YGG TV: Understanding Your Community from the Inside Out
In this YGG TV episode, John Sedano and Irene Umar talk about how W3GG built its community from the grassroots to unite gamers across Southeast Asia as YGG’s official guild partner in the region.
YGG TV is a digital program produced by Yield Guild Games (YGG) that delves into all things related to YGG, its partners and initiatives, and web3 gaming. With John Sedano, YGG’s Community Marketing Manager, as its main host, the show regularly invites guests from organizations and projects within the YGG ecosystem to share their insights on the trends, strategies and innovations driving the industry forward.
In this installment of YGG TV, Sedano is joined by Irene Umar, CEO and co-founder of W3GG (formerly YGG SEA), YGG’s regional guild partner representing Southeast Asian countries exclusive of the Philippines. The guild, which rebranded in June 2023, is focused on leading web3 adoption in Southeast Asia while providing learning and career opportunities to gamers and making a positive impact on the broader gaming industry. The name W3GG, pronounced “We GG,” signifies togetherness in web3 — something that has been at the core of the W3GG community since day one.
Aired prior to the rebrand, the episode features Irene and Sedano discussing W3GG’s approach to onboarding people from the Southeast Asian region into web3. The following is an excerpt from the episode, where Irene and Sedano also talk about the importance and challenges of grassroots initiatives, as well as the diverse community that makes up W3GG.
YGG TV: Powering the future of gaming in Southeast Asia, YGG SEA ft. Irene Umar! Latest updates in 2023!
Sedano (01:56): My question for you, Irene, is what's the importance of having YGG SEA as its own entity and approaching these different countries at the same time?
Irene (02:07): I think the same thing happened in the Philippines, where if you go to the different parts of the country, I’m sure there are some parts where your Tagalog will not work. But the good thing is that in the Philippines, the majority of the population, they do speak English, and they have a really good command of English. Even if they don't speak it, most people read it. And that’s why Filipinos, everywhere you go, you'll be able to find one, because of their ability with the language.
I think that plays a significant role in terms of [the Philippines becoming the] crypto capital of the world. The rest of Southeast Asia is a little bit different. In Indonesia — I am in Indonesia — even in Java alone, if I travel two hours to the right or two hours to the left, there will be people who will be speaking local dialects that I wouldn't be aware of. And Indo is a huge country. Then if you expand it to the rest of Southeast Asia, language and localization are ultra important.
And I understand that for games to localize every single thing in-game — that would be almost impossible. We did a quick research and I think there are around 1,200 different languages all around Southeast Asia. So when we would like to penetrate into different communities, we’ve got to first respect and understand how different people speak and what is important for each and every different community member before we even talk about games. That's why having YGG Southeast Asia is extremely important because that's the platform where we want to bring everyone together as one for the love of gaming.
Sedano (03:42): I definitely think that it's not an easy task, bringing different communities all together under one flag. What would you say are the biggest challenges for YGG SEA and how are you strategizing to approach it?
Irene (04:00): We didn't start from scratch. We had YGG to back us up, and there are YGG community leaders and community managers already existing all across Southeast Asia. It’s just that they have not been extremely active because they've been shy, or they might not be able to speak the language properly. So when we started YGG SEA, we were able to start off with four countries with a local presence since day one but having this strong foothold of people who understood what YGG and web3 are all about.
And most importantly, they understood the pain of going into the Metaverse because we all experience it. That in itself is extremely helpful for us to make it easier, to make it a mission for us that for anyone who would like to come into web3, that process would be made as seamless and as easy as possible. Because we don't want them to go through what we went through. But I think as much as we love the Metaverse, as much as we live in the digital world that we are in today, what is important are the in-person meetings — thanks to the community leaders that we have out there who have been arranging meetups or coffee sessions, on behalf of YGG SEA and the community.
So with that set of communities, regardless of whether it's a bear or bull market, they stick around because we're here to build a community that lasts. It's like having a family. It's like having a boyfriend or girlfriend — you don't want people who are transactional, who are there because you have certain things or you have money or fame. You want people who are there for you through thick and thin. And that's the ethos that we have been building from day one.
You can watch the full episode on the Yield Guild Games YouTube channel.
Follow Irene and Sedano to learn more about building communities in web3.
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