When Playing Video Games Becomes A Full-Time Job

While the lockdown put many industries in a state of uncertainty, the digital economy has developed a new market that’s turning online gaming from a favorite pastime into a profitable occupation. This transformation is thanks to new technologies like the blockchain, which has influenced the market in profound ways. The technology became popular among online gamers when casino sites like bitcoin dice started accepting cryptocurrency for wagering, but the technology has proven it can offer more than just digital coins.

Besides playing online casino games at Tower.bet and other crypto casinos, blockchain has become a focal point in the creation of crypto games such as Axie Infinity and The Sandbox. These crypto games have launched a new digital market, transforming video game playing from entertainment into a cash venture. That has been possible not because they’ve sold millions of copies on the internet, but because they’ve allowed cryptocurrency to be at the basis of their development.

Axie Infinity has been a major driver of the current revolution over the last year, making it the best example to help you understand how the new digital economy works. The game is quite similar to Pokemon, where players collect, train, feed, buy and trade “Axies”, which are vaguely inspired by axolotl. These crypto coins can be traded on the digital market, with top players being able to earn around 1500 SLP, equivalent to about $470 daily.

This new economic activity has also been made possible by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which have transformed the world of collectors and artists. For instance, the first tweet in history was recently traded for $2.5 million and almost anything collectible can be traded with NFT, which would be perfect for use if the idea of creating metaverses became a reality. This idea involves building a universe in cyberspace, which is accessible through virtual reality and people can travel through various shared experiences with millions of other people.

In Axie Infinity, players can buy and sell digital characters by converting them into NFTs. These characters have a unique value in ETH (ether), the second most popular crypto coin behind bitcoin. Besides the axis themselves, players can also trade the characters for in-game items like homes, flowers, and barrels.

According to EthicHub executive director Jordi Armbruster, such games have disrupted the digital economy completely. Over the last few months, Axie Infinity generated over $2 billion in transactions. Unlike in the previous years where players needed to pay to play games and access certain restricted areas, the blockchain era is shifting that logic by allowing the gamers to share in the value created.

Today, you can easily generate a token and share it with other people in your community –in this case, gamers. Fortunately, games like Axie Infinity are easy to start playing, although new players need about three axies and you can choose to buy or rent them. Unfortunately, the price of axies keeps constantly changing, although the initial investment costs about $350.

Cryptocurrency holds the advantage of inventing new assets with ease and that’s the case with the ethereum-based cryptocurrency known as Axie Infinity Shards. The users have voting rights on the title’s governance, allowing them to keep a share of the community’s treasury. That has transformed digital activity into something with tangible value in the real world.

Keeping The Economies Afloat

Created by Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity currently reports around 350,000 players daily mostly coming from the US, Philippines, and Venezuela. In the Philippines and Venezuela, the rise of crypto gaming has been such a help in keeping the national economies afloat following the global crisis that affected every country last year.

According to cyber-defense manager Floren Molina, most players are excited by the prospects of earning over $500 while doing so little. That’s the amount that players earn on average and it’s a decent amount for people living in the Philippines. Lots of people have gotten jobs in the digital metaverse and lots of more will continue to benefit as crypto wallets are already becoming common.

It’s hard to dispel doubt of whether the metaverses created by these video games are affected by excessive speculation as crypto games are quite fashionable at the moment. However, this digital economy can change at a breakneck speed in different periods. Fortunately, most industry experts agree that crypto games are here to stay, but there will be several adjustments made until stability can be achieved.

The decentralization power of the blockchain is also another advantage that’s opening new possibilities in the gaming industry, as there aren’t any centralized authorities to limit developers. As such, developers and gamers can easily meet, share views and earn money together in one-on-one transactions.

That’s the case with “The Sandbox”, which looks similar to Minecraft, with players building stuff to trade them as NFTs. However, players must buy plots first to get a place to build their stuff in the game. That’s helping players to earn money from games like never before.