All aboard the Axie Infinity hype train

Early bird or second mouse?

Since the introduction of its own Ethereum-linked side-chain, Ronin, a Pokémon-style game called Axie Infinity has been making headlines all over the place. Good for them. And great for all those play-to-earn people in the Philippines supplementing or outright replacing their monthly income by breeding cute characters.

I’ll have more to say on crypto-gaming in the coming weeks, but for now allow me to throw some cold water on the current exuberance.

Let’s start here. “Every generation thinks it invented sex, and every generation is wrong.” Naturally, catching a wave early on is cause for celebration. More so, the immense, overnight success of a company that kept fine-tuning its gaming during the “crypto-winter” prior to the recent explosion in popularity.

Axie Infinity’s leadership may nonetheless be getting somewhat ahead of themselves. What all the VC fanboys seem to be missing is that how rare it is to score a hit game, and rarer still to become the type of gaming sensation that pull…