Yield Guild Games: Community Update — February 2024
The following overview features key highlights from the latest Yield Guild Games (YGG) Community Update covering Q4 2023 to February 2024. This update includes news about YGG’s core products and recent acquisitions, the latest initiatives of the YGG network, and the successful YGG Web3 Games Summit (W3GS).
The Yield Guild Games (YGG) core team continued to advance YGG’s product strategy entering 2024, keeping a strong focus on the overarching vision of a community empowered by on-chain reputation. Wrapping up Q4 2023, YGG also dedicated its efforts to organizing one of the biggest web3 events of the year, the YGG Web3 Games Summit (W3GS), which gathered 5,300 attendees to the beating heart of web3 gaming, the Philippines.
Co-founders Gabby Dizon and Beryl Li represented YGG and its broader community in front of new audiences. Gabby spoke at Google’s Singapore headquarters, while Beryl delivered a keynote in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and joined several panels coinciding with the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. With a clear-eyed view of its goals for the web3 space, YGG got off to a flying start and anticipates further momentum as the year unfolds.
Below is a recap of YGG’s activities and accomplishments to usher in 2024, released now to ensure an accurate reflection of increased market activity. For a comprehensive account, please refer to the complete YGG February 2024 Community Update.
W3GS Proves the Future of Gaming Is Now
Co-organized with YGG Pilipinas, the Philippine entity of YGG, the YGG Web3 Games Summit (W3GS) was a resounding success. The summit showcased the most popular web3 games playable today, demonstrating to gamers worldwide that the future of gaming has already arrived.
In the lead-up to the event, YGG hosted a series of X Spaces featuring web3 leaders lined up to speak at W3GS. YGG Pilipinas Country Head Mench Dizon also appeared on the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) Business Roadshow, a business news program on one of the leading news networks in the Philippines, to talk about the impact of web3 gaming in the country.
The summit included a two-day conference featuring 90 international speakers. Among the most memorable sessions was the keynote speech of Sky Mavis co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin, who highlighted the growth of Pixels on Ronin and announced major updates to Axie Classic. Animoca Brands Executive Chairman Yat Siu also took the stage for a unique fireside chat where he answered children’s burning questions about the open Metaverse. Other notable speakers include Giulio Xiloyannis of Pixelmon and Philippine basketball player Jared Dillinger of Daredevil Media.
Participants of the 24-hour hackathon, Web3 Game Jam, produced innovative games and applications, which were evaluated by a judging panel consisting of Gala Games’ Jeff Espejo, Clique’s Jaden Yan, and BreederDAO’s Renz Chong. Meanwhile, the three-day W3GS expo showcased over 40 web3 games and concluded with the first-ever world championship of the web3 strategy game PROJECT XENO. Boxing icon and PROJECT XENO ambassador, Manny Pacquiao, presented the awards to the finalists.
Enhancing the Player Experience Through Quests
YGG’s first Superquests campaign in Axie Infinity: Origins attracted 4,322 participants, more than double the initial goal. At W3GS, YGG Global Head of Growth Angel Pui announced Superquests as the official in-game training partner for Origins, with a new challenge from spamandrice taking players deeper into the game at the launch of Origins Season 7. By the end of January 2024, Axie Superquests had seen a total of 50,000 unique users.
YGG plans to expand Superquests by integrating more blockchains, creating educational content for new games, and co-designing quests for an enhanced player experience.
Guild Advancement Program (GAP) Season 4 saw impressive growth with a 147% increase in YGG account sign-ups and a 243% increase in quest enrollments from the previous season. The GAP leaderboard also transitioned to a reputation-based system measured in XP, laying the groundwork for YGG’s Reputation and Progression (RAP).
In his keynote speech at W3GS, YGG Head of Community Mark Tan affirmed a commitment to community-driven development and urged for increased collaboration from YGG’s ecosystem partners to expand GAP into Season 5.
A Thriving Ecosystem of Web3 Games
With the community bringing a surge of engagement into several games from Q4 to February 2024, YGG increased its support for some of these projects and the community by acquiring in-game assets. Today, YGG’s 101 partnerships across games, guilds and infrastructure to support the adoption of web3 gaming are valued at US$50.41 million.
Pixels has notably been a popular choice among GAP questers, especially in GAP Season 4. YGG has secured PIXEL tokens worth US$6 million and acquired seven land plots, including one of the largest and rarest lands in Pixels, which is now being fully utilized by the community. YGG also acquired 67 Incarna NFTs in Overworld worth US$200,000, becoming the 11th largest holder of the in-game asset as of February 2024. To support even more activity for members, YGG made token purchases in Sanko GameCorp and doubled down on its seed round position in Sipher.
YGG also has acquisitions in Parallel worth US$1 million, across the PRIME token and Parallel Avatars. Additionally, in the last three months, rentals in Big Time have generated ~US$186,000 USDC at an average of ~US$62,000 monthly. As a validator, YGG has generated ~US$500,000 in the first three weeks of February. It is one of the top 15 validators for the Ronin network, with assets valued at US$12 million.
The GAM3 Awards in December was also a significant event for web3 games, with Big Time, Parallel, and six other games within the YGG ecosystem winning awards.
Dominating Regions and Leaderboards
YGG Elite dominated the Axie Infinity leaderboards in Q4 as spamandrice garnered 2,200 AXS and achieved Rank 1 across all competitive Eras in Season 6. Kousei and Enrico also scored notable wins, placing Rank 6 and Rank 8 respectively.
Sequinox, a seasoned veteran of trading card games (TCGs) known for representing Singapore at the Hearthstone tournament during BlizzCon 2018, officially joined YGG Elite in December. The player now contributes his wealth of experience to both Axie Infinity and Parallel fronts, further strengthening YGG Elite’s already formidable roster.
YGG’s regional guild partners actively engaged their communities as well. OLA GG hosted their Tournament Season 3, which featured 90 tournaments with 2,274 participants. YGG Japan established SHAKE Entertainment Inc. to manage operations and launched a token generation event for their token. The W3GG platform introduced several new features such as a user dashboard as it hit 41,038 registered users. The global Kratos (formerly IndiGG) community grew to 1.6 million on platforms like Indi.GG, Kratos.Global, Discord and X, up from 780,000 in August, with 1.1 million being IndiGG wallet holders.
As of February 2024, YGG and its network of guild partners have an online reach of 3 million.
Kicking Off 2024
Wrapping up a fruitful 2023 focused on product development, W3GS set the tone for the industry entering another year. The event provided the web3 community an opportunity to align with each other while expecting new game releases in 2024.
YGG extends its gratitude to its W3GS sponsors, ecosystem partners, global guild network, and broader community for building alongside YGG throughout the Crypto Winter. Web3’s gaming guilds are stronger than ever, and as questing and web3 esports continue to shape the space, the milestones reached in this period signal an even more promising rest of the year.
Read the full YGG Community Update here.
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