Comment by jeremyjh
4 years ago
The question is answered in TFA:
> These “economic opportunities” are essentially a wealth transfer from new players to established ones. Gameplay requires the purchase of three Axies, which currently cost in the hundreds of US dollars each. Players who buy in treat this as an investment, since it’s a necessary buy-in in order to work in the game.
It sounds more like a Ponzi scheme in a Gold farming disguise to me.
I'm very familiar with Gold farming from Eve Online, where selling game currency (ISK) was permitted via exchange of game time cards sold by the game's developer. There was always a secondary market for game time cards sold for real money and that was legal too. The reason it all worked is because playing the game was really fun, but required to grind to get ISK. People with more money than time would prefer to buy themselves new spaceships to get blown up in than grind for them.
It really sounds though like Axie Infinity is not a fun game and no one treats it as one. So it is something new.
> it’s hard to find any reviews on Axie Infinity as a game rather than as an income stream or speculative investment
> It sounds more like a Ponzi scheme in a Gold farming disguise to me.
I would agree with this if the primary income stream came directly from the increase in value of Axies as the game attracted more users. From my understanding, the income comes from acquiring and selling in-game currency rather than from the Axies themselves.
Is this a bullshit job? Maybe. Ponzi scheme? I don't think so.
If people are working this bullshit job, it means that this bullshit job is better than their alternatives. I'm not convinced the existence of these kinds of games is a net-negative.
The in-game currency's purpose is to breed new Axies though. If there wasn't increasing demand for Axies, SLP would be worthless.
Is that the only use of the currency or just one possible use?
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The problem with play to earn however is that it encourages people to play the game to earn money instead of fun, which causes inflation to the point where it's not worth the time of a casual player to do the grindy parts of the game and instead just lay people who grind all day. This is why play to earn is terrible, gold farmers will increase currency faucets without increasing currency sinks, and it is terrible for any game with a lot of player trading.
At least for the years I played CCP managed to create keep inflation under control and markets functioning pretty well. I think the percent of players who were either buying or selling ISK was fairly low, less than 15% is my guess but there are a lot of different ways to play the game so my experience may not be representative.