Thoughts on Axie and play-to-earn models

I am at odds with Axie and the whole play-to-earn model as a way to earn money. It surprised me that I would feel conflicted about this because who wouldn’t like just playing a game and earning from it right? I definitely would. As a gamer/grinder by upbringing, I now understand why this bothers me so much.

Are you here to learn or to earn? #

I’ve come across this question from Mark Suster a couple of years back and I think this goes straight to the crux of what I’m feeling. Just to get you to the same page, learn = do hard things now that will increase your value over time, earn = get paid big enough to buy your house cash.

Playing Axie is pure “earn”. There is no “learn” to it.

Let’s say, you spend a year playing Axie. Sure, you’ll probably earn big bucks but what skills can you say that you’ve learned that would be valuable outside of gaming? I honestly can’t think of any right now.

Being an Axie player would certainly put food on the table and a house to live in, but without building up anything else your skills will be worthless once the game fades away. There is no outcome that you’re building towards, and no inherent value to the things that you’re doing. You are just playing a game, after all.

To be fair, most people are probably this way with their job anyway. Learn everything they need to do in 6 months and then just repeat that over and over 20 times. That’s “10 years” experience.

The reason why it bothers me so much is that I’m very much in the “learn” side of the line. You could say I’m biased to learning. I should probably start going the other way, but that’s a discussion for another day.