Great Web3 Games Need a Party, Not a Solo Player

Every inspired dev needs a publisher to ensure their game gets into the hands of players around the world. Gabby shares this insight and more in an interview with Flux of ParagonsDAO.

The Web2 farming sim Stardew Valley is one of gaming’s most iconic Cinderella stories. It’s also one of the clearest examples of how the creative and business sides of a game need equal attention to succeed. After working on the game solo for four years, ConcernedApe partnered with publisher Chucklefish to handle QA, localization, marketing, and the game’s first wave of ports. Unfortunately, such partnerships are still relatively uncommon in Web3 gaming. Many studios spread themselves too thin trying to take on the development, release, and fundraising of their game all at once. YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon aims to change that with YGG Play, the recently established publishing arm of YGG.

Recently, YGG spoke with ParagonsDAO streaming partner and content creator Flux for an in-depth interview on YGG’s journey so far and its recent growth into a game publisher. During the interview, Gabby shared his plans to offer YGG’s expertise in building thriving gaming communities to more games in the ecosystem and emphasized the importance of catering to the growing casual market in Web3 gaming.

The following is an excerpt from their conversation, in which Gabby encourages budding game studios to work with publishers, allowing them to focus on what they do best — creating great games — while the publisher handles everything else, from funding and marketing to distribution and community management. Gabby also offers advice to games struggling to find a foothold in the market by reiterating the importance of identifying and serving a specific niche with their game.

ParagonsDAO: The Gabby Dizon Interview — YGG, LOL Land, and the Future of Gaming

Gabby (28:45): There are some Web2 ideas that work really well in Web3, and vice versa. Mixing all of those things together turns YGG into what it is. If you look at game publishing, it's not common in Web3. Most people raise money via VCs and then try to publish a game themselves. But now, it hasn't been proven easy to ship a game. It hasn't been proven easy to launch a game, raise funding, then launch a token.

So now, being a publisher actually matters more than ever. We're talking to a lot of really good games that say, “We want to focus on the creativity of creating a game. Can you handle the marketing, monetization, smart contract, audits — all of those things — for us?”

Those are things that we're in a position to do because we've been building out the distribution side of the business in the last few years, all without having our own content. Now, we're doing it for our own content, which feels a lot better.

Flux (30:08): So the common thread here is finding product market fit, being monetizable, actually driving revenue, and not just hype while you're losing money and you lose even more, which feels like what some Web3 projects have done. How should other games do this?

If someone's watching this, and maybe they're higher up on a team, and their game isn't driving a lot of revenue, they aren't finding that fit, what kind of advice would you give someone like that? Someone who thinks that their team is good and they have something but it's not connecting with the market?

Gabby (30:48): Ask yourself who your audience is. I think that's the most important thing. If you're not clicking or you're not finding that audience, you have to think about what is actually the size of the audience that you’re building for. If it's a large enough size and they have money, then maybe you're not connecting well enough with them.

Have you talked to their communities? One of the things we're good at is building our community and working with other communities. Honestly, that's really helped us with the distribution of our game.

You can listen to the full recording on YouTube.

Follow Gabby and Flux for insights on the best ways to build and engage a Web3 gaming audience.

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