The chief planner of a new chain game studio is troubled by a blank document. The document's title is (After the game goes live, how to quickly establish an active guild system?).
Five years ago, this was not a problem at all - once the game was made, the guild would naturally grow. But in today's Web3 chain games, a healthy and vibrant guild system has transformed from a 'bonus' to a 'lifeline.'
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Earth, the YGG team has just finished a community meeting, quietly organizing the pitfalls they have encountered and the experiences they have accumulated into clear modules. They may not even fully realize it themselves - they are starting a brand new business: 'Guild as a Service.'
First layer of service: special forces-style 'cold start.'
What do new games fear the most? It's when the economic model freezes upon launch. No one buys or sells tokens, no one uses assets, and the entire system is like a clock that hasn't been wound up.
YGG's first B2B service is the 'pressure testing team with its own funding.'
This is not an ordinary test. YGG can assemble a well-trained 'scholarly advance team' of hundreds of people to enter the scene with initial assets on the day the game launches. Their goals are clear: to produce, trade, battle, and explore.
They are not here to 'play games'; they are here to 'get the economy moving.'
For developers, this is equivalent to hiring the most professional test pilots to push the plane to its performance limits during the maiden flight, exposing all design flaws on-site. Real-time data feedback, precise problem location, and immeasurable value.
This addresses the coldest and most difficult step from 0 to 1.
Second layer of service: the 'outsourced brain' of community governance.
Building a community is not difficult; the challenge lies in operating an autonomous, orderly, and sustainably growing player community. This is art, and also hard labor.
YGG's second service is a 'community governance operating system.'
You can imagine: if game developers could directly integrate with YGG's guild protocol—
Task system: no need to build it yourself; just use YGG's ready-made tools to issue game tasks and rewards.
Governance module: player proposals, discussions, and voting all run within a mature framework; developers just set the rules.
Reputation passport: players' achievements and contributions are directly recorded in the cross-game YGG passport, forming transferable reputation assets.
For developers, this means outsourcing the most trivial and least efficient aspects of 'social engineering' and 'political governance.'
Focus solely on the game itself, while the 'software part' of the community ecosystem is provided and maintained by YGG, a 'professional property management company.'
The third layer of service (also the most hardcore layer): 'joint design' of economic models.
This is the most valuable part of YGG's 'guild-as-a-service.'
Through practical experience from projects like (Axie), YGG has accumulated the deepest and harshest understanding of blockchain game economics.
They know:
What proportion of daily output (gold mining revenue) and token price must be maintained to prevent large-scale loss of players?
What is the dynamic relationship between the activity of the asset leasing market and the overall inflation rate?
How should tasks be designed to incentivize long-term contributions rather than short-term quantity boosts?
This experience can be packaged into an 'economic model consulting plan' to be provided to game developers.
YGG can play the role of 'both enemy and friend,' simulating various scenarios of large guilds' involvement during the design phase to optimize models in advance.
This means that YGG is shifting from being an 'ecological participant' after the game goes live to a 'co-designer' before the launch.
It no longer relies solely on earning asset price differences post-launch but helps the game go further, sharing a larger and more sustainable overall ecological value.
Evolution of the business model: from 'earning players' money' to 'earning games' money.'
Traditional guild model (to C): profits from asset trading price differences and player profit sharing. Essentially, it is 'redistribution of players' surplus value.'
Guild-as-a-service model (to B): charging game developers 'startup service fees,' 'software licensing fees,' or 'economic consulting fees.' Essentially, it is 'selling professional capabilities and network effects.'
The latter is more stable, more scalable, and has a deeper moat. Because knowledge and networks are harder to replicate than pure money.
Challenge: How to avoid being 'both the referee and the player'?
Of course, this model has a fundamental contradiction: YGG itself is also an investor and asset holder. How to ensure fairness when it simultaneously provides 'services' to multiple competing games? Are its recommendations truly in the overall interest of the client games, or are they considering its own asset allocation in these games?
This requires extremely high trust building and transparency of rules. YGG may have to strictly separate the 'service team' from the 'proprietary asset investment team'—just like investment banks must establish firewalls between consulting and proprietary trading.
I believe that YGG is moving from 'game kingdom' to 'infrastructure provider for the gaming industry.'
YGG's exploration of 'guild-as-a-service' marks a leap in strategic understanding: it is no longer satisfied with just being a kingdom in the game world.
It is trying to extract itself from 'gaming' and become a 'new infrastructure provider' that serves the entire gaming industry. What it wants to provide is not water, electricity, or coal (these are provided by the blockchain itself), but a higher-dimensional 'social operation software'—addressing the questions of 'how to organize player communities' and 'how to build digital economic ecosystems.'
If successful, future game developers may seriously consider whether to purchase YGG's 'guild-as-a-service' package when conceptualizing blockchain games, just as they do today with game engines (Unity/Unreal).
By then, YGG's valuation logic will change drastically—it will no longer just be a 'super player' in a certain game, but an indispensable 'system integrator' and 'social architect' in the rise of the entire blockchain gaming industry.
