The Main Chain: The Culture of Yield Guild Games
In this podcast, Gabby Dizon and Beryl Li talk about Yield Guild Games’ culture with Michael Waitze.
The Main Chain, produced by Infinity Ventures Crypto, is a podcast series featuring conversations with luminaries and thought leaders in the GameFi, DeFi, Web3 and overall blockchain space. They explore and delve into the thought process behind prominent blockchain projects.
Podcast host Michael Waitze is a veteran of global finance with 20 years of experience from firms such as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. His company Michael Waitze Media, founded in 2016, is one of Asia’s most popular podcast producers.
Aside from The Main Chain, Michael also hosts the Asia Tech Podcast, a podcast that covers diverse tech topics, from fintech to blockchain, under his media company.
In this episode, YGG co-founders Gabby Dizon and Beryl Li discuss the guild’s culture, communities, and how the guild maintains a consistent experience across its subDAOs.
The following is an excerpt from the discussion. Listen to the full episode here.
The Main Chain - Beryl Chavez Li and Gabby Dizon - The Power of Financial Inclusion
Michael (21:41): How do you manage this idea of consistent company culture and evened player experience across the subDAOs? Because one of the things that you have to do really well, let's say in your home country or your first market, is to make sure that everybody's experiences — we’ve talked about this a lot — people aren't buying products anymore. They're buying experiences, and if that experience is great across the board, how do you manage that as well?
Gabby (22:01): That’s a great question. Think about it philosophically. We're not a company. We're a DAO and we're a network of people who are acting towards a common goal. Even though we're not a company, the concept of culture is very important, and the communication of your goals, what YGG stands for as a brand and why people want to stick around and stay in this community, that is important.
We are here at YGG not just because we're playing games together, but because we want to be able to help other people make their lives financially better through gaming, through community, through esports and through play-to-earn games. That's what binds people together, and in a sense, that's why I go on a lot of podcasts. It's very important for us that the people who opt in to join our community, our guild, believe in the same things that we believe in — the founders, the core team, the early community members — so that when someone says, “Hey, I want to be your Scholar Manager for Venezuela,” or like the farthest reaches of the Philippines, you still have the same kind of principles and the same culture even though the day-to-day life may be different.
Beryl (23:15): I wanted to add something to what Gabby said. At YGG, we value diversity a lot, and it's getting more exciting because the team is highly dispersed. Regionally, we have people in Europe, people in America, people in Asia, and then when we're trying to structure, for example, South Asia, we learn so much from somebody who knows that culture and the actual demographics of the country. It's very educational and there's really a transfer of knowledge as well because of that diversity. We value that highly.
Michael (23:46): One of the best things about diversity is not just diversity of skin color or the diversity of gender, it's diversity of opinion as well. If you figure this out, the more diverse your team gets, the more you're like, “I never would have thought of that because I don't encounter that. But now that I've heard that, I can’t unhear and we should incorporate that into everything we do.”
Check out Gabby, Beryl, and Michael’s Twitter to know more about their projects.
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