A 20-year-old crypto entrepreneur launched his first video game when he was 14. He jumped into NFTs and is now launching a play-to-earn game with the backing of 14,000 players

• Evandro Rodrigues created his first video game at 14 and pushed into the crypto world amid the pandemic.
• Now 20 years old, he's set to launch a new play-to-earn universe called House Game on Sunday.

Twenty-year-old Evandro Rodrigues attributes his deep-dive into NFTs to three things.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club — a series of "blue chip" digital collectibles he hopes to one day own one of. Beloved crypto influencer Gary Vee. And his friends who hyped up blockchain technology.

Those catalysts, he told Insider, caused him to go "all in" on on NFTs — which are digital collectibles minted on the blockchain — and invent House Game. In his play-to-earn universe, players can buy virtual houses and buildings, with each represented as unique NFTs that yield tokens and can be sold on the secondary market.

But Rodrigues isn't new to gaming. The Boston entrepreneur created his first video game when he was 14 years old. Once the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, he started investing in little-known cryptocurrencies with money he made from his job at Target as well as income from a successful web project and allowance from his parents.

The windfall from his crypto investments is powering his new venture creating the House Game, which he hopes will one day rival behemoths like Axie Infinity and Decentraland.

Rodrigues said he wanted to create an NFT collection that would be more useful than just becoming a Twitter profile picture. And he wanted the tokens in his game to outlast the initial hype and maintain their utility for the long-haul.

Once it launches on Sunday, House Game will have 7,000 unique digital houses and 700 unique digital utility buildings that users can mint on the blockchain. According to the whitepaper, each piece of digital real estate will yield $CASH, which is the utility token players get by staking buildings and can burn to earn ethereum on a weekly basis.

Upon launch, the game will have about 3,000 VIP players. On Discord, though, the game already has 14,000 members. The "strong community," according to Rodrigues, who is a Christian, is thanks in part to his hard work and faith. The server even includes a daily Bible verse channel.

After launching, Rodrigues said he and his team will continue working to add utility to allow players to do more with their NFTs and $CASH.

The game is just the first piece in Rodrigues' push into the world of NFTs, a market that swelled to $41 billion in 2021. He said the market for digital collectibles has many gaps, and as a serial entrepreneur and long-time developer, he said he plans on "filling a lot of these gaps." NFTs, he said, are at the mere dawn of their capabilities.

"I really do believe, and we're not too far from it, but down the line, NFTs replacing documents, replacing titles, replacing all these things," he said. "The technology is really new, and right now it's mainly being used for art, but this is just the beginning. There's so much more utilization with NFTs, with blockchain."