Animating to the Metaverse - Pablo Jordi, Pikkukala Oy.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so I'd like to welcome to the stage our next speaker to talk about animating for the metaph first do we have Pablo Jordi Pablo yordi are you in uh are you ah there you are already Pablo come to the stage big round of applause for Pablo our next speaker thank you okay oh that's your clicker by the way that's my thing thank you so much okay thank you hey hello thank you for being here there's so many interesting talks so I'll be moving from one side to another so I can see all of you um yeah so this is animating the metaverse I'd like to introduce ourselves to explain you who we are at pukala and Pablo Jordi CEO of pikala so I'd like to explain a little

bit who we are why we decided to animate the metaverse in our case that means why did we decide to bring a animated IP into into Roblox even if this animated IP has almost a decade and um and then how we are how we are doing it so if you know us maybe you know us for for our work in with some of these Big Brand like Angry Birds or or Ming or maybe you know what because um at pikala we do our own IP here we have Royals next door s fungi and and taste body so we we tell stories with what we do at P we tell um authentic stories and we aim to change or impact positively the lives of children in the long term so how how did we move from that to getting into into metaverse and Roblox um I guess you have probably read this book or you have heard of it could you kindly raise your hands if you have read this book nobody oh okay great so it's like like the

Bible of the of the metaverse and that makes me really happy because when I first read this I was um a total zero I I thought the metaverse was the a part of the foot you know bones uh here but it's not and now I am I'm an actual expert and I'm here and you haven't read the book so I have an advantage there um so so what you learn from this book is that there's actually not no consensus about what the metaverse entails um there's certainly elements of um of VR there are Li elements of AR there is uh certainly some blockchain web 3 elements and um and and most interestingly there's a lot about game and gaming and game engines fun fact in the in the whole book which is quite thick there's 100 exactly 109 mentions to the unity engine there's like 56 mentions to the to the Unreal Engine and there's zero uh um references to the godo uh engine so that's too bad but anyway the

interesting thing about the about about this whole metaverse fast word and concept and what is behind uh for us it was the the fact that the element of having different people playing concurrently and exploring a world together is something that's actually happening now and it's not a promise unlike the blockchain or the or the or the virtual reality um which are more like a dream but in reality now we have fortnite we have ROBLOX we have this these platforms that actually work and attract a lot of people so yeah then I have this picture of Mark presenting the his project meta um yeah so why why did we move into into roblo specifically and why did we choose uh to use it this old IP of us so um the reason why we went with fungi with our old animation series into into Roblox is because we found that it was a real match between the IP and the platform and uh it was crazy for us to realize because it it hadn't been

conceived about like a like a interactive project at all and it was done in 2012 so so it quite incredible then the animation series has been in like in 10 countries and and we have some audience but now we realize that this can find a new audience in in Roblox and then the reason why we went specifically to Roblox and not another um platform is because um the our audience is there so children from 8 to 12 are already there the the the platform is already up and running it's not a beta like sandbox or some other that are struggling to to get that kind of of of of mass and then it's very accessible so there's you have 10 year old children making games for for for Roblox and and and the setup is not that complicated the platform you know the infrastructure is there so that's really appealing for us and the reason why we say that we think that the IP really worked with the uh with the with with the roblo platform so it's because fungi

is about a funi house it's a place where a community of neighbors are cultivating fungi which is some kind of mushroom and they're using it for everything they use it for food they use it for their own um accessories they use it to create medicines hair products so depending on how they use this funi and there's a lot of interesting characters around there's like Tom the hyand there's Julia the hairdresser there's claraa and flano who have the rest so there's a lot of of of these different uses but everything is around this this uh fungi so um in the series we had two kids that were hanging out and being really looking what these neighbors were doing and so the core was really about the Curiosity of your of your community and your surroundings and uh and then if you see this is like a crosssection of the funi house if you see all the small little places with the hot shop and the laundry and the and the supermarket the there's

the the hair saloon all of these and all most importantly the fungi Farm um all these places could be a a mini game or could be a um a nice Roblox place no because it's quite H it feels like it was ready to do that so we we feel like the fungi economy the fact that they were playing and trading with fungi and using fungi for everything and the community were this two elements that we said oh this was like a Roblox game before Roblox so when we thought about game decide and and where to take it it felt really straightforward it's all about getting funy using them with your friends in some of these places or activities and then becoming met better and exploring and the idea of to explore the funi house and to be curious about it is what will keep you you know coming back so we of course transformed this idea of the Fung in some kind of fungi currency and uh and it's a grand design we have plenty of Stories We cannot do everything all the time all at once so

we decided to start with the two basic uh places in the funy house one is the street which is kind of a Lobby or a place where um a place where people can meet and also a hub to get to to get to your other experiences like uh using the elevator or using the the Metro you can get to to other places so that was really important as a first place to to present it was quite nice to make the transformation the translation of the 2D designs which are really specific into a 3D World I think they work quite um quite well but of course this is going to be more interesting when you can actually get to a lot of places um the second place we decided to focus on uh was the funi farm and that's important because the whole universe of of the funy house is around this hello are you still there yes hello this part of the audience yes so so we did the we did focus on the funy farm and uh we we did a mini game and for the mini game we

were lucky enough to work with all Huts which is this this team of very experienced um developers um Simo and and and and Olie um it was really a delight to to to work with them and and they managed to make this um um this mini game that actually allows uh us to help n picking up this this fungi trying to avoid the rotten or the bad fungi and and trying to get the good ones and in the end you get a reward so you can actually earn some funi so that's really the the the best uh first step for this uh big project because earning funy the next step will be being able to spend it maybe on some on some of the hats from the hat shop and in the long term of course uh the idea will be to to bring uh to to to go to new places and we have already started working on some of these oh on some of these places this

is this going back in time yes maybe the videos are are too heavy for this let's give it a minute so we worked on on on the laundry and we work on the lab and we've been working on the on the cinema it's uh yeah oh thank you you can make the video play but they're really heavy so maybe that's uh that's why it's not working imagine a very nice 3D environment with incredible textures and and a lot of things happening we can just go to the to the next one um yes thanks so um apart from making more more and more places this was also a video but I wonder if it will play um we we want um as a second thing to let people customize their characters uh because the funi house is open to for everybody and we have we actually did these profile pictures um not long ago and and we were using the same features

for the faces of the fungi people um to create some of the MPC characters in The Experience um very soon we'll be able to let players have their own avatar with this kind of uh with this kind of features and maybe uh a little bit later we'll be able also to let people um have their own place their own space in the in the FI house because who wouldn't like to have a a little apartment there and then make it pretty and and and show it to your friends so yeah we're just in the beginning right now of this journey we wanted to share why we went there there's a lot of talk and the entertainment and and children animation business about about uh Roblox but most of the IND the brands and small brands are not doing that much so we wanted to share this and um and U of course at this point we're trying to develop it further to to get some funding maybe to to keep testing it we we are testing the game and uh and and maybe one day to

make it grow like mushrooms uh thank you very much I'll come on stage too we've got plenty of time for questions I think we're we still got a got a fair few minutes left so do we have any questions uh for Pablo about uh about his work on fungi house and animating for the metaverse oh one in the front row here uh hey hey thanks Pablo that was really cool uh yeah when when is the game going to be released when's like the the alpha launch and yeah when can people play it well thank you yeah so so we are in this pre-launch status right now we are testing the funy farm Rush game that we did with all hats and the ideas towards the end of the year to have um the game in to be able to to make a like a like a soft launch of that including the the ability to buy some hats we have a plenty of hats but we are not a able to sell them yet so that

would be the the road map but it's interesting how to how the financing works for a project like this because we have thep and we we have plenty of ideas we managed to scrap some some uh Public Funding uh from Finland and from Spain um to to to create like trans Media stuff or or metaverse stuff uh but this is something that would really require to run as a service so if we manage by the end of the year to launch it like this maybe it's a like a proof of of uh concept good enough to get serious serious funding that's interesting so there's um there's funding from the authorities to develop for the metaverse yes that's interesting they to encourage people in Spain to work with new technologies and yeah yeah well at least at least U that's the case in in Spain and in Finland yeah here we got some funding from ABC so they are always open to new crazy stuff and in Spain there there was also some support for the creative

Industries great they encourage people to to break barriers and yeah that's interesting that's very interesting do we have another question from the or perhaps oh there's one there's one here he thank you thank you for the talk so I just want to ask about the Caper business side of think because from my understand that if you develop game for Roblox they cut realistically go into like 50 or 60% compared to if you go to like mobile or console it's just 30% so what do you think about this cut do you think it's justifi or not yeah the thing is of course this is a like a captive platform and they you they got you the you have to pay this this uh tax uh but then that in our case that pays off because you have all the all the infrastructure and it's so so so frictionless to start developing for for Roblox so so in our case because we are um we want we want to monetize the game in the in the midterm but mainly we want

to let the brand grow and uh and we can pay the price to pay a really high uh percentage um because we can smoothly get in contact with millions of players and uh uh that are already in roblo and we have this technology of the servers that we don't need to reinvent so it's a balance that that makes sense in our in our case that's why a lot of big or bigger brands are are getting into into roblo because um because they have this critical mass and and it's easy to to get in so for us it makes sense because we have a a brand yeah that's interesting the audience is already there I guess that's that's the the the Roblox audience is already there that's yeah and it happens to be now they're like starting to skew higher but traditionally it was up to 12 years old yeah were playing Roblox so it made it made a lot of sense absolutely I mean I I've spoken to Roblox a little bit and they've made it clear that the thing is that Their audience grows up with Roblox you know so they they they AG too do you have any other questions

we got we've got a few minutes left before our panel comes to the stage so are there any other questions oh there there's one over here thank you maybe we should ask you maybe uh what is or has been the most challenging things to bring animation series to Roblox yeah the most challenging bu oh sorry maybe may maybe the most challenging thing is that there's so many OPP possibilities and opportunities that you want to try and make a huge design and make too much and and to narrow it down to to to making one solid game that works and people want to play that's a that that's a hard part because the the brain of course then the we have a lack of of more technical uh people inside our team but that's why it was really good to work with you guys with uh with all hats um yeah but it wasn't that challenging I think it's okay do we have any other questions we've got

we've got a couple of minutes left so if there's any other I was so stressed I had too much material for 15 minutes no so I drank an extra cup cup of coffee and uh yeah we finished a few minutes early that's fine it gives plenty of time for questions sometimes there's questions that can go on morning but um thank you very much for your question so far is there anything else that you'd like to ask Pablo while we're while we're here can you tell me a little bit more about fungi house we've got a couple of minutes so yeah so this is an established IP yeah so you were work so what was it like working with the you know the the the kind of the the the IP holders the people who are you know investing the story right so and so that you have all the the writers for and the design so establishing that Universe how do you go about kind of maintaining consistency in the metaverse I guess is the question I'm asking for for for IP yeah you have to make some some uh you have to make some uh compromises of course right but and and and you cannot be too explicit we found in our really literal level we realized taking the backgrounds from 2D

to 3D the scales wouldn't really work because the Roblox people are are are a bit chunky and they need wider space for to get into the doors and then on a finer level of course there is this is going to be a life going on um service whereas the series you always have control on what's Happening to which character and what people are seeing all the time this is more like giving the car keys to the to the audience which is which is also nice yeah yeah yeah so it's very exciting for us yeah in that sense that's great well I'll tell you what let's let's let's leave it there let's give um give Pablo a round of applause for the first thank you very much appr that you've also given me some reading material as well I clearly need to go and read Matthew B's uh book about the mete yeah yeah everybody read it