Case study · Yield Guild Games
Choosing What to Reward as Participation Grew
I shaped quests and reward rules as GAP grew, while the program’s goal shifted from attracting activity toward earning revenue.
At a glance
The choice and its limits.
- My responsibility
- Owned the user-facing quest structure and reward rules within approved budgets; outcomes remained shared across the wider team and community system.
- Key decision
- Judged quests by the work they encouraged, their likely participation, and their reward cost. I also helped contributors take on more responsibility.
- Trade-off
- I accepted less activity when a quest did not justify its rewards and kept review for decisions with financial or reputational risk.
- Result or status
- Participants meeting program criteria grew from 545 to 3,190; average qualifying activity per person also rose. Revenue emerged later, but the program was not yet sustainable. These were shared outcomes.
Context and problem
YGG’s Guild Advancement Program (GAP) rewarded users for completing quests: activities with clear requirements. Growth came first. Around Season 4, earning revenue and covering the cost of rewards became more important.
The challenge was to encourage useful work and repeat participation—not just more activity.
My role
I shaped quests and reward rules within approved budgets, reviewed proposals, and helped contributors take on more responsibility. Financial approval remained outside my authority. The previous cycle was an inherited baseline; results and delivery were shared across teams.
Key decisions
1. Decide which activity deserves rewards
More completions were easy to count, but they did not tell us whether a quest helped the community or its partners. I assessed proposals by the work they asked people to do, the likely participation, and the reward cost. Sometimes I accepted fewer completions rather than reward an activity that did not justify its cost.
2. Share responsibility, with limits
Giving experienced contributors real responsibility could strengthen the program. Giving everyone the same authority would expose budgets and reputation to avoidable risk. I supported roles in which contributors could take on more work and some decisions, while decisions with material risk still went through review.
3. Address the work behind the growth
Each added quest brought more files, checks, and publishing work. I helped turn repeated failures into requirements for internal tools. Fixed rules could catch predictable errors; people still had to judge quality, fraud, and partner constraints.
See how this became product work →
Outcomes
More people qualified. Average activity rose.
Bars start at zero; compare lengths within each pair. The two pairs have different units and scales. The reported 24.5% uses underlying values; averages shown here are rounded. These program results do not isolate the effect of my work.
331 of 545 returned. Of the Season 3 participants who met the program’s criteria, 60.7% completed a quest in Season 4, using internal participant ID. That shows repeat activity, without establishing loyalty beyond rewards.
Revenue emerged; the program was not yet sustainable.
Partners generated most revenue at first. Users contributed a smaller share later, and that share grew. This is my firsthand account of the program’s direction. The figures above do not show whether revenue covered reward or program costs.
Supporting figures and how to read them
Public reach: YGG reported 3,475 unique wallets completing quests in Season 4. Wallets are not the people counted in the private analysis above.
Completion records: Qualified records increased from 1,635 to 11,915. These are records, not distinct people.
Quest coverage: 148 of 151 quest definitions produced qualified completions.
Reward claims: More than 96% of completed records reached claimed status; 92.7% of completing participants claimed. These use different units.
Public context: YGG’s Season 4 launch and wrap-up. Other figures came from private records with personal identifiers removed; participant-level data is not published.
What I would keep—and change
Keep the test of value. I would again accept fewer completions when a quest’s likely contribution did not justify its rewards. That choice made sense even when growth was the immediate goal: activity without useful work could consume rewards without strengthening the program.
Change how the test was recorded. Before increasing rewards, I would define what useful participation should look like for users, the community, and partners, then compare that with cost and repeat activity. I would make the same volume-versus-value choice again when the evidence pointed in different directions; clearer measures would make that judgment easier to challenge and improve.