For years, millions of young people have dreamed of being able to earn a living from doing what they love more than anything else – playing video games. Up until recently, it was of course nothing more than just a fantasy.
Unless you were literally one of the best gamers in the world, good enough to get into the eSports industry, the reality was the drudgery of a nine-to-five shift at the office or the factory, with only a few hours to get on the console and wind down in the evening, before heading back out to work the next day.
Well, that has since changed. With the arrival of the crypto gaming industry, play-to-earn is now a reality. These days, there are thousands of people who’re earning a living simply from playing games all day, especially in low income countries such as the Philippines.
P2E games reward players with real-life benefits such as cryptocurrency and NFTs. It has been reported that some have earned thousands of dollars a month simply from playing games such as Axie Infinity full time – more than enough to ensure a comfortable living in many countries.
The popularity of P2E games has mushroomed over the last year, however, and nowadays it’s very difficult to get in. P2E games have a big barrier to entry, as players are required to invest in expensive NFTs before they can start playing. As a result, we’ve seen the rapid rise of crypto gaming guilds that promise a solution to this problem.
What Are Crypto Gaming Guilds?
Crypto gaming guilds are very different to the original guilds such as FaZe Clan, Cloud9 and Team Liquid that were formed around traditional video games. Those guilds were formed primarily for fun, giving players a way to organize around the games they love, team up with each other and do battle against players from rival guilds.
While crypto gaming guilds retain the same spirit with lively communities, they’re all about business too. The main idea of crypto gaming guilds is to make money, which they do by acquiring the expensive NFTs needed to access P2E games and then renting them out to the hottest prospects they can find – talented gamers who cannot afford to buy the tokens themselves.
Guild’s players are known as “scholars” and they commit to sharing a portion of whatever rewards they earn with the guild. Those profits are then reinvested in several ways, either to buy more NFTs and expand the guild, or in training and educational material that’s made available to other prospects. Some even go further, establishing mentorship programs, for example.
The majority of crypto gaming guilds are decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which is a community governance model. Members of the guild can acquire governance tokens, which give holders the right to make proposals and vote on them, meaning the community gets to decide things such as which NFTs it should buy and what games it should focus on.
While joining a guild is easy, becoming a scholar can be quite a challenge. Evert guild has some kind of page where players can apply to become a scholar. They usually also operate Discord channels where it’s possible to learn more about the guild and apply. However, most guilds have waiting lists with several thousand names on them, because only the best prospects will be selected.
These days there are literally dozens of crypto gaming guilds around, but the following three stand out head and shoulders above the rest.
Yield Guild Games
By far and away the largest guild of all, Yield Guild Games boasted a market cap of more than $292 million in March, down from an all-time high of $720 million in November last year. The guild was one of the first to emerge, having been founded back in 2020 by Axie Infinity player Gabby Dizon.
Since being founded, YGG has raised more than $28.4 million in funding across five rounds from backers including Animoca Brands and BlockTower Capital.
Unsurprisingly, YGG sees itself as the “Guild of Guilds” due to its enormous size. At the end of last year, it reported that it has more than 10,000 scholars from more than 10 countries on Axie Infinity alone. Those scholars share 10% of all rewards they earn with YGG.
YGG has its own native ERC-20 governance token, $YGG, which is backed by its NFT assets. Its tokenomics borrow from those of other crypto projects, with all investors required to lockup their tokens for two years to protect against a huge dump of tokens on the market. YGG also operates a three year vesting period for the tokens it owns.
YGG is plotting a big future, with plans to move to a full DAO governance structure, expand into new, upcoming P2E games and even launchpad for new crypto gaming projects.
Balthazar
It might not be as big as YGG at the moment, but Balthazar is nonetheless one of the most intriguing crypto gaming guilds around. The key difference between Balthazar and other guilds is that it operates a different business model. Rather than acquiring NFTs and building up its own asset base, what Balthazar does is rent NFTs from other players before loaning them to its scholars, earning a portion of the rewards they generate.
Balthazar CEO John Stefanidis said in a recent interview the guild has opted for this model because, while it’s long on the P2E gaming industry, no one can be sure which titles will endure. Therefore there’s a danger that the NFTs purchased by other guilds might lose their value.
“We want to stay as asset-light as possible,” Stefanidis said.
Balthazar’s native $BGG token supply is capped at 2 billion, and is used for DAO governance, P2E rewards, staking, lock-up bonuses and will also be a currency for future P2E games.
Balthazar is also working to launch a new marketplace called Balthazar Buy with the idea of attracting investors. The marketplace will list NFTs recommended by Balthazar, so investors can buy them and then immediately rent them out to one of its scholars to generate an income.
Its other projects include a gaming launchpad for new P2E titles. Right now, the majority of its 1,500 live scholars play games such as Axie Infinity, Splinterlands, Thetan Area and Pegaxy. Its scholar waitlist currently lists over 50,000 names, while its Discord has more than 70,000 members.
Good Games Guild
Another fairly new but equally promising guild is Good Games Guild. At present, it only has 300 or so scholars but it is growing fast. It also has over 117,000 followers on Twitter, proving its popularity.
Like the others, Good Games Guild is a DAO, with community led management and governance. It earns 20% of the revenue generated by its scholars.
The real reason to believe in Good Games Guild is its long list of high-profile backers and partners. The guild raised $1.7 million in October 2021 from investors including Animoca Brands, Illuvium, OKEx, Blockdream Ventures and others. Meanwhile its biggest partners include Titan Hunter, DopeWars, Gamestation, and The Monopolist.
The Good Games Guild has its own token, $GGG, which is capped at 100 million. The current market cap of $GGG is just around $3.5 million, pretty low in comparison to some other guilds. However, with the limited supply and the guild’s clear potential, that does make it an interesting one to follow.
There are of course dozens of other promising gaming guilds around that are making waves in the P2E space. The GameFi industry is growing fast and it promises to change the video games landscape forever. It’s one of the most promising use cases for blockchain, and one that could someday give millions of gamers around the world the chance to fulfill their dreams, doing nothing else but sitting and earning money from doing what they love.
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