YGG Play Summit: What Makes a Successful Web3 Game?

At the YGG Play Summit, Ann Chien of IVC, Jonathan Huang of BITKRAFT, and Joony Koo of SKYGG joined the BGA’s Melanie Dow to discuss sustainable growth and factors investors assess in Web3 gaming.

At the YGG Play Summit last November, SKYGG CEO and co-founder Joony Koo, Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC) Partner Ann Chien, and BITKRAFT Principal Jonathan Huang, joined moderator Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) Communications and Content Lead Melanie Dow in a panel discussion titled “Discovering Web3 Gaming’s Next Wave of Opportunity.” The group discussed the elements that could bring about the next big Web3 gaming hit. They talked about the shift from play-to-earn to free-to-play, the importance of an experienced team, and the right use of tokens in gaming ecosystems.

The following is an excerpt from the panel where Melanie asks about the key ingredients to the success of a Web3 game. Ann emphasizes the need to balance active gamers and speculators while maintaining a strong product. Meanwhile, Joony states that success ultimately depends on the founder, highlighting the tenacity of leaders like YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon and Sky Mavis Chief Growth Officer Jihoz in building lasting projects.

Listen to the full recording on YouTube.

YGG Play Summit: Discovering Web3 Gaming’s Next Wave of Opportunity

Melanie (21:32): What is the secret sauce that you think a Web3 game needs to succeed in a sustainable way? What are the key ingredients?

Ann (21:51): First, you have to have a good balance of the real gamers and the speculators. Of course, the token, in terms of liquidity, is very important, so you shouldn't be neglecting that, but at the same time, you still need the real gamers to keep your product going. It’s not about people coming here for an airdrop and then they leave. It goes back to our core thesis. We are still very product-first, but you need the crypto-native people on your team.

You need to find a good balance between the two — the core product itself, so you can attract people who want to stay on your platform. Some people are probably not here for the token. They’re here for spend, and that is the kind of model we've been seeing in Web2 for ages. Then, you still need liquidity. You need the speculation part for people providing that liquidity.

In order for Web3 gaming to work, you still need to get a sense of the Web3 elements and how you are designing your token flow. If you are building in-game pieces, building the economy, you need to think about the Web3 factors. Most importantly, it’s about the product itself. The game itself has to be good quality — good enough to have real users.

Joony (23:30): For me, in the end, it’s the founder. For investing early, everything is about the founder. And I have some experience with this. Successful founders are people who bounce back like crazy. For instance, Gabby — who just left right now, so I can talk about him — I've been shit-talking on a lot of his projects since 2017, and he always sprang back up. He was always able to come back up, until we got YGG. He’s always been able to come back with something.

Jihoz — I’ve been shitting on him. When I first met him in the Philippines in 2018, he had 147 users on Axie, and he was the Chief Growth Officer. He's not in the room so I can talk about this too. I was saying, “Dude, Axie is not gonna fly with a lot of the gamers,” because back then, the character, based on all the mobile games out there — the quality wasn’t on par. And this is me coming from gaming; I've been in gaming since 2006. But he’s been bouncing back, all the time. He always has an answer for something, and he’s always on top of everything. He always has a solution to cater to my questions.

If you’re a founder like that and you can bounce back — maybe, if you’re not a founder like that, make sure you bounce back. Because if you can continuously bounce back, the VCs are like, “Okay, this guy might actually have that founder mentality that you just cannot disregard.”

You can listen to the full recording on YouTube.

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