Axie：在家也能用打遊戲來賺錢的區塊鏈遊戲

The ultimate point of playing video games has always been to have fun. Whether it’s Space Invaders or Sonic or Red Dead Redemption, you hit the start button and do your thing until game over – and then you probably wipe the sweat off your hands and do it again.

但是一種新的遊戲正在出現，其中游戲是一種投資機會，甚至可能是一種謀生方式。最近，像Axie Infinity和the sandbox這樣的所謂的遊戲賺錢遊戲已經大受歡迎。

What they have in common with many previous classics is that they include complex economic ecosystems. In the 1980s blockbuster Elite, for example, players travelled from planet to planet, trying to increase their credits by buying and selling things like weapons and commodities. Or in life-simulation franchise The Sims, players buy everything from pizzas to houses with Simoleons.

But in these older games, the in-game currency had no value in the real world. There have also been games like World of Warcraft where a grey market for exchanging in-game items and characters grew up around them. But play-to-earn games take this to a whole new level. So how do these games work and where are they heading?

Axie Infinity introduction

The leader in this new space is Axie Infinity, a Pokémon-style game created by the Vietnamese developer Sky Mavis. It has some 350,000 daily active users, about 40% of whom are in the Philippines, with Venezuela and the US the next two biggest markets.

The game revolves around cute furry creatures called Axies, which players breed, acquire, train, use to complete challenges, and do battle with online. The object of the game is to obtain small love potions (SLPs), which can be used to breed new Axies that can then be deployed within the game.

SLP 兼作可以在加密交易所買賣的Cryptocurrency。據報導，頂級玩家每天從他們的 Axies賺取SLP1,500（435 美元/317 英鎊），儘管 SLP 兌美元的價格在不斷變化。自 2020 年以來，它一直在普遍上漲，因此有理由堅持持有它們——或者，在進展順利時賣出。

Axies 本身可以在現實生活中作為nft（同質化代幣）在Axie 市場等交易中進行交易。NFT 是存在於被稱為區塊鏈的在線分類賬上的數字收藏品，並且以最近席捲藝術界而聞名。

除了 Axies 之外，土地、鮮花、箱子和藥水等其他遊戲內物品也都可以作為 NFT 進行交易。這些都是使用以太坊進行買賣的，以太坊是僅次於比特幣的第二大Cryptocurrency.

This is a welcome improvement on predecessors such as World of Warcraft where trading of gold and in-game assets took place in unaffiliated auction sites, and was grounds for being banned from the game for a long time. By introducing a dedicated marketplace, NFTs and a blockchain, the trading around Axie Infinity and similar games is more secure and means that players actually own the items in question.

To get started on Axie Infinity, players need to buy (or borrow) three Axies. They are available from US$190 (£138), though the current average is about US$350, and higher level, rare or mystic Axies can sell for a lot more.

The most expensive ever Axie, a triple mystic called Angel, sold for ETH300 in late 2020, which was around US$120,000 at the time. Meanwhile, a chunk of in-game real estate went for US$1.5 million earlier in 2021. Monthly trading volumes for all Axie Infinity NFTs currently stand at US$170 million.

Finally, there is another cryptocurrency associated with this game called the Axie Infinity shard (AXS). Investors in AXS have a vote in the governance of the game’s ecosystem, and can also use it to get a share of the community treasury. AXS has also seen an impressive rise recently, up about sixfold in recent weeks. It is the largest gaming cryptocurrency on the market.

Related games

除了 Axie Infinity，CryptoKitties 是另一款贏得大量粉絲的區塊Cryptocurrency game戲。在該遊戲中，玩家使用以太坊購買、繁殖和交易數字貓。同樣，這些貓是 NFT，它們不僅為開發人員而且為玩家社區創造財富。迄今為止售出的最昂貴的CryptoKitty 被稱為 Dragon，售價為 ETH600（當時約為 170,000 美元）。

除了為玩家創造真正的收入外，玩遊戲還創造了社區，玩家和創作者可以在這裡見面、分享智慧並進行交易。一個很好的例子是The SandBox，這是一款與 Minecraft 相同類型的遊戲，玩家可以在其中建造東西並以 NFT 的形式相互交換。

This discreet economy is driven by its own cryptocurrency, SAND. One way to make SAND is to sell parcels of digital real estate known as LAND, which players can purchase for their shopfront as a way of sharing experiences with visitors to the world. In February alone, the game announced that a record 2,352 plots of LAND had been sold for a combined US$2.8 million.

有了如此高的興趣，主流遊戲品牌都看到了在這個不斷擴大的元宇宙中分一杯羹的潛力。例如，《行屍走肉》將很快在平台上敞開大門，讓玩家進入遊戲中的殭屍世界，Sandbox 稱這是邁向“虛擬景點公園”的一步。像這樣的品牌可能會為該平台吸引更多的主流受眾。

既然這樣的遊戲成為可能，它們似乎會繼續存在。許多遊戲過去一直維持線上社區，但通過增加獲取經濟收益的能力，玩遊戲賺錢的遊戲將來可能會導致更成功的社區。如果您對區塊Cryptocurrency game戲的這個區域不熟悉，那麼是時候開始密切關注了。