If you think you’ve had a bad year, just put yourself in the shoes of Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis.
Twelve months ago, the play-to-earn game had 2.5 million DAUs, its AXS governance token was worth $95 and the cheapest Axie NFTs were trading for hundreds of dollars.
Axie Infinity was the blockchain game everyone was talking about and copying.
Today, however, the cheapest Axies sell for $3, AXS is valued under $6 and that original play-to-earn game — now called Axie Infinity Classic — is effectively obsolete.
Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain was hacked by the North Koreans for $625 million-worth of ETH and USDC in March.
Google “Axie Infinity is…” and you get the following results
Existential doesn’t really feel strong enough a term for the sentiment. It likely felt more like the death of 31,536,000 cuts (seconds in a year).
Or did it?
Perhaps acting as the most extreme Rorschach test of blockchain gaming to-date, a strong case could be made that the reverse became true; don’t be influenced by the frothing waves, feel the deep current etc.
Because despite what happened in terms of consumer-facing, market-driven activity, behind-the-scenes Sky Mavis had an extremely productive year.
As chief growth office Jeff Zirlin puts it:
Of course, doing a lot of things and building a lot of product isn’t in-and-of itself valuable.
Given that it has enough financial runway for the next half-a-dozen years, Sky Mavis could fall prey to the temptation of not caring at all about market conditions and just doing whatever it feels like.
Personally I don’t feel that is currently the case but I could see a situation where “Shipping. Relentless” becomes the vision rather than shipping the right number of high quality products required to fulfil the longterm vision for Axie Infinity.
If nothing esle, it’s an easy way to insulate company culture against hostile outside forces.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing in the future of gaming
Nevertheless, the trajectory of Axie Infinity during 2021 and 2022, both in terms of the value of its tokens and the inflation in its NFTs — 11.5 million Axie characters have been breed — does create a problem that needs to be resolved both symbolically and structurally.
Brutally put, it seems unlikely that Axie Infinity’s tokens will ever regain their all-time-highs while — as it stands — the sheer number of Axie NFTs acts as an overall commodizing factor.
Nevertheless, as a glass-half-full chap, I do think Axie Infinity is now headed in the right direction.
Getting the redesigned Axie Infinity Origins game out through the Google and Apple app stores will be a sensitive process but a key one for 2023 and beyond.
Meanwhile for owners of the game’s land NFTs, the just-launched Homelands experience — which introduces new material collection and crafting mechanics, alongside buildings and technology trees — starts to reveal the vision of how an Axie Infinity universe will eventually combine such deep MMORPG elements alongside games, ranging from the current esports-aligned battler to perhaps simpler match and merge titles.
Once again, it’s all about the vision; getting the right balance between taking advantage of the ability to think strategically about longterm goals, while acting tactically to build momentum.
In that respect, 2023 will be a crucial year for Axie Infinity generally and Sky Mavis more specifically.