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From Ice Age to Eighth Era How to Build Games That Outlast Trends
52 Plays2 days ago
๐ง Episode Description:
In this episode of Player Driven, we sit down with Jason Wasserman and Vincent Nguyen, the co-founders of Nice Gang, to dive into their journey from major animation studios like Blue Sky (Ice Age, Rio, Ferdinand) to launching their own game studio and original IP, Eighth Era.
With Season 2 of Eighth Era launching today, Jason and Vincent share how lessons from animation shaped their game design approach, the importance of creative partnerships, and why building a long-term community matters more than ever.
If you care about worldbuilding, player loyalty, and creating original stories in a crowded market, this episode is a must-listen.
๐๏ธ Key Takeaways:
- How experience at Blue Sky and Disney influenced the way Nice Gang operates today.
- The real skills Jason (business, scaling) and Vincent (visual worldbuilding) bring to the team.
- Why original IP is the foundation of everything they are building with Eighth Era.
- How they see opportunities for Eighth Era to expand beyond gaming (animation, collectibles, more).
- Their approach to growing a loyal community for the long-term, not just at launch.
๐ Timestamps:
- 00:00 โ Intro + Season 2 Launch
- 02:00 โ Meet Jason and Vincent: Backgrounds + Skills
- 07:00 โ Lessons from Animation: What Carried into Game Development
- 15:00 โ Founding Nice Gang: The Why and How
- 22:00 โ Building a Creative Partnership That Lasts
- 28:00 โ Worldbuilding Eighth Era: Staying Original
- 36:00 โ Thinking Beyond the Game: The Future of the IP
- 43:00 โ Building a Long-Term Player Community
- 48:00 โ Final Advice and Where to Follow Nice Gang
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Transcript
Introduction to Nice Gang and Eighth Error
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, Greg from PlayerDriven here. Here's what you're about to listen to on today's episode. This one's a really great episode. We're joined by Jason Wasserman and Vincent Nguyen. They're the co-founders of Nice Gang and they launched a game called Eighth Error.
00:00:13
Speaker
They both got their starts at Blue Sky Animation and then went their separate ways. One went to King, one went to Disney, and then they came back together to found a game studio. And it's such a cool story to hear and learn more about. If you aren't following PlayerDriven, Be sure to check out our Instagram page as well as our YouTube channel or TikTok. We're sharing content on all different channels, so be sure to check it out.
00:00:34
Speaker
And I really hope you enjoy learning more about 8th Error.
Journey from Animation to Gaming
00:00:42
Speaker
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to Player Driven, Greg here. Today we have a really special episode. I'm joined by Jason Wasserman and Vincent Nguyen, the co-founders of Nice Gang, right as season two of their game, Eighth Era, launches.
00:00:57
Speaker
Jason and Vincent bring a wild mix of experience to the table. Jason spent years helping build Blue Sky Studios during the rise of animation hits like Ice Age and later led Binance at the Walt Disney Studios.
00:01:10
Speaker
Vincent, meanwhile, spent over a decade at Blue Sky, shaping the look and feel of films like Rio and Peanuts, and later led visual development at King. Now they're teaming up to create something new, a game studio that's blending deep world-building original IP with community-first mindset.
00:01:27
Speaker
We're going to dive into their journey, understand what they've learned from the world of animation that they could bring to mobile gaming and just hear the formation of a studio and how it works. So that was a lot. Vincent, Jason, thank you so much for joining me.
00:01:40
Speaker
You want to let us know where you're joining us from today and little bit about yourself and maybe Jason, you want to kick it off? Sure. That'd be great. Thanks for, but first of all, thanks for having us on. We really appreciate it. um You know, Vince and I love to tell our story to anybody who'll listen.
Creativity and Collaboration in Game Development
00:01:54
Speaker
So thank you for having us on.
00:01:56
Speaker
I'm calling in from Westchester County, New York, which is north of New York City in a town called Katona. We're about 45 minutes north of the city. And so we're enjoying one of our few really nice spring days so far this year. But happy to be here and and talk about everything. Nice, gang. And I appreciate you having us on.
00:02:17
Speaker
Of course, Vincent. Vincent. Yes, I'm ah ah I'm calling in from Houston, Texas. You know, I grew up in Houston, Texas, and, you know, couldn't wait to to leave it to you know go to the big city to be an artist. You know, I lived in New York for over 20 years and You know, now I'm back for the last two years. So, you know, be closer with family and, you know, work, work at remote. So, you know, that's yeah, it's been working out pretty well.
00:02:49
Speaker
ah Very different from New York City. Right. Yeah, I could imagine. I'd say the weather is probably nicer, but but as Jason said, we have a beautiful day out today. So so we could we could probably put up a fight. If you've ever been to Houston in the summertime, ah it's it's toasty.
00:03:04
Speaker
i you we We have this we have this thing called AC. ah tri says That's why the grid is working down there in Texas. it's miss um I love your guys' stories. And Jason, we spoke a lot about it on the pre-calls that we had, right? Is that you're coming from the world of animation and people know the characters from Blue Sky. They know Ice Age and know Peanuts and know Rio. They know all that stuff.
00:03:28
Speaker
um And it's so cool to hear it go into become a studio on the gaming side of things. Right. So before we dive deep into this, what I'm really curious about is what skills do you each bring to the table when you're working together? Right. You both have different specialties and I'm curious on kind of where your skill sets lie. And when you're looking at your day to day today, what are you doing? Yeah, that's a great, it's a great question. So there's a lot for those that don't may not know, there's a lot of correlation between animation and gaming.
00:03:59
Speaker
right it's it's that It's that balance between ah you know the engineers and the artists. right And so you have to be able to balance both those things. And I would say my biggest asset coming into this was knowing how to work with both those parties. Artists are a little fickle, no offense, Vince.
00:04:20
Speaker
But, you know, because and artists will tell you that every single, you know, corporate guy will be like, it needs to be done in three days. It needs to be done now. You're running late. But art takes time, right? It takes time to to breathe. It takes time to get the best out. We always used to say, like, you can get 90% of the way there in art in the first two days.
00:04:43
Speaker
But then to get that last, you know, 10% would take another week because it's really about refining it. and perfecting it. And so being able to work with artists and understand their temperament and understand how they like to work was incredible. But then, you know, when we were at Blue Sky, had, i think the R&D team, the engineering team was somewhere around 70 engineers writing code, writing tools.
00:05:07
Speaker
i mean, a huge team of of engineers. So you have to understand the balance between those two things because they ah they also get the same pressure. Oh, it that shouldn't be a big deal. Just add that, and create that tool, take a couple of days.
00:05:20
Speaker
um But understanding how they work and how they process, that's the key. cause then And then you can bring those two teams together. ah That's really when the magic happens and you you start to really really build something that's very cool.
00:05:34
Speaker
Would you kind of liken that back to just basically management skills, understanding what this group of individuals are good at, how it connects to this, how to keep a project on on schedule, stuff like that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think planning is everything, right? You have to yeah have to you have to really come in and be open-eyed, especially with with a game with games, right? Because they're they're super complex, and Vince always always puts it the best.
00:05:58
Speaker
They're incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard to create a really good game. And so you got to make sure that you plan everything out properly, that you bring people on at the right times, that you give them you know you give them the opportunities to be successful. I think too often,
00:06:14
Speaker
we you know In these games, either don't have you don't have enough resources or you have too many resources, and then that that creates its own problems with inefficiencies and you know all kinds of other you know cultural things. But for us, I think we one of the great things that we did and the reason we were able to make our game at such a lower price point was because we planned everything out step by step, and we brought people on as we needed them,
00:06:42
Speaker
And we didn't overcorrect or either way, we we found solutions. And the bottom line is you're always going to run into road bumps. You're always going to have issues. You've got to just be able to like have a good team, take everybody's advice, bring them in, and then find a solution and and work towards that goal.
00:07:00
Speaker
That's awesome to hear. You know, we we often at PlayerDriven talk about feedback and you're collecting feedback internally, making sure that people are working, everyone's clicking and you're hearing each person. I've heard multiple times at a good manager, what they do is they remove the roadblocks for those that are working for them. Right. So, so it sounds like that's yeah what you're doing is you're helping understand, Hey, what is stopping you from getting from point A to point B and let's remove those roadblocks we can continue to move forward.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. Even, even, even going, even going more, you know, a little bit deeper, it's really understanding how your team works is everybody, every individual is unique, right? They all have their own things that are important to them, whether it's,
00:07:38
Speaker
like even going even deeper into like things like work-life balance or pressure, like some people feed feet off of pressure. Some people this just, you know, shrink when pressure is put on them. So the people that shrink, your job as a manager is to keep that pressure off of them and don't don't let them feel any of the stress. Just let them do what they need to do and go as fast as they need to go.
00:08:00
Speaker
um Yeah, that's that's the key too. It's just getting to know people and getting to understand how they like to work and how and what what makes them ah you know motivated and then tapping into that as much as possible to to get the results out.
00:08:15
Speaker
Awesome. I guess, Vincent, same question, right? You're coming from the more creative side of the process here, right? What is the kind of superpower that you're bringing to NiceGang? How do those skills translate from what you were doing animation
Founding of Nice Gang and Pandemic Influence
00:08:28
Speaker
to now kind of game creation?
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, i you know, like Jason said, you know, the correlation from to from games to movies is very, very, very similar um and and more so through, you know, cinematics and cut scenes and all all the all the the fancy graphics that games are are doing today.
00:08:51
Speaker
um You know, I think what I bring is very different from what Jason, you know, I'm obsessed with image making storytelling, motivation for characters, you know, acting and all that stuff.
00:09:09
Speaker
And, you know, I've always loved that side of creating worlds ah beyond, you know, what is what I even sometimes think capable of. And that's sort of what I love to bring in, you know, in in this in in the gaming business, you know, like especially, you know, movies is definitely um larger than life.
00:09:36
Speaker
And now you're you're you're taking you know, that storytelling aspect of creating a character for movies and then bringing it into a game and then being able to actually control that character. You know, that's that's pretty powerful you know for me specifically.
00:09:53
Speaker
I think it's really cool, especially when you take a look at 8th Era, right? You have different heroes that have different stories that's all building towards this kind of greater story. And I'm curious because I've never really done a podcast with someone that's on the create, like a story person before or a visual like this, but like, how does this begin in your mind? Like, are you just sitting there, the two of you one day kind of spitballing ideas? Like you take this seed that's growing into this whole complex plant, right? And how does that seed get started? Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
and Believe it or not, ah we created like scripts. And you know we started it as you know ah miniseries of a TV show or you know ah you know a three-act structure film.
00:10:37
Speaker
you know we we we We blocked it all out. And then we just sort of added characters that sort of made sense and then um and then deconstructed it for specifically ah genre of game. you know um If you ask me if we wanted to do you know and MMO right now, you know I could break that same script into an MMO. you know like oh Or even like, i don't know, Switcher or you know Merge game. Who knows?
00:11:08
Speaker
you know and we we We kind of we kind of stole we kind of stole a mantra that we had at Blue Sky, which I think was a mantra that other wasn't just original a Blue Sky, but you know we want to explore worlds that haven't been explored yet.
00:11:21
Speaker
right So it's got to be something original. It's got to be something that nobody's seen before. You might not like it, you might love it, but it's not going to be another fantasy, you know medieval type of of game. right It's going to be a world that's very unique um because what we've found is that that those are the worlds that people fall in love with, right and the ones that are incredibly unique. And so that was that was That was one of the things. And to Vince's point, we were like, all right, we've got these this base of characters. We've got time. Let's start thinking about storylines and how... like we could Again, you know we we could talk about transmedia and all that stuff. But we, of course, went to our are you know sweet spot, which is which was animated films, right? And we've seen thousands of them and we've made our own and and you know been a part of making these great these great movies.
00:12:14
Speaker
So we were like, okay, let's build a story. Then... From
Challenges and Decisions in Game Development
00:12:18
Speaker
there, that we build a character, you know, Vince designs the characters with his brother. We then create the story, the world.
00:12:26
Speaker
Now we're ready to bring in our developers and start building a game because we have that foundation already in place. It's just, it might I don't know how other game developers do it, but that's how we approached it because in our minds, if it's if it's a great creative, then you're already way down the road for building your game.
00:12:48
Speaker
how does storytelling change when there's a character that's being controlled by a player versus say a movie, what's kind of more on rails? Did you notice that there's any changes there or because it's still on rails, the game, you could kind of control that flow.
00:13:04
Speaker
I mean, i would, I would say that there's, there's very little difference because you build the character. Like we even like when you're doing character driven stories and I think Vince might might might agree with me here.
00:13:16
Speaker
The character is the character. Then the story is a story that's probably been told a thousand different times, but because you have this unique character in this unique world, it presents itself as new. I mean, buddy films have been done thousand times, right? Or, or you know, buddy ro road movies or all these different types of of of genres.
00:13:37
Speaker
Same thing in games. Like, it's like, okay, we're going to build this character and he's got these traits. We know what the physical traits, because those are for the game, but then what are his psychological traits? What are the interesting things about him? How does he act around his friends?
00:13:51
Speaker
Does he have friends? What is, you know, all these different things. um And that's where you can have a lot of fun with the characters. And then you get there, and then those characters in the game will then have their own voice. Right. And so I would say that, you know, with Eighth Era,
00:14:04
Speaker
you have ah a rainbow of characters that have all different kinds of voices, some fun and lighthearted, some very serious, some sinister, some, you know, joking and and, you know, all different intellectual. So.
00:14:18
Speaker
yeah and Yeah. Yeah. and And one part that, you know, was a little different for me was, you know, when, you know, the game designers came in and, and gave characters abilities and, you know,
00:14:33
Speaker
it actually sort of in my head changed the story of who who they were when when I originally started, you know, thinking about them, designing them. um So that was kind of cool. You know, that's very different from, you know, making a film, right? Because, you know, you figure all that out before you create the character and, you know, specifically what they're acting for.
00:14:55
Speaker
um but But in games, because, you know, especially this this game, um you know, every character has x amount of abilities and those abilities, know,
00:15:08
Speaker
you know, innately make them a certain type of character, you know, like an an attacker versus a defense or, you know, ah magician, you know, so it's, you know, you automatically get a sense of who that character is through their abilities, which which is pretty interesting to me.
00:15:27
Speaker
Do you have like pushback when you first see something like that? Like, no, that's not who I pictured this character to be. Or do you kind of go in that with an open mind and say, hey, we got to evolve. We got to. Yeah. I mean, you know,
00:15:39
Speaker
ah I think the game team did an amazing job of just um giving me the heads up on their needs as far as like, we need X, um we need this character in this faction that does this, like, do you have any ideas?
00:15:58
Speaker
And you know, being an artist, I had a million ideas, so, you know, now you get the sketching and then, you know, you you work out what that character does with, you know, the weapon, the abilities and stuff like that. So, um,
00:16:15
Speaker
So you're both at Blue Sky for a number of years, many years. You kind of split. Vincent, you go towards King in gaming. Jason, you go towards the Walt Disney, Walt Disney pictures, right? And stuff like that.
00:16:29
Speaker
Then you eventually reconnect and decide, hey, let's build a game. How does that go down? the I'll let Jason tell this one.
00:16:41
Speaker
So, I mean, i'll give you i'll give you the full I'll give you the full story. So we had we had we had closed down Blue Sky because of the pandemic. We were a victim of the pandemic. And very very, like, you know, very emotional, sad thing. So we closed that up and in May, said goodbye to a lot of good friends.
00:17:00
Speaker
um It was really, really tough thing. Luckily, everybody landed somewhere for the most part. So, you know, that that was a good, that was a great thing. Uh, then i was just kind of, I took, I decided to take the summer off cause I had worked since I was 20 years old. I hadn't had a day off and, or not day off, but you know i haven't, hadn't been out of work and and since I was 20. So I was like, right, take some time.
00:17:22
Speaker
And literally I'm on, I'm road tripping around the U S and three days in, i get it. I get a email or text from Vince. Hey, I'm back in America. I'm having lunch with one of our blue sky and like friends.
00:17:36
Speaker
Uh, I got this idea for a video game, for a mobile game company when we chat. And I was like, yeah, sure. You know, so we chatted and literally he told me about it and everything else. And he's like, yeah, would you be interested in coming on? And I was like, yeah. So I was like, come on to what?
00:17:54
Speaker
Like you're building. like I thought at that time, I didn't know, but I thought like he had like maybe two, $300,000 to like build like some like, you know, inexpensive mobile game.
00:18:05
Speaker
was like, I was like, I can't, yeaht I can't do that. Like, i'm you know, it's not going to work. And he's like, no, no, no, no. We'll raise a ton of money. We've got a guy who's going to get us started and this, that, and the other thing.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so i literally, i think like a week later, flew back from Nashville and we met with one of the founders, a man by the name of Mark Salzberg, and kind of went through the iteration of the idea of what we wanted to build, which was like this sort this triple mobile game company that also,
00:18:37
Speaker
rewards players with physical rewards, like bringing the digital and the physical together. And that's what, and then Vincent, Vince at that time, I think it moved back from, from England.
00:18:48
Speaker
And so we were just like, you know, it was like perfect timing. Everything was lining up and that's, and we were just like, yeah, let's, let's talk about it. We talked about it for about, I think another month or two.
00:19:00
Speaker
And then, and then we got started and we started working on it. um And that was four years, like i said, that was four years ago. So that's sometimes it's just as simple as that, you know, just, right, yeah, let's do it.
00:19:12
Speaker
um But it was, it was, it was, it was, it was the right time for all of us, know, because of, and by the way, as bad as COVID was, like, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for COVID and Vince probably would still be in Europe working for King. I would still be at King.
Role of Data in Gaming vs. Animation
00:19:26
Speaker
um Yeah. And so in that respect, like there was, there, there was a positive, there there was a positive note there. So um that's how get together. It's a simpler time. Who ever thought we could say that?
00:19:38
Speaker
um What about you Vince? I love the idea that you, I mean, you were at King, right? So you have Candy Crush experience and you think of this, I'm not going to say drastically different idea of a mobile game, but it doesn't follow the Candy Crush kind of formula as in match threes, right? so So how did you kind of come to ah hero kind of driven Well, you know, I was hired, um at King to do, to develop their, to help develop their new games.
00:20:09
Speaker
So, you know, you know, Candy Crush, you know, wasn't something, it wasn't, you know, that I really worked on, you know, I helped, um, do some visual designs for, you know, Candy Crush friends, but, you know,
00:20:27
Speaker
you know, they really brought me on to, to, to help steer the the visual development side on their new games, you know, and working with, ah you know, different game teams in different countries, because they had game teams across the whole entire country, um you know, from Sweden to Barcelona, Berlin, everywhere.
00:20:53
Speaker
And, you know, Every game team worked independently and every game team, um you know, had their way of working. So, you know, a part of what I learned was was literally um how to make games yeah from the ground up from start to finish. And um it it was an i will it was a very eye-opening experience, you know, as a with the games we were developing because they weren't match three games or merge games that we were doing they were you know more mid-core games and um and you know i was trying to bring know that level of you know animation art quality to to those type of games and develop story and stuff like that so so yeah it was uh but it was
00:21:47
Speaker
But it was a it was a great experience with working with you know great game makers over ah over in Europe. Yeah. you know I think ah ah there's a lot to be learned when you see how a game is made, right? From the outside looking in, you're just wondering why is the DLC taking so long to come out? Can't just put a few engineers on this. Hey, now that we have to create a game, we got to translate it. We got to do this. We got to do that. We got to... Right? Like, it is...
00:22:15
Speaker
it's no wonder that games take so long to get made. But I think once you start seeing that process, you can start to formulate how it works. and And Jason, I imagine, you know, as where you sit, you kind of could start to see these teams being formed. a question I have for you, Jason, is from the business side, what did you learn that translated well from Blue Sky over to game studios when starting a studio? Or maybe the better question would be, is there something you didn't expect to happen when you started a game studio that you you were caught off guard?
00:22:44
Speaker
um i don't I don't think there's anything necessarily that got that that caught me off guard. um i think that the biggest the biggest difference for us is that when you're doing film, the only thing that, I mean, you studio executives will look at, okay, what what movie what type of movies right now are popular?
00:23:06
Speaker
And then they'll look at your slate of develop stuff in development and go, okay,
Balancing Creativity with Business Models
00:23:12
Speaker
that's not, what's popular right now. Now that could also be the kiss of death. And every creative will tell you that's the worst thing you could do, right? Because there would be no, you know, ice age if, if we just did what everybody else was doing. Right.
00:23:26
Speaker
um But the difference, the big difference is, is that with, with games is that there's so much data and there's, I mean, it is a data driven business and it's probably in terms of creative businesses, it's the most data driven creative business. I mean,
00:23:42
Speaker
Vince would tell me, we would sit there that first year, it was the first year, it was just Vince, his brother and myself. And that was it. And we would sit and talk about his days at King and how like they would test, they would they would AB b test a green button versus a red button.
00:23:58
Speaker
And i forget this story exactly, but like they tested a red button and revenue went up 15%, right? Or something to that effect. And that just blew my mind because, mean, we'll do like a test screening towards the end of the movie and make some small tweaks. But at that point, you're 80 million, 100 million, 120 million into the film. is's not a ton that you can do to change it, your characters or your characters.
00:24:21
Speaker
um But that was the biggest thing. And and to that point, when we started, the game that you see now was not the original game that we were planning on making. Originally, Vince's vision was a rail shooter.
00:24:35
Speaker
um What like, like, you know, sort of, you know, ah like just up and down, boom, boom, boom, sort of like a, like a, you know, 3D subway surfer kind of thing where you're shooting and everything else. But as we got into our research and as we got into our data and we said, okay, we got this, like nothing seemed to fit with that genre that we wanted.
00:24:59
Speaker
It was just, were kind of forcing it. And so Vince made the tough decision to be like, okay, i've got I'm going to let go of that. And instead, we're going to we're going to go over here to you know an idle turn-based RPG, which is ah which is a big shift.
00:25:16
Speaker
Our costs went from probably you know a couple million. We kind of probably made that rail shooter for two, three million. And they shoot all the way up you know to 10 million, eight to 10 million. So um that that changed our business model, how fast we can make it, all the things. But if you want to talk about hero collection, you want to talk about physical collection, you want to talk about story, characters, all these things that we want to emphasize, this is the genre that best fits what we're trying to do. And the data the data kind of drove drove us there.
00:25:51
Speaker
I mean, going on Censor Tower and being able to see the the taxonomy of every game that you want and what's in it. It's just, it's mind blowing. Like we used to do that at blue sky where people would go through the movies and they would, they would, we would have people that would do full analysis of a movie, like number of characters, number of sets, what type of film, what worked, what didn't work, all these types of things to get a sense of like, okay, what are movies that, that audiences are responding to, but it doesn't even
00:26:23
Speaker
doesn't even you know compare to all the data that's out there now ah for game game designers, game developers, producers. you You have to be deep into that stuff before you even get started to really have before you build your roadmap out.
00:26:40
Speaker
Yeah. Oftentimes we always talk about how much data there is out there. We also talk about maybe getting ah trap where there's just too much data and you're following the data without actually listening to other people and what they have to say. Right. So I think there's data driven, then there's data obsessed Israel.
00:26:55
Speaker
Well, right. And think there's that line you got to say, Hey, you know what? I know the data is saying this, but I want to do this. Right. So, so understanding where you draw that line, why you need to do it and not just get too caught up in the numbers.
00:27:08
Speaker
yeah Yeah, no, I mean, there's there's you know there's a no there's a saying that you know players don't know what they want until and so you give it to them. So yeah, if you if you've totally focused just on the data, then you're just going to produce what everybody else is producing, in which case you're going to struggle. You're going to struggle to even find an audience. going be very difficult.
00:27:30
Speaker
So you use that as a foundation say, okay, these are sort of the table stakes that we need to have in the game. Then we elevate it. We elevate the game by bringing in better art, better story, some better make new mechanics.
00:27:46
Speaker
And then also swing for the fences. Take some risks. Take some big risks and and see what you know what might land. you never You just never know until you introduce something. And then you know then you've got Fortnite, right? And then things like that happen all the time.
00:28:02
Speaker
um i mean Candy Crush, right? King was like a casino yeah and A casino, w right? Weren't they like a casino company or something and a casino game company? And then they did this and used candy and like state the rest is history. So you got to swing for the fences and take big risks if you want to find a large audience. and but chair um So we're about halfway through, usually halfway through. We do kind of like a fireball around. i'm just going to throw a random question at you and get your answer.
00:28:33
Speaker
And then I want to talk more about specifically a there and kind of see what you're doing there. So good to go. Shoot. All right. What is the last TV show you binge watched?
00:28:46
Speaker
I mean, I'm going to sound so lame, but I just finished last night binge watching Ted Lasson. i'm I'm way behind because I just I didn't have Apple TV.
00:28:57
Speaker
Vince, Vince will tell you I'm very anti Apple. That's a whole other story. We could do a podcast on that. but But we got... so But I finally broke down ah because a friend of mine was like, you've got to see Ted Lasso. You'll love it. it's right up your alley. So finally, over this past weekend, I binge watched it. And it's it was phenomenal.
00:29:19
Speaker
It was great. Yeah, you're ready for the new season that's eventually going to come out. Fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed. Vince? Yeah, for me, ah you know, it was Ozark. No,
00:29:30
Speaker
that Kind of old. Now you realize how how little TV I actually watch. ah So yeah, that that was sort of the last. Better late than never, right?
00:29:42
Speaker
What did you have for breakfast?
00:29:47
Speaker
Go ahead, Vince. I actually don't eat breakfast. I drink lots of coffee. How do you take your coffee then? Black. There you go. It's the coffee down there that everyone loves in Texas. It's like...
00:30:00
Speaker
yeah I had my go-to protein shake, milk, protein, and peanut butter. Worked out this morning. So you're feeling good. But i do when I don't work out in the morning, I do like i do like to just have some eggs, eggs and toast.
00:30:18
Speaker
It's my go-to. Love it. Simple, straightforward, quick to make. You can 15-minute break, go grab it. There you go. That's that's my that's my my thing. I eat a big dinner, so it always carries over to breakfast. feel i give it I'm not a big breakfast fan. Give me a coffee. Sometimes I'll put like protein powder and make a latte. What else do you need?
00:30:39
Speaker
That's it. um so What is the last game you played? Not counting 8th Error. Testing out Season 2. Alright, so...
00:30:52
Speaker
right so Last game that I last game that i i truly played, ah meaning like a lot. So I download a dozen games a week, and I'll play like the first 25, 30 minutes of them just to see like, okay, what's that first time user experience?
00:31:11
Speaker
I'm constantly trying to like pair our game to other games. So dozens of those. But NCAA football is I mostly, when it comes to games, mostly sports.
00:31:24
Speaker
And I play them with my with my kids. So NCAA football is the last one that we've been playing pretty consistently for the last six months. right All Yeah, for me, as much as I love console games and you know I want more than anything to play a console game, you know I always end up playing mobile games.
00:31:44
Speaker
And I always go back to Clash Royale. i played i was one of the first players to test it. And you know you know six years later, I'm still like you know playing that game.
00:32:00
Speaker
There you go. Not King. Supercell's got ah a hook on you there, huh? Oh, yeah. And yeah and you know I'm a big fan of Supercell games. And and you know I know a lot of those guys who work over there. So you know they're great people, too. Yeah, you want to you it's interesting. Supercell...
00:32:17
Speaker
I mean, here's like Brawl Stars. I don't know how old Brawl Stars is, but it's years and years and years and old. My 12-year-old son, who's in sixth grade, all his buddies like earlier this year found Brawl Stars. And now they're just playing constantly, constantly. that shows you that like โ that like If you made the game right and you make it engaging, that it could it could be evergreen. like It can just keep going and new players will come in and and just keep going.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah. you know we which This is the community that you want to build. right you want like Back in the day, we had N64. We'd have coach couch co-op all sitting next to each other. right and Then all of a sudden, we became an online place where we could play anywhere, which is great, but you lose that sense of community when you're not with someone. I feel like with a game like Brawl Stars, which I've never played, but I've realized that all the third graders in my town play it as well. Like yeah they're all getting together and still playing games. Like, yeah yeah yeah, it's a mobile game, but that's awesome that they're all taking the time to go sit together, hang out together and play this game together. Because when you're together playing that stuff, there's just such a cool sense of community and being together. And I think it's important to bring experiences like that back. Lots lots of tears.
00:33:34
Speaker
Lots of tears. Yeah. Group, they're idle. Yeah.
Creating Original IP and World-Building
00:33:39
Speaker
yeah I mean, that was honestly, that was one of the most the most interesting things. Like as a father, as a father you know, yeahre like we my son, when my oldest first started playing console games.
00:33:49
Speaker
And it was like, he's on there, you know, all day long. And, you know, oh, get you don't let your kids play video games for three, four hours and da-da-da-da. But then I realized, like, that's his social network.
00:34:01
Speaker
like those are his Those are the people that he's he's going to see them in in school later that day. like To your point, like we used to go down in the basement and play. Now they you know they log on and and they do the same thing. They just don't go over everybody's houses.
00:34:15
Speaker
um But it's i think I think it's also a great way for people to connect. Plus, you can connect with people from all over the world. That's the other thing, too, that you couldn't do you know from your Sega Genesis. Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
And I think this all goes in kind of to that kind of next topic I want to talk about, which is kind of world building in a way, right? You're here creating this entire world and you kind of spoke about where the idea of 8th Era came from, Vince telling us kind of what you were playing. but Like you look at the market today and see all the different games that are out, right? How do you try and stay original? what What do you do that's a little different when you're at the drawing table to say, hey, we're going to be different when we start creating our game, right?
00:34:54
Speaker
At the time, don't know if you knew it was going to called the eighth era, but like, how do you start that process? I think, for you know, specifically for me, you know, there's for creating anything there's always a problem and you have to figure out what that problem is and then sort of build that world around that problem and then cast ah a group of characters you know heroes villains And then now once you you have that, you can now break down every single sort of like, you know, character in size and gender or, you know, or non-gender, whatever you want, right?
00:35:38
Speaker
And once you have that, you know, you you can almost build, you know, a blanket sort of cast and before you go very deep and very specific, you know, because what What tends to happen as an artist is, you know you always tend to always go straight for the details, you know?
00:36:01
Speaker
um But you know building everything, knowing everything that's supposed to be built and sort of having a big sort of idea of what that is before you get very granular, I think that's very important.
00:36:19
Speaker
um So, you know, it's tough for me to talk about like, you know, very specific characters, because, you know, when when I'm thinking of, you know, building a world, you know, it's it's it has to be bigger than just the one particular character, know?
00:36:37
Speaker
so So, you know, I would never start one particular character and and build from there. It's always like, what's the world? And then sort of build that sort of cast that lives within that world, you know?
00:36:49
Speaker
It almost sounds like kind of earlier to what you're saying is kind of the power of collaborating with the others on the team, right? You can start building this stuff out and they'll say, hey we need this or you need this. And it's almost like when you start big picture, the little details will start to fill themselves in based on feedback, based on what other people are thinking as well.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, and you know you know now now we're in you know year two of designing new characters. They're way more interesting than the original characters.
00:37:17
Speaker
you know ah Just because you have that time really know what world is, the style, certain shapes, colors, stuff like that. Now it's all fluid coming together. certain you know shapes colors and stuff like that now it's ah it's all sort of like fluid and coming together If you, well, let's come back to this. ja Jason, why was it so important for you to create your own IP? what why Why was that a must do?
00:37:46
Speaker
I mean, that's an interesting question. You know, i got when i was when we were first raising money for this, that was one of the questions that I got a lot was like, well, why don't you just, you know why don't you just grab some other IP and then create a game?
00:37:58
Speaker
The problem is that then you, first of all, you don't have control over, over much, right? The typically the person who owns the IP is going to have the ultimate control. What characters can you use? Which ones can't you use?
00:38:11
Speaker
um You know, to, to our point, we're storytellers, right? And so in the end, if I don't own the IP, I can't, I can't tell the story, right? Somebody else owns the story and controls that.
00:38:22
Speaker
And we just, Vince and I do doing, Peanuts and doing other, you know, Horton Hears a Who and these other things, you realize that, like, you don't have the freedom to do what you want to do.
00:38:34
Speaker
And so for that for us, it was like, listen, I've got two of the best artists, period, in anything, in gaming, in film, in anywhere. they can't create their own IP, then, you know, maybe I should go do something else. Like, we knew from the get-go, it was like, we have to do our own thing.
Transition from Animation to Gaming
00:38:53
Speaker
And plus, it's like, what fun is it? I mean, I shouldn't say but what fun is it doing somebody else's IP? Like, let's let's do our own. Let's create something that we can be proud of, that we can put our name on, say created by, this is who we we created this.
00:39:06
Speaker
And then also from a business standpoint, when you when things hit and things land, you're in a much, much better position financially to leverage the game through other media outlets. And then ultimately, if you ever want to sell the company or get acquired, um owning the IP is that, you know, is is much more valuable than just a game developer studio.
00:39:31
Speaker
um If you're, if you're developing other people's IP, it can be, again, nothing against it. I mean, obviously, you know, people did Monopoly, people have done other things in and made billions of dollars.
00:39:43
Speaker
um But for us, for a startup, um you know, i'd rather I'd rather spent the capital and the resources on my team to build a ridge. And then that's what stands out. you know And that's what stands out. and And it's harder.
00:39:59
Speaker
It's going to be harder because if you if you don't have a known IP, it's more difficult to market. But once people find it, I think then that's when the that's when they can the magic happens, right?
00:40:09
Speaker
I love to hear that. I'm on my desk here. I'm a big ah big Peanuts fan. I got a whole bunch of Snoopy stuff here. And it's funny the way you're talking about this. I remember when the Peanuts movie came out. I remember there were people that were against it, wanting to come out because they're saying i can't have that same part that Charles Schultz had when he was creating the comic. was one of the artists who was against doing it.
00:40:32
Speaker
and then And then I remember the art director was like... ah The director was said, that's why I need you on the team because because you're so against it. Pretty funny. And it did such a great job of of keeping the heart that was there. it was such a well done movie. It was just like, I was excited to watch it with my kids or without my kids at that point. Like you did it justice. And I think that's one of the things about having an IP that you're following for better or for worse. It gives you the standards that they want you to stay in between. You can't take a chance and, and,
00:41:04
Speaker
go crazy, right? But but you're you're going to be particularly safe unless you really screw up, which a lot of games have screwed up licenses before. Yeah. No, i mean I mean, we could we could do a we could do a ah whole podcast just on that movie.
00:41:18
Speaker
And because by the way, like people don't realize, Vince will tell you, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, what they look like changed like dozens and dozens of times throughout the comic strip.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. And so like they had, these guys, these guys put together this grid of like, Charlie Brown, like it would be every part of Charlie Brown's face from like 1948 to like 19, 2010. Yeah. and And then like, how do you, how do you, you know, when Snoopy, Snoopy, right.
00:41:54
Speaker
So Snoopy, when he turns, his nose stays right the center, right. So his face moves, but his nose doesn't move. So how do you animate that? Like in 2D, it's fine because you see the shots. He never moves his face.
00:42:07
Speaker
But if you're doing 3D, he's got to move. So they had to create this sliding nose. Yeah. that like It was wild, man. It was crazy. The animation team like just changed the game on on how to animate something like that, you know?
00:42:26
Speaker
you're right we could probably do a whole pod because this is just getting me excited hearing this stuff like i want to picture all the charlie browns kind of over the years just kind of and even even like charles schultz's like line weight like we had to decide does the model go outside the lines inside the lines so you know do do we split the difference you know like everything because because our characters don't have line you know All right.
00:42:51
Speaker
This is hard, let's in the back. And as business guy, when we did Peanuts, I was excited because I like, oh, this is going to be so inexpensive. All the characters are already designed. well just it'll be and Everybody's like, we'll do a 2D, 3D mix. It'll be quick and simple.
00:43:05
Speaker
It was like one of the most expensive movies we ever did. You nailed it, though. Way to go. So back to gaming, right? When the two of you sit down in a couple of years from now, or maybe not even a couple years from now i say, hey, what are we going to for our second game?
00:43:21
Speaker
are you going to do anything different in the planning stages than what you did this first time? Were there any learnings that you took from this experience that you'll know you won't you'll do different next time?
00:43:32
Speaker
um ah Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you're not, yeah, a ton of things that that I would do differently. I mean, I know for us, I think we want to, you know, I think the the point of of these game studios is to build more ambitious games.
00:43:46
Speaker
So, you know, doing doing an open world, A game would be fantastic. and And I know Vince has got a number of ideas and a number of artists that he would like to work with that we could build those games.
00:43:58
Speaker
But I think the biggest thing for me would be more more in the planning stages, understand better market better market analysis and meaning like, look at what's in the market. Who are you competing against?
00:44:13
Speaker
where of the games Where were the games five years ago? Where are they now? Where have they gone? And then you really need to you need to come up with four or five really true differentiators. Like, where are you going to invest time, energy, resources to give players something that they don't already
Innovative Monetization Strategies
00:44:34
Speaker
have? And it can't just be some gimmick of like, oh, we're going to add this little thing or that little thing.
00:44:39
Speaker
Those things are important, and you should have dozens of those. But really have like two or three tentpole... found bedrock foundations where you're saying, okay, this is what these type of games need, whether it's more, more of X, more of Y, or we're going to, we're going to make it more casual. And this is, but you know, whatever you try to work, make sure that you map those out early on and not wait to the, like we, we waited till we, we put the game out there and then realized we needed to do more differentiation.
00:45:16
Speaker
And we need to do other things to really, sorry, separate the game and and get us out there. Yeah. Sorry that. and We talked about that earlier, right? We talked about in our pre-calls, kind of when is too soon to launch, right? We see everyone going into alphas and betas, right? And it's just like, all right, well, are we ready to see it waiting in its current stage, right? And I'm sure if I had to take a guess, and I don't know, Vince, you might be a little more wary of of launching sooner, maybe because it's the art and the story and and kind of the stuff you're designing, but maybe the same thing you want to be seen so you can get that feedback.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think... i think um I mean, you know, mobile games overall is still very young industry. I mean, maybe it's 15 years old, right? At the most.
00:46:04
Speaker
and And I think that there, when we started, there was a mindset that like, yeah, you know, put the game out there. Players will be accepting of the fact that it's not fully done and you can build it up over time. And and I think that model used to be more acceptable, but there's so much money involved in mobile gaming now. i mean it's over a hundred billion.
00:46:26
Speaker
You've got these massive companies. You've got all these different things, massive teams, massive budgets. So I think the mindset of like putting a game out there before it's, it's like 98% done is very, very risky, but obviously different companies have to get stuff out there.
00:46:43
Speaker
And also if you're depending on where you are, what genre you're you're in but that's a thing where I think, the yeah i saw I saw an interview with the the former CEO of Zynga, and he made the point of like, you need to stop with the MVPs.
00:46:57
Speaker
um If you want to have a closed beta test with your MVP, just to get, that's great. Do something with a thousand players, open it up for four weeks, get feedback, close it, and then move on.
00:47:10
Speaker
But um ah launching a game early, it's it's very risky. um Because now you've got to split your team between live ops and development, right? So the game is not fully developed, but you but you have to support your players um or they'll leave soon. So now you split the team in half as opposed to all being focused in on development.
00:47:32
Speaker
So all focused on development, you can move twice as fast. But as soon as you open up that game, it's split. Everybody's you know priorities are split and it becomes... And also you have to add...
00:47:44
Speaker
cost, right? You've got to add marketing. You've got to add player support. You've got to add all this other stuff that comes with it. So your costs go up quickly. um um And so I would say personally, do do close betas, closed alphas, whatever you close MVPs, whatever you want to call them, just to keep but keep confirming that you're on the right track.
00:48:05
Speaker
But then try to try to take the game as far as possible um versus what else is in the market. And then before you before you go to release it.
00:48:16
Speaker
That's just my opinion. Vince, same feelings? Yeah, ah for me, you know, it's I always struggle, right? Because, you know, as an artist, you always want to do, you know, the work to perfection.
00:48:30
Speaker
yeah But, you know, what what I sort of learned was, you know, you just have to let stuff go. You just have to to make a decision. you just have to, you know,
00:48:41
Speaker
let your baby out there and let him, you know, hurt himself and, you know, you patch him up, you know, so, you know, that's something, you know, I've, I've come to learn that, you know, um, you can't be too, you know, sensitive when it comes to, you know, the, the art process of releasing a game, you know?
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's tough, right? i Yeah. Because at the same time, you know, it's not perfect. And, and, it could be so much better, but at the same time, like, you know, I feel like people need to see it you know, people need to experience it.
00:49:18
Speaker
Perfect is the enemy of good, right? so So if you keep waiting for perfection, you're never gonna hit it, right? So again, it's just trying to determine how do I know it's right? I'm having that argument with some studio right now. it's just like,
00:49:30
Speaker
you need to pick up milestone. And at that milestone, you just gotta do it, but you gotta decide on what that milestone is Like even talk to the other people there. Like all of you agree on the milestone because you can't just keep it hiding forever. At some point, yeah let it rip.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We used to, we used to say, I can't afford perfect. I can't, I just can't afford everything to be. And by way, not only that, but not everything can be at that same level. Some things you've just got to say, like, this has got to be at a B level or a C level. Like,
00:49:59
Speaker
You know, it's just because because it's not it's not the most important thing that we're doing. So let's just get that done and ship it and make choices, right? Focus in on what is most important to Vince or most important to the game designer and focus in on those things or or whatever it might be.
00:50:16
Speaker
And some things you just have to let it go. It's just they're not going to be. You're not going you not goingnna win an award for that. Just let it It's okay. So we're coming up to time here, right? And there's a few more things I want to hit on. But with Season 2 now launching as of today, right, are there things that you've changed that you're excited for players to see or there things now that are on the roadmap that you're excited to be working on now that you kind of got something out there?
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we launched PvP a month ago, and the response so far has been actually really, really good. And we're really, really excited. i mean, player sessions doubled.
00:50:51
Speaker
um And so, and we're seeing a lot of, lot of response. So we're, we're working on for season two, number, number of other features, battle pass, loot boxes is another thing on our our roadmap. And, and so but we're, again, we're getting a lot of the features in We want to be more, you know, for, for people on this, on this podcast, who don't know, we haven't really talked about it is that our com, our game,
00:51:17
Speaker
Hey, Farah offers players the opportunity to win the coins behind me ah in the game. So you play leaderboards, you play in these events, finish on top of the leaderboard, and we send this around the world, these coins around the world to your house, free of charge, and and you collect them. And the response so far has been incredible. So we're going to be rolling out new coins as well for PVP.
00:51:43
Speaker
We're going to be rolling out more team coins, more special coins for our avid players. Like when once the battle pass rolls out, you'll be able to collect a coin with that.
00:51:54
Speaker
So a lot of really, really cool features. and Because one of the things that we've learned is that our players love collecting these coins. And ah you know we we've done the analysis on it. We've looked at eBay. you know Our coins go for you know an average of over $100 a hundred dollars coin.
00:52:12
Speaker
um So the collectability is high. But we're also seeing not a lot of sales, which means that our players are are winning them and they're holding on to them. And the best part is we're seeing players win win these who spend money in the game. And we see players win these who are not spending money or just grinding and playing the game a lot.
00:52:32
Speaker
um So it's a really cool thing to see. that Because that was one of the things you talk about swinging for the fences. We had no idea if anybody would even care one bit about these coins.
00:52:44
Speaker
And but yeah Vince laughs, but like when we when we released the game in October and we did our first tournament, we were just like, okay, you know, all right. so first the first good sign was that i think 90 players won and 89 out of the 90 redeemed they the reward.
00:53:06
Speaker
So like, okay, players want to win the reward they like to And it's been that way. It's been like 98, 99%.
00:53:13
Speaker
redemption So players get in and they and within 10 days in the U.S., you know, three weeks internationally, the coins at your house. And and then, like i said, and then they're trading, they're trading on eBay, they're trading in our discord.
00:53:29
Speaker
People are people are doing three, four way trades. And so we want to keep we want to keep elevating the game so that the player experience keeps getting better and better and better. And then we also want to keep tapping into that collector mindset because I think as people come into this game and as they collect these coins, they want to build their collections. We're also going to be launching a registry in the next couple months where players will be able to to take their coins and have their own accounts and then see what other, you know, and we're going to give rewards for people who have collections and the best collections or the best ah sets of, of these type of coins or those type of coins. And so,
00:54:08
Speaker
um It just adds, and then that information will go back into the game, which will be great, because then you'll see, okay, who are the biggest collectors? Who are the best? Who have the, what guys, when I'm battling PvP, am I battling against a guy who's got a great set of of coins and a great collector?
00:54:23
Speaker
And those type of things, just bragging rights and and peacocking and just a lot of the fun social pieces of the game. That's awesome. I have a question about the coins, but before we do that is Vince with season two here, any updates you're excited for p players to check out?
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, we we've we started, you know, i'm I'm a big sort of like, you know, blind box sort of, you know, and toy collector. So, you know, anything with loot boxes and stuff like that, I'm um um'm always like, let's let's roll it, you know.
00:54:57
Speaker
So, you know, that's that's something I'm pretty excited about. All right. So the coins, that's such a unique differentiator and something I think is really awesome, right? I think there's a huge community out there of collectors that will find an engaged game and being able to get a coin from is something amazing.
00:55:14
Speaker
You've partnered with The Mint, which is awesome because they're they're producing these. How did that idea come about and how does it actually happen? Like who who calls The Mint up and figures this out? so So the original idea, the original idea, if you believe it or not, when going back to the the earlier story, when we first met in um we first met in New York, and Vince probably tells the story of how he first met Mark, but basically the the the one of our founders, Mark Salzberg, was also the founder of this company Certified Collectibles Group.
00:55:48
Speaker
And they're one of the biggest graders of collectibles in the world. So comic books, baseball cards, Pokemon cards, coins, stamps, money, all that stuff.
00:56:00
Speaker
And so he had this idea that we would, first, his first question to Vince, which i always find hilarious was, do do people, are there coins or collecting coins in video games?
00:56:12
Speaker
And Vince was like, yeah, pretty much every video game. Every game has them. Every game has, you know, since Mario, you know, so.
00:56:24
Speaker
Right. And so his idea was, what have we rewarded players with ancient coins? And I was like, oh, that's, yeah, like like we actually just did last month, we did a ah promo where we gave away ah Byzantine coins that were like 1,300 years old, 1,400 years old um to to our tournament winners in addition to our character coins.
00:56:48
Speaker
But so we just said to him one simple question, well, like how many of these coins do you have? And he's like, oh, I could get like 10,000. And we were like, yeah, we that then what do we do after those three months?
00:57:01
Speaker
Like, then then what? Like, what do we, 10,000, we might have a million users in our game eventually. And just get like, I think, so that's when we moved away from that.
00:57:12
Speaker
And then we partnered with ah ah with partner with the US Mint, to be clear, like the US Mint produced a coin that we had early access to.
00:57:22
Speaker
um Our character coins are produced by a different mint that we use. But you know we're we're exploring using other mints too and and eventually having a coin that's denominated.
00:57:35
Speaker
So it's actually like a real you know real coin as opposed to what we're doing, which is more just what they call metal. um But yeah, it's it's right Mark went to the U.S. Mint and said, hey, listen, you want to reach a new demographic, right?
00:57:51
Speaker
Here's an idea. And i thought when we first met with the U.S. Mint, I thought, wow, this is going to take like two, three years. It's the government. And so we met and we walked away. And I want to say like a month later, they were like, all right, you guys want to do something in the fall?
00:58:08
Speaker
And I was like, what? I'm like, the game ah the game wasn't even going to be ready for when they were ready. But we, again, moved everything up. We made some changes and and and then we were able to do the deal.
00:58:21
Speaker
Um, and so we just actually, right now we just did us our second Royal mint Chrome, or sorry, us mint promo, um, with a, with a unique, with a first time silver Eagle with a flying Eagle privy mark on it.
00:58:35
Speaker
And the response was incredible. I mean, we sold out in, I think ah um in less than two days, we sold all our coins. Um, and so it's been, it's been really good again, collectors love to collect.
00:58:46
Speaker
And, uh, and it's it's been It's been really cool. you mind if I show some of our coins? Please, by all means. We could also kind of, if it doesn't come out clear, could just put pictures of them if you want to send them in afterwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
So we have we have, so this is this is our team coin. And this is the one that players can get as an early bundle when you first come in the game. This is one of the only coins that we actually sell in the game.
00:59:12
Speaker
The rest you have to win. So we have We basically run four, Mike, I'm giving you the ah promo. but We run four-week tournaments, and we do one-week tournament, one-week tournament, and then a two-week tournament.
00:59:25
Speaker
And we get we run each time we run a character, so this is Scoria. And so this is the gold version of it. So this is for our top players in the game.
00:59:36
Speaker
And then we'll have a silver version and a color version. I think it's a color. And so you can see here, this would be the color version. And we you know right now we're giving out and each in each tournament cycle you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of coins.
00:59:51
Speaker
And that will scale as the players scale. As we get more players in the game, we want want to get as many coins in as many hands as possible. um And like I said, the crazy part is really organic. nothing Nothing to do with us.
01:00:05
Speaker
People are trading these for for over $100 on eBay. And these gold have gone for a lot, lot more. Um, and so, cause these are one of fives. So we only give out a few of these every tournament. That's it. The the colors are are more, have more, uh, are like one of three 51 to 450.
01:00:26
Speaker
And then the silvers are one of fifties. Um, so we want to keep that demand high for our best players to really offer them something unique and rare. And then, like I said, with every four weeks, it's a new boss that you're competing for.
01:00:39
Speaker
And these coins, the best, the cool part is, Once this tournament's over, this is it. This coin will never be minted again. you never but You'll never see this one again. the only place you'll be able to get it is on the secondary market.
Future of Nice Gang and Eighth Era
01:00:52
Speaker
So we we want players to know that when you win something, yeahre you you you've won something and you're not you're not goingnna nobody else is going to be able to get it except you.
01:01:02
Speaker
I think that's such a great differentiator, especially the market full of just clones of one another, right? The ability to actually win a physical prize, right? It's something that people don't see anymore. They get in-game purchases instead, right? And I think being able to actually have something is just such a cool thing to do.
01:01:18
Speaker
and that's And that's the thing too. That's the part that that kind of, again, one of the things when we started this that that bugged me was, you know, a lot of these games, they make, they make,
01:01:29
Speaker
you know people pay a lot of money and they just get these digital rewards. And it's like, you should be able to figure out a way to get them something more, so to to to make that connection between the physical and the digital.
01:01:43
Speaker
And so that they're putting in their time and their commitment and and their money as well, that they have a chance to win something and be rewarded with something. And and like I said, once Battle Pass is up, we'll have coins tied to Battle Pass.
01:01:57
Speaker
So even if like, yeah like If you buy Battle Pass, you'll be you'll be able to get a coin with that as well. So it's just it's always like a great value proposition for the player.
01:02:08
Speaker
Awesome. Well... think that's all I have for you guys today. This is a super cool episode. We got to hear about kind of your beginnings at Blue Sky about animation and creativity and business side of it, how it all comes together. And I think you're doing such a cool thing at Nice Gang of Eighth Era.
01:02:25
Speaker
Before we do go today, is there anything each of you want to say? Vince, I'll let you start. No, I just want to say thank you. You know, it's like, ah you know, i I originally got offered my first couple of jobs through video games, but it never weirdly panned out. so so um So I went into into movies, but you know now I'm back in games. I always felt like it it was supposed to be. you know Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
you know The two skill sets are all converging here, right? And you're luckily you know one of them, right? So you'll know both of them. And I think it's a good time to be there.
01:03:08
Speaker
Jason. Yeah. And I'll, I'll, I'll just reiterate that and say, thank you for having us on. um You know, it's, it's very like Vince and i we're very proud of, of, of the game that we have so far and we're incredibly excited about the future. And, but I would say overall, like I know the video game industry is a tough business and I know that there's a lot of ups and downs in the business, but I'll tell you what, I think the games are going to get more and more exciting, more and more beautiful.
01:03:38
Speaker
And I think that the passion, one of the things that I loved about making the transition from animation to gaming is the people that are in this space are just as passionate as animator animators and and artists were making making movies.
01:03:56
Speaker
Like we used to go to this we used to go to this conference called Seagraph and it was sort of the animation visual effects conference the way GDC is to gaming. And I'm telling you, you could literally swap out the people there.
01:04:10
Speaker
one Right, Vince? Like one for one, and you could swap out. And I stick out like a sore thumb in both places. but But I will tell you this. like i love you know i love being around those people because they have just such a passion for what they do. um you know Gamers, when they're done working, after working 50-hour weeks, what do they do?
01:04:34
Speaker
They go home and they game, right? Animators did the same thing. Like when they were done working long hours, they'd either go home and practice their animation to get better or draw as as Vince and his team would do. They'd go do, I mean, at lunch, they would go paint and they would keep working on their craft or they go home and watch movies and and watch what other people are doing and and get inspired. So it's just very, I'm just very lucky to have, you know, been a part of all that.
01:05:03
Speaker
as not as a non-artist uh it's been great that's awesome to hear and i love that sentiment of just continuing to learn afterwards because we love what we do before we do finalize for today let us know either one of you where we can find eighth era in nice gang yeah sure so uh you can you can find uh eighth era uh on the app stores uh ios and and android uh so 4.8 stars on the app store so if people are loving the game please get in Get going. Within a day, you'll be thrust into your first tournament and have an opportunity to compete for a physical for physical reward.
01:05:42
Speaker
um And then also check us out at NiceGang.com. We're always going to be adding content, expanding the lore. You can see what coins have already been put out there, what the next ones coming down the pipe are, and a little bit and ah and a lot about Aethera and the game itself. So go check it out.
01:06:01
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks again to Jason and Vincent. A huge congrats on season two of eighth era. That's awesome that that you've made it to season two. I'm excited to see what you continue to build out. If you're not following them along yet, we'll have links to their play store and i iOS store so they can download the game, check it out.
01:06:17
Speaker
It's still early. So get on early and enjoy it. And again, guys, thank you so much for sharing your story today. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you, Greg. Appreciate having us on.