ViaBTC｜What is the Charm of the Rising Guilds Amid the Ongoing Boom of Blockchain Games
Ever since ancient times, teamwork, or the so-called “sticking together”, has been what humans are best at. This is also true in games. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has left millions jobless. These people have been forced to stay at home until things turn around. During the same period, young people in the Philippines sensed a get-rich-quick opportunity in a blockchain game called Axie Infinity. The word soon spread around, and Axie went viral in the country. The profits made by the average Philippine player has been even higher than the local per capita income.
However, the surge in the number of players has led to the skyrocketing of initial investment costs. At its height, the cost of playing Axie stood at about $3,000. For most players in the Philippines, a developing economy, such costs are simply unaffordable. This triggered the appearance of Yield Guild Games (YGG). By purchasing Axies and leasing them to players, YGG allows players to profit from the game without paying the high costs. Such organizations that gather players together and function as the hub between games and players are also known as gaming guilds (in the case of Axie, blockchain gaming guilds).
Blockchain gaming guilds now have developed a full set of services, covering player recruitment, training, lending of in-game assets, etc. Moreover, they have started to support games other than Axie Infinity. The existing guilds focus on many trending concepts, including the metaverse, DeFi, Web 3.0, and DAO. They are run by a bottom-up organizational model where community members participate in governance through proposals and votes.
Recently, GuildFi, a Thailand-based guild, has received a $6 million seed investment jointly led by DeFiance Capital and Hashed. According to GuildFi, it is the interconnected ecosystem of games, NFTs, and communities, with an aim to maximize players’ benefits and enable interoperability across the metaverse. To achieve this goal, GuildFi has introduced the GuildFi ID, which resembles the Apple ID. The ID records the stats of all blockchain games a player ever played on the platform, including their achievements, participation, and rankings.
GuildFi also uses GuildFi ID to analyze players’ in-game performance and distributes additional rewards to outstanding players. These players will even be invited to become whitelist users and participate in the beta test of new games. Although GuildFi now only offers two games, CYBALL and Axie Infinity, it is reportedly negotiating the launch of other three popular games, Big Time, Nyan Heroes, and Sipher, which may soon be available on GuildFi. In this sense, GuildFi is no longer just a blockchain gaming guild. It is more like a hub that connects players and developers. If you are interested in GuildFi, go and find out more about the platform on its official website.
Recently, other than GuildFi, BAYZ, a gaming guild in Brazil, has also received investments from big-name institutions, including Sebastien Borget, cofounder of The Sandbox, and Jeff Zirlin, cofounder of Axie Infinity. Brazil boasts the world’s third-largest gaming population: Of the 212 million Brazilians, 95 million identify themselves as game enthusiasts. Despite this, 55 million of them do not own a bank account, and these people are all potential blockchain gamers. Predictably, BAYZ will play a vital role in the development of blockchain games in Brazil.
In the past, guilds are small organizations created by players seeking peers who are willing to work as a team and share experience points. As they continue to evolve, today’s blockchain gaming guilds have become the essential link between games and players, making them one of the indispensable tools in the field of blockchain games.
To a great extent, the current boom of blockchain games is driven by, apart from their own advantages, guilds. Moreover, these organizations fully practice the concept of DAO. In a way, the success of such guilds is natural because they have incorporated the most trending concepts, spanning NFT, DeFi, the metaverse, Web 3.0, and DAO.
A final tip, whether it is a guild or blockchain game, make sure to do your research and make rational investments.
