It has been difficult for games like Axie Infinity to acquire players in the developed world because many gamers despise NFTs and these games look and play like free-to-play phone or browser apps, but require players to buy hundreds of dollars worth of NFTs to get started.

Which is a very gentle way of saying that Axie Infinity sucks as a game.

This is my basic problem with the NFT game economy - the gaming sucks. Nobody makes any attempt to hide it. None of it was driven by a burning desire to make something fun, it's just another grift. I got served an ad for Deepspace at some point, and I'm a sucker for that - I want games like Eve or Elite Dangerous or whatever to be actually fun rather than spreadsheets so okay, sure, I'm maybe 250 hours into No Man's Sky sign me up. And then they hit "drop day" or something like that and it was "first you need to buy a ship. The cheap ones are like $80 and the expensive ones are like $4000" and it doesn't even occur to this economy to maybe show me the damn gameplay first?

Compare and contrast:

The reason for this strict regulation of the game’s economy is cultural more than anything else: a recognition that Second Life is for living, not profiteering. Of the 900,000-odd monthly active users in the game last year, only 14,000 or so draw any kind of income from it. The rest come for the community, or to be different versions of themselves, or to find escape. During the lockdown, Second Life saw a surge in new registrations. Something similar had happened during the 2008 recession, Altberg said: a spike in players, higher engagement, the game offering “a reprieve from social and economic stressors.” But last year, many players who hadn’t logged on in years also returned, unable to pursue their full lives offline and spending increasing amounts of time online in any case. And they happened to spend some money while they were back.

This is you, realizing that Second Life still exists. That the "metaverse" has existed for nigh-on 20 goddamn years, and something under a million people hang out in it. That makes something like $70m a year, or about seventy bucks per user, and has its own land, and economy, and craftsmen, and has done since before GWB hung a "Mission Accomplished" banner on an aircraft carrier. And they... have not played any games with NFTs.

Know who else doesn't do NFTs? Roblox. The place where your kid can accidentally buy a $10,000 dress for her character? yeah nope. No NFTs. Eve, neither - you can buy a $33k spaceship but it ain't on the blockchain.

Gaming economies go back to warcraft gold farming in the '90s but nobody serious has done any blockchain stuff. As of last week, Gamestop is on Ethereum but they're looking squarely at collectibles. The gaming industry has figured this out - people will pay real money for useless farkles but the minute you have to pay money to have an edge? You're hated. Meanwhile games like Axie Infinity operate on the principle that the point of horse racing has nothing to do with actually watching big beasts go around a track real fast and is all about studding.

I am a big booster of NFTs - for what they're good for. But NFTs as they exist right now are basically Garbage Pail Kids for rich edgelords.