Written by: Mu Mu
After blue-chip NFTs such as Pudgy Penguin and Doodles started selling peripherals, Axie Infinity, the "originator" of the Web3 gold betting game, also started selling products.
Recently, Axie launched an online store to commercialize 4,877 NFTs in the game and make them into dolls, T-shirts, hoodies, cartoon stickers and other peripherals for sale. In order to boost sales, Axie will also give away free NFTs of Mystic Axie images to the first 5,000 buyers.
How to develop incremental markets is what Web3 brands are currently working on. The combination of NFT and Web3 games that produce NFT with physical objects is becoming one of the ways to expand influence and generate economic benefits.
Unfortunately, after the release of Axie peripherals, the transaction volume and community number of in-game NFTs have not increased significantly. This Web3 game IP seems to have not really reached the Web2 crowd. On the contrary, the return of the Axie Classic classic game not only brought activity, but also promoted the price of the game token AXS.
It can be seen that if Web3 games want to get out of the trough, they have to return to the game itself.
Unable to sell NFT, resell dolls
If you know the concept of Web3 games or GameFi, then you must have heard of Axie Infinity, which the Chinese-speaking circle likes to call "Axie".
This cute TGC game (trading card game) has been used by millions of Filipinos to supplement their families during the epidemic. The "Play To Earn" model of making money by playing games has also become a mainstream model of Web3 games due to Axie.
Axie Infinity was created by Sky Mavis. The game has two key features: players purchase NFT-based game characters to complete tasks, battles, upgrade NFT characters, or obtain in-game tokens AXS; and then earn revenue by selling AXS or NFT.
This model has even spawned the business of leasing game characters, and gold-playing game societies have emerged, which specialize in renting characters to players. Longer-tail derivative applications are pledging game NFTs and borrowing crypto assets such as USDT, BTC, and ETH.
Game therefore has the characteristics of Finance, and the concept of GameFi was born.
At its peak in 2021, Axie's highest daily revenue reached an astonishing US$17.5 million, daily active users (DAU) exceeded 1.5 million, and the project's total 30-day revenue reached US$300 million, surpassing the profitability of most traditional games.
But Axie didn’t stay at its peak for long. It began to show sluggish growth in more than half a year, and any marketing activities since then failed to bring it back to its peak. Crypto Slam data shows that by the end of November 2023, Axie’s monthly sales were only $28,000. DappRader data shows that the floor price and market value of Axie Infinity NFT have also hit the bottom.
Axie proved that chain games can reach millions of DAUs. The next question is how to break through tens of millions of DAUs. Some practitioners believe that this requires Web3 games to penetrate their influence into players of traditional Web2 games.
At the end of November this year, Axie began to do this, launching an online store that sells badges printed with the project logo, Axie character shirts, hats, accessories, Squishmallow-style plush toys, figures worth $300, etc., supporting encryption Dual payments in currency and fiat currency.
In addition to selling peripherals, Axie also encourages the UGC ecosystem and unlocks the copyright restrictions of 4877 NFTs in the Mystic and Origin series. Users who own these NFTs can sell their own designed products in the store. Not only that, they can also use the NFT characters they hold to develop Axie-themed industries, such as cafes, restaurants, comics and other businesses.
A more powerful move is that Axie Infinity cooperates with the Philippine taxi app Grab to launch a user points reward program to open distribution channels from mainstream Web2 applications. In the Grab App, users can visit Axie’s online store to purchase peripherals.
In addition, Axie has also cooperated with game development studios such as Tribes Studio, Bali Games, Directive Games and Bowled.io to allow some games to use Axie IP to make games.
It can be seen that Axie is working hard to open the boundaries of Web3 game IP and wants to strengthen its connection with the Web2 world in more areas, so as to expand the brand's popularity and long for the arrival of new traffic.
IP is not working, game improvement promotes growth
So, does this series of moves by Axie bring it new growth?
Data shows that since the launch of Axie's online store, the number of community members has not increased significantly, and it is not very attractive to incremental Web2 users. In fact, of the 11.9 million Axie character NFTs, less than 5,000 have had commercial restrictions lifted. According to Axie market data, this group of NFTs only accounts for 0.04% of all Axie NFTs.
Looking at Axie's dynamics in the past six months, it is not difficult to find that the real increase in daily activity is the game itself.
On November 22, just before Axie was launched in the online store, the game's classic series Axie Classic returned, upgrading the game experience, including allowing AXP character inheritance, increasing the AXS reward pool, and setting up the ultimate prize "Mysterious Ax". In addition, Axie has also lowered the threshold for entering the arena and removed the "energy" requirements of the game, allowing players to play without restrictions.
Axie Classic restart
The revamp of Axie Classic has reignited the passion of veteran players and attracted the interest of new players. In just a few days, Axie Classic's weekly active users have reached 100,000, and the price of AXS has also continued to rise.
Compared with the launch of NFT physical goods, actions based on improving gameplay will have a more immediate impact on Axie's data improvement. Axie has tasted the sweetness of this approach before.
On September 6 this year, the gold mining community Yield Guild Games (YGG) successfully completed the first super task event set by Axie Infinity on the Ronin network, and received a reward of 112,000 AXS tokens (approximately US$472,000). At that time, this wave of excitement also brought a new level of activity to Axie.
All this shows that Web3 game IP is far from breaking through, and marketing activities are still stirring up the existing market. New Web2 users are far more difficult to reach than old Web3 users.
No one denies that IP peripherals can make more people aware of the brand, but you must first win the title of "popular" through your own industry. For Web3 games, IP is not a timely help, it can only be regarded as the icing on the cake, and the timing is also particularly important.
During the golden age of American animation, the Mickey Mouse IP Club gained 1 million members in less than 4 years. This is because Disney first used animated stories to successfully penetrate the Mickey Mouse IP into the audience market, and then brought this IP to comics. , go into video games. By 2010, 40% of Disney's $1 billion in consumer products revenue came from Mickey merchandise.
The well-known NFT "BAYC" illustrates the importance of timing for IP. After Yuga Labs saw the exposure of "BAYC" in the Web2 market, it quickly promoted IP cooperation with traditional brands, attracting corporate marketing departments including China's Li Ning, and further promoted the "BAYC" IP to break out of the circle.
If Axie could launch peripheral stores and expand its brand influence when it first became popular, it would really be possible for it to become an IP that surpasses Web3 games.
Unfortunately, the time is gone and everything needs to be done again. Nowadays, what can really make Web3 games stick is game quality, gameplay and experience, and even profitability. These are more critical than the release of peripheral products. The recently popular Web3 game BigTime is an example.
Crypto KOL @0xJamesXXX believes, "Don't think about IP all day long, and various so-called rights empowerment." He pointed out that the most important thing in any NFT community is "people", a person who has community consensus and can generate value. The project has defeated 99% of NFT projects.
IP is not a panacea, and it also poses a challenge to Web3 games: whether to build products that Web3 players are really interested in, or to use traditional Internet methods to cater to new Web2 users.
Now that Axie has chosen to do both, this IP will have to wait for the next release of the game itself.
