The biggest NFT game currently in the marketplace is Axie Infinity, a game—similar to Pokémon—in which players collect and battle monsters which resemble axolotl salamanders.
The business model for Axie Infinity and nearly all other nonfungible token (NFT) games is called “play to earn.” In these games, all players must start by purchasing NFT characters on a marketplace. In-game assets and currencies are traded on crypto exchanges, so everything in the game is worth money. The often-high upfront cost of buying into the game is theoretically justified by the opportunity to earn money by playing.
Web3 investors are really excited about the prospects of games like this. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is an investor in Axie Infinity, believes play-to-earn games will be 90 percent of the gaming market in five years. And Sky Mavis, the developer…
