YGG Play Summit: It’s All About the Players

YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon joined the recent YGG Play Summit announcement stream with Emfarsis' Leah Callon-Butler to hype web3 gaming’s only consumer-focused event.

In-person events like the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and PAX have long served as the beating heart of the web2 gaming industry. The entire community comes together to witness the future of gaming come to life with each new announcement, demo, and trailer unveiled onstage. YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon had these consumer-centric events in mind when YGG began holding in-person events celebrating its growing community of web3 gamers.

Last July, YGG’s Philippine-based regional guild partner, YGG Pilipinas, held the final leg of its nationwide Roadtrip in Manila. A roaring crowd of nearly 3,000 gamers flooded the event grounds, exploring booths set up by YGG game partners like Xociety, Parallel, Arena of Faith, and more, while connecting with prominent web3 gaming players and leaders like YGG Esports star player spamandrice and Gaming Grid founder YellowPanther. This November, YGG is extending an open invite to the global web3 gaming community to join the YGG Play Summit (YPS), its biggest event of the year. Here, gamers from all around the world will be able to enjoy the industry’s only truly player-focused event held in the epicenter of web3 gaming adoption.

Gabby recently appeared in an AMA on YGG’s livestream announcing this year’s YPS, joined by special guests YellowPanther and GAM3S.GG co-founder Omar Ghanem, with Emfarsis Director Leah Callon-Butler moderating the discussion. The following is an excerpt from the stream, where Gabby and Leah discuss the event’s history of putting players at the forefront, the variety of games and activities available for attendees to explore, and the presence of the international web3 gaming community at the event.

Listen to the full recording on X.

YGG Play Summit: Are You READY to PLAY?

Leah (1:10:04): Gabby, I know how focused you've been on this for the last few years. Even in 2023, when you were talking about doing it in what was essentially a bear market, I thought: You're crazy. But it turned out to be one of the greatest events of the whole year. So, what's the vision? How did you recognize that this was such an important thing to happen right here in the Philippines?

Gabby (1:11:31): In the Philippines, we're really focused on gamers, the people who are playing these games. That's what YGG has always been known for. This is the third time we're doing an event in the Philippines, and we really want to focus on the consumer experience. I think all of the other web3 gaming events around the world are B2B events. We're the only one that's really focused on the consumer experience, making it a full B2C event.

There's a lot of stuff happening that week. We've got a conference, we've got a full expo, we've got cosplay, we've got multiple esports tournaments, we might even have awards, and we have a lot of creators flying in from around the world. It's really going to feel like a big gaming event.

We talked about changing the branding a little bit. Last year, it was called the Web3 Games Summit. This year, we're just calling it the Play Summit, because we want it to be about the games. We want people to focus on playing these games. And eventually, web3 games will just be games that people will play and enjoy. This is for everyone.

Leah (1:12:44): I love it. Any sneak peeks that you can give us in terms of what audiences can expect this year?

Gabby (1:12:52): We're talking to content creators from all around the world — from the US, Europe, and all around Asia. We have our good friend YellowPanther coming. We've booked the Samsung Hall for three days of tournaments for one of our favorite games. I'm not going to say which, because that's going to be announced, but one of our favorite card games is going to be there with a tournament.

We're talking to some of your favorite blockchains with all the different games on those blockchains coming to show the games at this event. So the focus is really for you to come in and really play these games. If you've gone to consumer game expos before, like PAX or E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), or PGDX (Philippine Game Dev Expo) locally, it will feel more like that, but we have so much more in store for you.

You can listen to the full recording on X.

Follow Gabby and Leah to learn more about the Philippines’ role in the web3 gaming ecosystem.

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