Last semester, I had enrolled in a Social Psychology course at the I-School in Berkeley. It was an exciting course, and I later pursued an independent study under the Prof. This post, however, focuses on the capstone project that I had undertaken in April as part of the course with two other students- a CS Ph.D. student and a Game Design student. We were interested in doing projects related to the open metaverse, and Axie Infinity felt like an interesting game. The game went viral in the last week of June 2021, and much has been written about it since. This post is to share the paper that we had written to apply a Social Psychology lens to the game.

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Abstract:

We apply the principles of social exchange and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to a qualitative study of a blockchain-based game - Axie Infinity. We aim to study how blockchain techniques affect the game design and social exchange aspect in Axie Infinity. The study illustrates that (1) blockchains can serve as the assurance structure in social exchange and provide additional properties to further facilitate financial transactions; (2) the financial benefits of a ‘play to earn’ games do not always crowd out the intrinsic motivations for playing a game; (3) human interactions in Axie Infinity community are more friendly and supportive than communities of traditional games. We conclude with implications for design and future research.

Link to our paper: Axie Infinity: Motivations and Financial Assurances in Blockchain-Based Games