Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord, prospective players post their contact information and details that prospective managers might find useful: locations, the hours they can play per day, the strength of their internet connection. “We just started our guild about two months ago,” said the entrepreneur Shah. He founded the Las Vegas–based Starship Guild, which currently has over 500 scholars. “Every time we Tweet out that we have 50 scholarships available, we have hundreds of people on the waiting list.” Ever the salesman, Secretario has begun using his earnings to buy up Axie teams and resell them to others looking to enter the game.