{"id":7599,"date":"2021-04-15T08:21:05","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T12:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2021-04-15T19:32:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:32:34","slug":"gabby-dizon-making-computer-games-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2021\/04\/15\/gabby-dizon-making-computer-games-real","title":{"rendered":"You can make money playing in virtual worlds: Gabby Dizon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabby Dizon \u2014 co-founder of Altitude Games and Yield Guild Games \u2014 thinks the science fiction-inspired virtual reality Metaverse is being created all around us at increasing speed. “The Metaverse means different online worlds that are interconnected upon some form of shared economy. Usually, this economy is based on a blockchain,” explains Dizon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While he thinks we’re still “in the very, very early stages” of building it, blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity<\/a> and The Sandbox<\/a> are already developing robust in-game economies. Dizon believes it will snowball from here, as ever-increasing automation is making it increasingly hard for people to find jobs and a place in society.<\/p>\n

“A lot of people will be losing jobs in the physical world, and what will they be doing? I think they will be going online, and they will start playing games. Specifically, they will start playing games to earn money.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not entirely without precedent, as locals in hyperinflation-hit Venezuela have been mining<\/a> virtual gold for profit in the game RuneScape to feed their families for many years already.<\/p>\n

Dizon’s game design studio, Altitude Games, is based in Manila in the Philippines, where many Filipinos have managed to stay afloat through endless COVID-19 lockdowns by raising and selling NFT-creatures known as Axies<\/a>. Though his game design firm started out with free-to-play games, he is now helping build the leisure economy<\/a> through a play-to-earn gaming model.<\/p>\n

He believes that reinventing gaming is the answer to some of the world’s problems. “Play-to-earn has the opportunity to level the inequality of wealth that is happening in the world right now,” he says, full of optimism. This model is especially relevant in developing countries where it has already become reality.<\/p>\n

In 2020, he co-founded Yield Guild Games as a guild for players, many of whom are active investors ,buying up a portfolio of income-earning in-game NFTs in a swath of blockchain games.<\/p>\n

Play-to-earn<\/h4>\n

Back in the day, gamers paid the purchase price just once for video games that provided endless gameplay, with levels unlocked by way of in-game progression. Then came pay-to-play, which required players to make small purchases to unlock levels or abilities by which to progress.<\/p>\n

Free-to-play is another model that can be played for free, though benefits can usually be purchased. Often, such games have purchasable loot boxes<\/a> containing random in-game goods. This has proven controversial, with European Union regulators calling them “problematic design features” and some countries like Belgium deeming them a form of gambling.<\/p>\n

Play-to-earn is a somewhat radical concept that suggests that players actually earn money through the process of gameplay, usually by performing tasks to earn items of benefit to other players. An early example of play-to-earn is found on centralized multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and Runescape, where players can earn in-game gold that can then be sold to other players in exchange for fiat on exchanges like DMarket.<\/p>\n

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Dizon explains that “The problem with a lot of the gold farming in games like World of Warcraft and Runescape was that the gold operations were set up basically in sweatshops,” which caused the supply of in-game currency to rise. This led to in-game items getting more expensive, making gameplay more complicated. “These games themselves were not built for that kind of inflation, so value ended up being extracted from the game and harming the in-game economy overall,” he continued.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s different with blockchain games.<\/p>\n

Gamers in the Philippines can earn<\/a> three times the minimum wage by playing blockchain games. While computer games are a free or low-cost pastime for many around the world, especially considering the global lockdowns due to COVID-19, a growing number of people have realized there’s money to be made playing:<\/p>\n

“They are gamers who are playing League of Legends six hours a day. Then they see on Facebook that some of their friends are getting rich playing this game, and they think, ‘Like, how is that possible?’ So, they pop into our Discord.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once inside the Yield Games Guild Discord channel, they soon learn the basics of how to get started. This includes setting up a Metamask wallet and security tips around never revealing their private keys or seed phrases. At present, Yield Games focuses on teaching newcomers how to earn money in Axie Infinity, a game where players buy, raise, trade and battle creatures called “Axies.” Since the game runs on Small Love Potion tokens,\u00a0which can easily be traded on Uniswap and other DEXs, there is real money at play.<\/p>\n

“You don’t need to be anyone special or highly educated to do it. You do have to be computer literate and have a mobile phone with internet and some gaming aptitude \u2014 and then you can start earning money,” Dizon explains.<\/p>\n

A key to making play-to-earn a reality, according to Dizon, is to make the process easy to understand. Knowledge about blockchain technology is not required. “When I want to drive a car, or when I start a car, I don’t necessarily know how the combustion engine works,” he explains. “You shouldn’t really have to know how a distributed ledger works to use it in a gaming context.”<\/p>\n

Bringing the IP home<\/h4>\n

Dizon remembers being around computers since he was three years old. That first computer was a 1981 Commodore VIC-20, which his father \u2014 an engineer who would often travel to the United States on business \u2014 brought home to the Manila suburb where Dizon grew up. He became interested in games at the age of six, recalling that the Commodore “had a few games \u2014 it had Hangman, it had Chess, and one or two more.”<\/p>\n

He attended Ateneo de Manila University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in management information systems in 2000. “I wanted to make games, and it was tough when I graduated because there were no companies that were making games,” he recalls of the lack of gaming studios in the Philippines at the time. His first job was in PHP web development, but when he saw a job posting for game developers in Manila three years later, he couldn’t believe his eyes.<\/p>\n

Dizon remembers going to visit the Anino Entertainment game studio after applying. “There were several people kind of sleeping on the couches and making what became the first game in the Philippines. I really loved the energy, and I’ve been in games ever since.”<\/p>\n

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