On a recent Tuesday night, around 20 people crowded into the second floor of Joniel Bon’s newly opened internet cafe in Quezon City, 10 miles from Manila.
Seated at computers with 34-inch curved monitors, they began playing video games such as Heroes of Mavia and Nifty Island, as music from Taylor Swift and Maroon 5 hummed from the speakers.
Playing these games can be a full-time job, and some of Mr. Bon’s customers had settled in for the night with slices of pizza to fuel them.
The games reward players with cryptocurrency tokens for completing small, daily challenges.
Often, players convert their tokens to pesos, the country’s currency, earning around twice the Philippines’ minimum wage of $11 a day.
Persons:
Taylor Swift
Locations:
Quezon City, Manila, Nifty, Philippines