YGG Play Summit: Founders Are the Connective Tissue of the Community

At the YGG Play Summit, Gabby spoke with Parallel co-founder Kalos about the Parallel community’s strength, the team’s openness to player feedback, and the true role of founders in their communities.

During the YGG Play Summit, builders, content creators, and investors highlighted the increasing transparency, interconnectedness, and community building in Web3. Parallel has been a leading example, creating a bridge that onboards competitive Web2 trading card game (TCG) players attracted to the game’s deep mechanics and growing esports scene.

Through its partnership with YGG, Parallel has been featured in the Guild Advancement Program (GAP), which has helped onboard many new players. YGG Esports has also been competing in numerous Parallel tournaments, represented by players like Sequinox, Tyler and Feno, who joined the team following successful careers in Web2 TCGs. Last November, the YGG Play Summit’s US$100,000 Parallel tournament saw the game’s best players traveling from all over the world to compete in Manila, with YGG’s Zeliaser taking home the grand prize.

At the Summit’s Industry Day event, YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon invited Parallel co-founder Kalos for a fireside chat titled “Building the World in a Parallel Universe.” Kalos shared how the idea to create the game came to him and his friends while playing Call of Duty: Warzone. He and Gabby also discussed Parallel attracting professional TCG players from games like Hearthstone and the team’s exploration of AI technology with Parallel Colony.

The following is an excerpt from the fireside, where Gabby and Kalos talk about how vital the Parallel community is to the development of the games and how being a founder does not mean being removed from the community.

Listen to the full recording on YouTube.

YGG Play Summit 2024: Building the World in a Parallel Universe

Gabby (11:42): Let's talk about community building because one of the things that struck me as we were entering the Parallel communities is that it reminded me of a very strong community that I started within Web3, which is the Axie and Ronin community. What was your approach to community building, and what were the things that you learned and discovered along the way that worked?

Kalos (12:07): I think the simplest thing is anyone in this room who plays Parallel or who follows me, if you’ve ever tweeted at me, I've responded to you. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I will still respond to you. When you have the community mindset, everything everyone says matters. If it doesn't, you're starting to look inwards more than you're looking outwards. Generally, the strategy that worked in my mind was just to listen to people and talk. I share a lot of ideas so that we can all collectively think about things that don't exist, but I'm not necessarily married to those things. A lot of times, people from the community outside are like, “Nerf Shroud! Earthen is like this!”

Gabby (12:55): Don’t nerf Shroud.

Kalos (12:59): I think, and maybe this is unique to building a game with blockchain infrastructure, everyone has something to add to the community. Sometimes that presents itself as a tool. A lot of community members have built infrastructure and tools. Sometimes it presents itself as a balancing piece of feedback, and sometimes it presents itself as an opinion. Even when the opinions are super toxic, that’s okay when that happens if there’s still something valid in it.

Gabby (13:31): You want to get to the message behind it. Not the “FU Kalos,” right?

Kalos (13:37): No. I mean, I don't get too much of that. I'm sure I'm going to get a whole lot of that after this. If I could distill it down to one thing, you being the founder, one of the founders, of something like this does not remove you from the community. It makes you the person who is the connective tissue in the community. It doesn't put you outside of it. You’re not isolated from it. You're actually a part of it in a way that is connective to everyone rather than trying to be the person who stands out.

You can listen to the full recording on YouTube.

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