CoinGecko Virtual Meetup Featured Guest: Aleksander Leonard Larson (Co-founder of Axie Infinity & Sky Mavis)

CoinGecko will be hosting our Virtual Meetup #3 this coming Wednesday, June 10 @ 10AM EST.  Held monthly, CoinGecko Virtual Meetup is our live online community event where we explore different key topics in the crypto sphere and invite industry leaders to share their two satoshis.

This month, we will be exploring developments in blockchain games and one of our featured guests is Aleksander Leonard Larson, co-founder of  Axie Infinity and Sky Mavis. Axie Infinity is a digital game universe centred around collecting, training, raising, and battling fantasy creatures called Axie. The game combines collectable NFT assets with card and skill game mechanics.  

1. Tell us a bit about yourself

I'm Aleksander, the COO and one of the co-founders of Sky Mavis, which is the company that created Axie Infinity. My main responsibilities in Sky Mavis are making sure we get things covered on the business side and I handle things like funding, partnerships, legal and more.

Before Axie, I worked as a manager in the Norwegian state. All my free time was spent as a competitive gamer and content creator in the Dota space and I played at a very high level for many years. I've also founded various communities and e-sports leagues over the years.

2. What was the idea behind your company?

We felt that NFTs represented a paradigm shift in the gaming industry, and set out on a journey to create a fun and beautiful game universe that highlighted the benefits of blockchain technology in an easy way.

3. What project(s) are you up to lately?

At the moment Axie Infinity requires crypto know-how. Right now we are focused on removing that barrier so that we can launch it to the mainstream in early 2021. That includes tackling several large challenges at the same time: scalability, true ownership in a very complex economy, user experience for crypto products, mass adoption (especially lowering entry barrier) for crypto products, and let's not forget gameplay design.

4. What is one thing you think needs to happen for mass adoption of blockchain games?

In the end it all comes down to delivering a game that is fun and easy to use while enabling new possibilities for players. Until now no developer has been able to do that due to the lack of experience and bad infrastructure. 

Creating an amazing game is very hard, creating an amazing blockchain game is an order of magnitude harder at this stage. Improvements are happening fast though, and I expect we will see a great game launch very soon.

Once we see a breakout hit, more developers will be attracted to building blockchain games which again will lead to more players.

Join us at CoinGecko Virtual Meetup this Wednesday (10 June 2020) to learn more about the future of blockchain games.