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You can make money playing in virtual worlds: Gabby Dizon

Altitude Games CEO Gabby Dizon 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

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3 years ago

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Altitude Games CEO Gabby Dizon 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, who also heads Yield Guild Games.

While he thinks we’re still “in the very, very early stages” of building it, blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity and The Sandbox 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.

“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.”

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

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. Though his game design firm started out with free-to-play games, he is now helping build the leisure economy through a play-to-earn gaming model.

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.

In 2020, he co-founded Yield Guild Games as a guild of investors buying up a portfolio of income-earning in-game NFTs in a swath of blockchain games.

Play-to-earn

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.

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 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.

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.

 

 

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.

Its different with blockchain games.

Gamers in the Philippines can earn 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:

“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.”

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,which can easily be traded on Uniswap and other DEXs, there is real money at play.

“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 and then you can start earning money,” Dizon explains.

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.”

Bringing the IP home

Dizon remembers being around computers since he was three years old. That first computer was a 1981 Commodore VIC-20, which his father an engineer who would often travel to the United States on business 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 it had Hangman, it had Chess, and one or two more.”

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.

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.”

 

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In the 2000s, the IT industry in the Philippines was almost entirely based on outsourcing. Dizon had his own outsourcing business, FlipSide Games, where he oversaw Filipino designers working on behalf of overseas clients from 2005 to 2009. But this interaction sat uncomfortably with him, as he felt that his countrymen were getting the short end of the stick due to receiving no intellectual property rights. The rich countries were trading money for the fruits of Filipino creativity.

“The usual case was that someone in America or Europe or Japan would outsource their work to the Philippines where workers would get paid a fixed rate, but they would never really make their own intellectual property. I really got tired of that, so I closed down the business.”

In 2009, he joined Boomzap Entertainment, a small independent firm that was creating its own games in Manila. “They were making their own intellectual property, and that’s what I really wanted to do to make my own IP,” Dizon remembers with pride.

Four years later in 2014, he grew restless and decided that it was time to work for himself again. “I knew that the next step was that I wanted to have my own company again, but creating my own IP this time,” he says. Dizon founded Altitude Games, a studio creating free-to-play games in Manila. Game titles include Dream Defense and Kung Fu Clicker, with the latter boasting over a million downloads.

His company had difficulty raising money because local investors did not understand the business model of creating IP locally. International investors were similarly wary of funding a game studio in the Philippines.

 


 

Fundraising was very hard, and it was very unusual for a startup from Southeast Asia to be able to raise money fast, he recalls. There was a sense that all of Southeast Asia was behind, always playing catch-up to more advanced countries.

Doing what others did a decade earlier did not appeal to Dizon. He wanted to be at the bleeding edge. That’s why the company got into blockchain.

“I felt like for the first time in my career, I was in front of a trend learning about smart contracts at the same time as almost everybody else in the world. You could be one of the leading experts in the world in something and still be based in the Philippines.”

The company’s first blockchain game, Battle Racers, allows users to design and race model cars in Decentraland.

 

 

Into the Metaverse

Last year, Dizon founded Yield Guild Games with the help of 2,500 investors from around the world. The company invests in yield-earning in-game NFTs within blockchain games, and there are plans to turn the venture into a decentralized autonomous organization.

“The guild owns the entities inside these games,” he says, referring to in-game elements that take the form of NFTs, such as in-game real estate. In addition to Axie Infinity and The Sandbox, some of the blockchain games the guild has invested in include F1 Delta Time, League of Kingdoms and Star Atlas.

“The nice thing about these blockchain games is that they are enabled with marketplaces from day one. We actually work in tandem with the developers so that we invest in the economy, and of course, our players take some proceeds of that.”

Dizon sees his work as that of an early pioneer laying out the roads for a coming megacity. He is also a collector of NFT art, which he displays in the Narra Gallery in Decentraland.

 

 

“We bring in the manpower that’s required to populate it [the Metaverse]. We bring them from all over the world, and it gives you equal opportunity whether you’re from the Philippines or from Nigeria or from France,” he says, adding that the Metaverse does not discriminate based on things like skin color, age or location roadblocks that Dizon himself has encountered.

“For me, it’s like we’re settling a new nation in the same way that America was being settled in the 1700s. We’re now settling a digital nation with people who are aiming for a home from around the world.”

Dizon is confident that the range of play-to-earn jobs will expand. “There’s a whole set of jobs that are available in the Metaverse, and it will look a lot less and less like just, you know, killing monsters and getting loot, and it will be more about the different things that are needed to make a town really be alive,” he predicts.

Dizon stresses that there is a need for all types of skill sets to help build these virtual worlds, including programmers, artists, fashion designers, storytellers and architects, to name a few.

He has one piece of advice for anyone of any age, from anywhere, who wants to join the revolution.

“Start by joining a community, and provide value to that community. […] As long as you’re providing value to a community in the Metaverse, you will find your own place in it.”

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Key shipping company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

The Illinois-based general freight trucking company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize.

Published

7 hours ago

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March 14, 2024

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The U.S. trucking industry has had a difficult beginning of the year for 2024 with several logistics companies filing for bankruptcy to seek either a Chapter 7 liquidation or Chapter 11 reorganization.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a lot of supply chain issues for logistics companies and also created a shortage of truck drivers as many left the business for other occupations. Shipping companies, in the meantime, have had extreme difficulty recruiting new drivers for thousands of unfilled jobs.

Related: Tesla rival’s filing reveals Chapter 11 bankruptcy is possible

Freight forwarder company Boateng Logistics joined a growing list of shipping companies that permanently shuttered their businesses as the firm on Feb. 22 filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with plans to liquidate.

The Carlsbad, Calif., logistics company filed its petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California listing assets up to $50,000 and and $1 million to $10 million in liabilities. Court papers said it owed millions of dollars in liabilities to trucking, logistics and factoring companies. The company filed bankruptcy before any creditors could take legal action.

Lawsuits force companies to liquidate in bankruptcy

Lawsuits, however, can force companies to file bankruptcy, which was the case for J.J. & Sons Logistics of Clint, Texas, which on Jan. 22 filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Texas. The company filed bankruptcy four days before the scheduled start of a trial for a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a former company truck driver who had died from drowning in 2016.

California-based logistics company Wise Choice Trans Corp. shut down operations and filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on Jan. 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, listing $1 million to $10 million in assets and liabilities.

The Hayward, Calif., third-party logistics company, founded in 2009, provided final mile, less-than-truckload and full truckload services, as well as warehouse and fulfillment services in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Chapter 7 filing also implemented an automatic stay against all legal proceedings, as the company listed its involvement in four legal actions that were ongoing or concluded. Court papers reportedly did not list amounts for damages.

In some cases, debtors don't have to take a drastic action, such as a liquidation, and can instead file a Chapter 11 reorganization.

Truck shipping products.

Shutterstock

Nationwide Cargo seeks to reorganize its business

Nationwide Cargo Inc., a general freight trucking company that also hauls fresh produce and meat, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois with plans to reorganize its business.

The East Dundee, Ill., shipping company listed $1 million to $10 million in assets and $10 million to $50 million in liabilities in its petition and said funds will not be available to pay unsecured creditors. The company operates with 183 trucks and 171 drivers, FreightWaves reported.

Nationwide Cargo's three largest secured creditors in the petition were Equify Financial LLC (owed about $3.5 million,) Commercial Credit Group (owed about $1.8 million) and Continental Bank NA (owed about $676,000.)

The shipping company reported gross revenue of about $34 million in 2022 and about $40 million in 2023.  From Jan. 1 until its petition date, the company generated $9.3 million in gross revenue.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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Key shipping company files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

The Illinois-based general freight trucking company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize.

Published

7 hours ago

on

March 14, 2024

By

The U.S. trucking industry has had a difficult beginning of the year for 2024 with several logistics companies filing for bankruptcy to seek either a Chapter 7 liquidation or Chapter 11 reorganization.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a lot of supply chain issues for logistics companies and also created a shortage of truck drivers as many left the business for other occupations. Shipping companies, in the meantime, have had extreme difficulty recruiting new drivers for thousands of unfilled jobs.

Related: Tesla rival’s filing reveals Chapter 11 bankruptcy is possible

Freight forwarder company Boateng Logistics joined a growing list of shipping companies that permanently shuttered their businesses as the firm on Feb. 22 filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with plans to liquidate.

The Carlsbad, Calif., logistics company filed its petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California listing assets up to $50,000 and and $1 million to $10 million in liabilities. Court papers said it owed millions of dollars in liabilities to trucking, logistics and factoring companies. The company filed bankruptcy before any creditors could take legal action.

Lawsuits force companies to liquidate in bankruptcy

Lawsuits, however, can force companies to file bankruptcy, which was the case for J.J. & Sons Logistics of Clint, Texas, which on Jan. 22 filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Texas. The company filed bankruptcy four days before the scheduled start of a trial for a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a former company truck driver who had died from drowning in 2016.

California-based logistics company Wise Choice Trans Corp. shut down operations and filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on Jan. 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, listing $1 million to $10 million in assets and liabilities.

The Hayward, Calif., third-party logistics company, founded in 2009, provided final mile, less-than-truckload and full truckload services, as well as warehouse and fulfillment services in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Chapter 7 filing also implemented an automatic stay against all legal proceedings, as the company listed its involvement in four legal actions that were ongoing or concluded. Court papers reportedly did not list amounts for damages.

In some cases, debtors don't have to take a drastic action, such as a liquidation, and can instead file a Chapter 11 reorganization.

Truck shipping products.

Shutterstock

Nationwide Cargo seeks to reorganize its business

Nationwide Cargo Inc., a general freight trucking company that also hauls fresh produce and meat, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois with plans to reorganize its business.

The East Dundee, Ill., shipping company listed $1 million to $10 million in assets and $10 million to $50 million in liabilities in its petition and said funds will not be available to pay unsecured creditors. The company operates with 183 trucks and 171 drivers, FreightWaves reported.

Nationwide Cargo's three largest secured creditors in the petition were Equify Financial LLC (owed about $3.5 million,) Commercial Credit Group (owed about $1.8 million) and Continental Bank NA (owed about $676,000.)

The shipping company reported gross revenue of about $34 million in 2022 and about $40 million in 2023.  From Jan. 1 until its petition date, the company generated $9.3 million in gross revenue.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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Tight inventory and frustrated buyers challenge agents in Virginia

With inventory a little more than half of what it was pre-pandemic, agents are struggling to find homes for clients in Virginia.

Published

10 hours ago

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March 14, 2024

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No matter where you are in the state, real estate agents in Virginia are facing low inventory conditions that are creating frustrating scenarios for their buyers.

“I think people are getting used to the interest rates where they are now, but there is just a huge lack of inventory,” said Chelsea Newcomb, a RE/MAX Realty Specialists agent based in Charlottesville. “I have buyers that are looking, but to find a house that you love enough to pay a high price for — and to be at over a 6.5% interest rate — it’s just a little bit harder to find something.”

Newcomb said that interest rates and higher prices, which have risen by more than $100,000 since March 2020, according to data from Altos Research, have caused her clients to be pickier when selecting a home.

“When rates and prices were lower, people were more willing to compromise,” Newcomb said.

Out in Wise, Virginia, near the westernmost tip of the state, RE/MAX Cavaliers agent Brett Tiller and his clients are also struggling to find suitable properties.

“The thing that really stands out, especially compared to two years ago, is the lack of quality listings,” Tiller said. “The slightly more upscale single-family listings for move-up buyers with children looking for their forever home just aren’t coming on the market right now, and demand is still very high.”

Statewide, Virginia had a 90-day average of 8,068 active single-family listings as of March 8, 2024, down from 14,471 single-family listings in early March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Altos Research. That represents a decrease of 44%.

Virginia-Inventory-Line-Chart-Virginia-90-day-Single-Family

In Newcomb’s base metro area of Charlottesville, there were an average of only 277 active single-family listings during the same recent 90-day period, compared to 892 at the onset of the pandemic. In Wise County, there were only 56 listings.

Due to the demand from move-up buyers in Tiller’s area, the average days on market for homes with a median price of roughly $190,000 was just 17 days as of early March 2024.

“For the right home, which is rare to find right now, we are still seeing multiple offers,” Tiller said. “The demand is the same right now as it was during the heart of the pandemic.”

According to Tiller, the tight inventory has caused homebuyers to spend up to six months searching for their new property, roughly double the time it took prior to the pandemic.

For Matt Salway in the Virginia Beach metro area, the tight inventory conditions are creating a rather hot market.

“Depending on where you are in the area, your listing could have 15 offers in two days,” the agent for Iron Valley Real Estate Hampton Roads | Virginia Beach said. “It has been crazy competition for most of Virginia Beach, and Norfolk is pretty hot too, especially for anything under $400,000.”

According to Altos Research, the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News housing market had a seven-day average Market Action Index score of 52.44 as of March 14, making it the seventh hottest housing market in the country. Altos considers any Market Action Index score above 30 to be indicative of a seller’s market.

Virginia-Beach-Metro-Area-Market-Action-Index-Line-Chart-Virginia-Beach-Norfolk-Newport-News-VA-NC-90-day-Single-Family

Further up the coastline on the vacation destination of Chincoteague Island, Long & Foster agent Meghan O. Clarkson is also seeing a decent amount of competition despite higher prices and interest rates.

“People are taking their time to actually come see things now instead of buying site unseen, and occasionally we see some seller concessions, but the traffic and the demand is still there; you might just work a little longer with people because we don’t have anything for sale,” Clarkson said.

“I’m busy and constantly have appointments, but the underlying frenzy from the height of the pandemic has gone away, but I think it is because we have just gotten used to it.”

While much of the demand that Clarkson’s market faces is for vacation homes and from retirees looking for a scenic spot to retire, a large portion of the demand in Salway’s market comes from military personnel and civilians working under government contracts.

“We have over a dozen military bases here, plus a bunch of shipyards, so the closer you get to all of those bases, the easier it is to sell a home and the faster the sale happens,” Salway said.

Due to this, Salway said that existing-home inventory typically does not come on the market unless an employment contract ends or the owner is reassigned to a different base, which is currently contributing to the tight inventory situation in his market.

Things are a bit different for Tiller and Newcomb, who are seeing a decent number of buyers from other, more expensive parts of the state.

“One of the crazy things about Louisa and Goochland, which are kind of like suburbs on the western side of Richmond, is that they are growing like crazy,” Newcomb said. “A lot of people are coming in from Northern Virginia because they can work remotely now.”

With a Market Action Index score of 50, it is easy to see why people are leaving the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria market for the Charlottesville market, which has an index score of 41.

In addition, the 90-day average median list price in Charlottesville is $585,000 compared to $729,900 in the D.C. area, which Newcomb said is also luring many Virginia homebuyers to move further south.

Median-Price-D.C.-vs.-Charlottesville-Line-Chart-90-day-Single-Family

“They are very accustomed to higher prices, so they are super impressed with the prices we offer here in the central Virginia area,” Newcomb said.

For local buyers, Newcomb said this means they are frequently being outbid or outpriced.

“A couple who is local to the area and has been here their whole life, they are just now starting to get their mind wrapped around the fact that you can’t get a house for $200,000 anymore,” Newcomb said.

As the year heads closer to spring, triggering the start of the prime homebuying season, agents in Virginia feel optimistic about the market.

“We are seeing seasonal trends like we did up through 2019,” Clarkson said. “The market kind of soft launched around President’s Day and it is still building, but I expect it to pick right back up and be in full swing by Easter like it always used to.”

But while they are confident in demand, questions still remain about whether there will be enough inventory to support even more homebuyers entering the market.

“I have a lot of buyers starting to come off the sidelines, but in my office, I also have a lot of people who are going to list their house in the next two to three weeks now that the weather is starting to break,” Newcomb said. “I think we are going to have a good spring and summer.”

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