Axie Infinity Secures Series A Funding as Yield Guild Games Announces Play-to-Earn Docu

Good morning. Welcome to the Axie Infinity Edition of Wednesday Watch, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look back at all the major news and updates that happened this week. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad. We look at what’s happening to everything Axie today. And why not, Filipinos are earning a lot from playing this game.       

Market Price as of May 12, 2021:

AXS	$8.13	+11.98%
SLP	$0.20	+3.6%
Ether	$4,182.79	+5.122%

The tokens above are all coins related to Axie Infinity. AXS is the game’s governance token. SLP is earned whenever players win battles in-game. Ether is self explanatory.

What’s Axie Infinity? Check out our primers:

Series A

Axie Infinity Developer Sky Mavis Secures Series A Funding 

Sky Mavis announced it has secured series A funding – raised $7.5 million to scale Axie Infinity and bring it to billions of more users. The investment round is led by Libertus Capital and supported by institutions like BlockTower Capital, Animoca Brands, and Sparq. The round is also participated by individuals/founders like Mark Cuban, Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Sebastian Borget (The Sandbox), and Gabby Dizon (Yield Guild Games.)

The full list can be found here:

Awesome quotes from one awesome investor:

“I think Axie is an amazing platform. It’s fun and engaging. It’s a game you want to play for hours on end. Add the Axie economy and you have something special. I’m excited to be part of it.” – Mark Cuban

What will Sky Mavis do with the funding:

• Further lower the barriers to entry with NFT games. The developers’ first step here is Ronin, an ethereum sidechain which it launched early this year
• Hire more traditional game developers and make the game more fun. “Why wait for triple AAA game studios to catch on when we can simply hire their star talent?”
• Scale play-to-earn and make it more attractive to gamers

Sky Mavis envisions Axie Infinity to scale through the following:

• Create a world class creator program
• Unlocking “Free to play-to-earn.” In this way, players can try Axie Infinity first before making any economic decisions.
• Tap on user generated content, where Sky Mavis will just be one of the many organizations building on top of Axie Infinity and Ronin.  

Documenting History

Speaking of which, a number of articles discussing the Play-to-Earn development in the Philippines is increasing. 

Axie Infinity Player Buys Two Houses in the Philippines From In-game Profits

Could you imagine not having to pay a mortgage because you bought two houses with SLP tokens? That’s what happened to an Axie Infinity gamer in the Philippines. https://t.co/zcJY66phXC

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 12, 2021

In the article from Cointelegraph, Brian Quarmby writes about Aaron Ramos (Magnus TV) who bought two houses from the profits he earned from playing Axie Infinity. He attributed it to the surging price of SLP, which is what players earn in the game when they win battles. 

“I believed in AXIE’s ability to lift us up, I held an SLP, paid attention to the trend of AXIE Community and did some research […] then I played with the price of SLP to have enough funds to buy two houses and one team,” Aaron told Cointelegraph.

For Filipinos, Axie Infinity Is More Than a Crypto Game

This article from Leah Callon-Butler deep dived into the “play-to-earn” mechanics of Axie Infinity and how it was possible in Axie and not in other games. And indeed the success stories are wild — from people who bought food for their families, to families who were able to pay for their kids’ tuition fees. Some even bought land. Real life land. 

Play-to-Earn

Documentary to Show the Impact of Play-to-Earn in the Philippines

ANNOUNCEMENT: we are launching a documentary on play-to-earn this Thursday, May 13 at 9am ET following the lives of the people from Cabanatuan City, Philippines that were saved by playing Axie Infinity during the early lockdown period last year. Trailer: https://t.co/zkAnsXR79C

— Yield Guild Games (@YieldGuild) May 11, 2021

Yield Guild Games, a DAO that aims to bring more gamers to the play-to-earn ecosystem, announced that they have been working on a documentary, in collaboration with Axie Infinity, Delphi Digital, and Emfarsis. The latter directed “Play-to-earn” which documents the NFT gaming phenomenon in  the Philippines. Here’s a 30-second teaser clip:

The documentary is based in an article on Coindesk written by Leah Callon-Butler that first revealed how families in Cabanatuan had survived the middle of the lockdown by playing Axie Infinity. Earnings from Axie became food on the table, medicines, and basically their income all throughout the pandemic. In the documentary, travelled to Cabanatuan to meet the very people whose lives changed because of the game. 

Truth be told, I’m excited about the feedback the documentary will have. I think someone’s going to chop onions while I watch it.

Keep an eye out for the Play-to-earn channel on YouTube and the relevant Twitter pages to watch the documentary.

This article is published on BitPinas: Axie Infinity Secures Series A Funding as Yield Guild Games Announces Play-to-Earn Docu

Source: https://bitpinas.com/feature/axie-infinity-secures-series-a-funding-as-yield-guild-games-announces-play-to-earn-docu/