Introducing YGG’s Newest SubDAO, YGG Japan
Continuing in its efforts to develop a global, distributed community of players, Yield Guild Games has established YGG Japan, a subDAO that will promote blockchain gaming among the Japanese community, and curate and create content for all gamers at various regional and local levels in the country. This is in partnership with ForN, a game guild service based on a user community structured as a DAO, optimized for Japanese gaming culture.
The country of Japan houses over 52.7 million gamers, of which the majority are not aware of blockchain gaming and play-to-earn. Valued at US$22.1 billion, the current Japanese gaming market could significantly benefit by introducing existing gamers to new blockchain games that promise ownership of the value they generate in these virtual worlds.
Leading this effort, YGG Japan will scale the blockchain game market in the country by developing services that enable participation in gaming guilds, strengthening partnerships with existing guilds, offering scholarship programs in a variety of locally developed games, and providing a smooth onboarding process into Web3 for the Japanese population.
What YGG Japan Offers
Japan has some of the most well-known intellectual properties (IP) like Mario, Pac-Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon and Final Fantasy, which have been mainly limited to traditionally developed media such as manga, anime, and games. Many game publishers, game development studios, and companies in Japan create and distribute various types of content that can be explored in the play-to-earn space.
Leveraging Japan’s unique ecosystem, YGG Japan will provide development and marketing support for various blockchain games fueled by Japanese IP and produced by local companies to build a pipeline of games to millions of users around the world.
“We would love to onboard Japanese gamers and offer them opportunities to play, earn rewards, and learn about blockchain and crypto via gaming,” said Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG.
“YGG Japan will provide a lending hand to locally developed games and will use its guild of players to participate in these virtual economies. Japan has some of the most cherished and popular IP, and to bring this to play-to-earn games would be a dream come true for many,” he added.
YGG Japan has partnered with Gensokishi Online, a Japanese GameFi project inspired by the award-winning Elemental Knights game on Nintendo. The subDAO hosted a Twitter Spaces AMA last April to commemorate its first partnership with a blockchain game.
YGG Japan’s US$2.8M Incubation Round
YGG Japan recently raised US$2.8 million in funding from notable investors such as Infinity Ventures Crypto, Animoca Brands, YGG, YGG Southeast Asia, Akatsuki, double jump.tokyo, Crypto Games, Artiba Studios, Kii, and Days. The funding will be used to build products that will become the entry point for mass gamers in Japan.
“The history of games is being rewritten with Web3 and blockchain games,” said Tetsuya Fujiwara, CEO of YGG Japan. “We believe gaming guilds will be an irreplaceably essential hub that does not only connect games to players, but also connects everyone to be educated about the Metaverse.”
“YGG Japan and its exclusive partner, ForN, are committed to realizing ‘play-and-earn,’” Tetsuya added. “We want the players to play with ease and Japan to become a leading force in the world of blockchain games.”
YGG Japan’s Core Team
YGG Japan has assembled a team of leaders local to Japan who have years of experience in the gaming and tech space working with different brands and companies across the country:
Tetsuya Fujiwara is the founder of ForN and serves as the CEO of the company. Tetsuya worked at Netmarble Japan Inc. as the head of marketing, where he was in charge of the strategic numeric design, planning and production of several marketing initiatives. From there, he started GAMEPLEX, which was founded by the president of Netmarble independently.
Masamitsu Shiino produced many online games as part of the team at SEGA and served as the Director of the Strategic Planning Department and the Deputy Director of the Programming Department. Appointed as the President and Representative Director of GameBankCorporation, a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan Corporation. Subsequently, he was appointed as the Director of the Business Development Office at Netmarble Japan, where he was in charge of game development and alliance development in the country.
Kenju Kikuchi joined CROOZ taking charge of multiple areas of the game development division such as the product and marketing sections. He also served as the representative director and the head of a subsidiary company of the said group, and concurrently as the director of a business division in another subsidiary. After gaining experience in the establishment of several new businesses and business planning, he joined ForN as a Director.
Akio Tanaka is the founding partner of Headline Asia, a leading Asian venture capital firm, and the founding partner of Infinity Ventures Crypto, the most active crypto venture investment firm in Asia. He was formerly the head of the venture investment program for Adobe in Asia and was responsible for Adobe’s corporate venture investment in Greater China, Japan, and India. Previous to Adobe, Akio held the position of CTO for Macromedia Japan working as part of the local management team as well as the position of Technology Advisor to the CEO for Macromedia Inc.
Learn more about YGG Japan through their website, Medium, Discord and Twitter.
For more information about Yield Guild, read the YGG whitepaper here. Join the YGG Discord or follow us on Twitter for future updates.
