​​In this article, Yield Guild Games (YGG) shares an update on its community engagement, membership growth, and various partnerships as of December 31, 2021.

The final quarter of 2021 was a period of heavy market volatility for crypto. However, YGG has kept its focus on enriching its ever-growing community by hosting and participating in engaging activities, forming several new partnerships with games and guilds alike, and acquiring more game assets for the community to use.

This article is an overview of these events, which are described in more detail in the recently published YGG Q4 2021 Community Update. Read the full report here.

Community Engagement

There has been plenty of activity on YGG’s community channels for members to have a constant stream of new entertainment and educational resources that can help them improve the overall quality of their time spent in the Metaverse.

From October to December, YGG hosted nine Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions and a special Community Update with co-founder Gabby Dizon. The YGG Managers Cup also launched in October, bringing players together from the Philippines, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Latin America, and the United States to participate in the biggest Axie Infinity tournament in the world.

In addition, community creators hosted several streams featuring many of YGG’s game partners, with six episodes of Thetan Arena Tuesdays, 15 episodes of Game Hunters, and 25 episodes of Axie Bootcamp released in the final quarter of 2021. Recordings of these community events can be found on YGG’s Facebook page and YouTube channel.

YGG also received a significant amount of global media coverage, including news media and features about the guild as a key contributor to the play-to-earn space, as well as a long series of podcast interviews with top shows. A full list of YGG’s podcast appearances can be found here.

Growth Update

YGG has seen incredible growth from the third quarter of last year to the final quarter, with a huge increase in Discord members from 62,545 at the end of September to almost 100,000 members at the end of 2021.

Guild Badge holders also increased from 14,161 in the first month since the launch of the Badge to 18,598 by the year-end of 2021, signifying a strong commitment to the guild.

Meanwhile, a much-celebrated milestone for YGG last year was hitting the 10,000 mark in its total number of Axie Infinity scholars in December. As of the same month, the guild now possesses a combined total of 68,465 Axies across its breeding and scholarship wallets.

Scholars brought in at least 25.8 million SLP last November, which is the highest amount of SLP ever earned by YGG scholars cumulatively. In the last quarter of 2021, YGG scholars received US$11.7 million by putting their time into productive play, while US$2.6 million was earned by the YGG managers. YGG received US$1.3 million from SLP earnings.

Partnerships

​​Since its inception in November 2020, YGG has partnered with 48 projects across games, gaming guilds, and essential play-to-earn infrastructure that will help create a stronger ecosystem for players. The last quarter of 2021 was the most active quarter of the year with 27 new partnerships made, totaling US$5.46 million with 54.73% going directly to play-to-earn games, 27.44% to gaming guilds, and 17.83% to other play-to-earn infrastructure projects.

From the total amount spent, US$2.992 million went to game partnerships, with 58% of the amount going to NFT assets and the remaining 42% going to governance tokens to ensure that YGG can access many of the in-game components and participate in the games’ evolution.

The guild also increased its partnerships in MMORPG games last quarter, with 33.42% of the game partnership spend going to Big Time, Aavegotchi, Genopets, and VulcanVerse, making MMORPG games the second largest category of YGG gaming behind Strategy games. In addition, YGG engaged with games in the MMO Strategy, MOBA, Sports, and Casual game categories to ensure that there are available games to suit every YGG community member’s needs and interests.

In Q4 of 2021, YGG also formed partnerships with gaming guilds Merit Circle, BAYZ, YGG SEA, and IndiGG to ensure that players all around the world are given the opportunity to access scholarships. The guild also partnered with play-to-earn adjacent platforms and services — namely Cassava, BreederDAO, XY Finance, Ignite Tournaments, and Strider — with the goal of providing value to the YGG player community and the play-to-earn ecosystem in the long term.

Looking Ahead

YGG expects to see continued growth in the blockchain gaming ecosystem in 2022, driven by the continuous development of experienced blockchain engineers and traditional gaming studios looking to explore new opportunities.

A shift in the way play-to-earn games are designed may also be anticipated. While emerging markets have shown higher interest in earnings than in gameplay, a more “fun first” ecosystem with a game economics layer is a growing strategy to encourage traditional gamers and those from developed regions to try blockchain gaming and explore the Metaverse. With this in mind, YGG will continue to create various opportunities for players and creators to be onboarded in this new era of gaming.

To learn more about YGG’s partnerships and activities from October to December 2021, download the full report here.

For more information on YGG, read the YGG whitepaper here. Join the YGG Discord or follow us on Twitter for future updates.