At the YGG Play Summit press conference in Manila, attendees previewed the upcoming five-day event in November, highlighting innovations in web3 gaming and popular global titles.
YGG: The Play Summit
The summit focused on the future of play, showcasing how web3 is transforming digital ownership, player engagement, and in-game economies. Speakers discussed how blockchain is reimagining traditional strategy games like chess and trading card games (TCGs), teaching players tactical and digital skills.
In a panel moderated by Jayvee Fernandez, Brian Chan and Carlo Ople discussed Anichess’s use of “spells” and NFTs, highlighting how web3 trading card games like Parallel enable players to own and trade digital assets like physical cards. Web3 also enables competitive TCG players to participate in on-demand esports tournaments with more transparency.
“Early on, a lot of people were just in web3 gaming for the financial incentives. But today, you can see that the quality of games has improved dramatically and web3 games can be fun on their own, even without the tokens,”
“The idea of building onchain goes further than this; we want to empower our community to contribute to the game. By using a decentralized governance model, players who are deeply invested in the game can contribute directly. This brings a new layer of engagement and ownership to the players, and that’s a big part of why we’re building on web3.”
Brian Chan, Head of Anichess
In the “Play, Learn, and Work” panel, YGG co-founder Beryl Li introduced the Future of Work program to equip the community with digital economy skills in AI data labeling and decentralized infrastructure. Coins.ph CEO Wei Zhou added that licensed cryptocurrency exchanges facilitate gig workers’ conversion of earnings into Philippine pesos.
“We’re excited about how the future of play connects with the future of work because digital skills learned in web3 games are becoming relevant across industries. The convergence of web3 and AI is going to redefine the way we work and play together, and we’re seeing the early signs of this today,”
“At YGG, we remain committed to our mission of bridging economic opportunities for Filipinos, no matter where they are in the world. Together, we’ve onboarded the world into this new era of digital play, simply by playing and working together as a community.”
Mench Dizon, Country Head YGG Pilipinas
The YGG Play Summit’s Industry Day will host over 50 web3 leaders, including YGG co-founders Gabby Dizon and Beryl Li. Invite-only Leaders Roundtables will gather insights for a report on 2025 web3 gaming trends, releasing in Q1 next year.
YGG: The Sponsors of the Event
Supporting the goals of the YGG Play Summit are Title Sponsors: HyperPlay and Mantle. Other key sponsors include Aptos, B3, Ubisoft, OpenSea, and Coins.ph, Ronin, SKYGG, and the Echelon Prime Foundation. Key opinion leaders Sam Steffanina and Een Mercado, along with YGG Play Summit ambassador YellowPanther, will participate in the event. A side event with MADEVIRAL will unite over 100 gaming creators and curated game companies to discuss collaboration in 2025. The YGG Play Summit will also include the Gamer Expo, featuring demos and show matches from over 40 games. Attendees can play web3 games like Star Atlas, Blade of God X, and Captain Laserhawk: The GAME.
YGG: The Prize Pool and Date of the Event
The YGG Play Summit will host a TCG tournament with a $100,000 prize pool for the top 16 players. Other competitive events are for games Arena of Faith (AOF), Anichess, and Indus, each with US$10,000 prize pools. Finalists from Web3 Metaversity’s Game Jam will pitch ideas on modding, social games, and on-chain game logic after a hackathon for students and developers. The two events will have a PHP 500,000 prize pool distributed among winners. A cosplay competition with a PHP 130,000 prize pool and various side events will take place throughout the week.
Red carpet events will celebrate the industry’s best throughout the week. This includes the first in-person GAM3 Awards ceremony featuring the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra performing nostalgic video game theme songs. An invite-only red-carpet event will premiere the Metaverse Filipino Worker video series at SM Aura Cinema.
The YGG Play Summit will take place from November 19-23, 2024, at the SMX Convention in Taguig, Philippines. Tickets are available on the summit website, with early bird discounts until November 1, 2024.
