Tokenomics #13: How Hollywood star’s love of WoW led to the creation of Armored Kingdom

GM friends, hello and welcome to another episode of the Tokenomics podcast. We've got a super exciting podcast today all about Armored Kingdom, the new Web3 transmedia property from Mila Kunis's production company Orchard Farm Productions. So, uh this is kind of the most high-powered Tokenomics, the first time we're really reaching way outside our comfort zone of fellow game development nerds. Although I I do know that we've got fellow nerds and gamers on the other end. I am of course Ethan Levy, your host today. Um why doesn't everyone take a a turn introducing themselves and talking a little bit about their background in media creation? Right. Um I'm Lisa Sterbakov. I am Mila Kunis's production partner in Orchard Farm Productions. We have been uh making traditional film and television together for 7-8 years. Um last year, just about

a year ago, we um launched our first uh Web3 project with Stoner Cats, um followed up kind of briefly after that, quickly after that with The Gimmicks, and now kind of coming into number three with um with Armored Kingdom. But we are um the second we did Stoner Cats and we realized like what kind of untapped potential there was here. We just became total um excited D-gens and we're we're just we're we're here. We're in it for it. Right. You're like upcoming exclusive Netflix movie, that's old news for us now. Now we're all out this year on Netflix called Luckiest Girl Alive. You guys check it out. We're incredibly, incredibly proud of it. And it was one of those experiences, I will say, um on for on Netflix's behalf where we got to make the the movie we wanted to make, and they they really supported artists in a beautiful way, which isn't always the case, and they were fantastic. But yeah, between movie, TV, animation, now game development, comics, web 3. Orchard Farms kind of doing it

all. Uh Hugh and Brian, would you each introduce yourselves, please? Uh I'm Hugh Sterbakov. I uh I've had a very long career in writing. I started way back as a game journalist. I wrote for Game Pro magazine. I I interviewed some of the people who probably listen to the podcast. If If I knew that, I have some issues of Game Pro around in the house. I found them while I was moving recently. so I'm sure if you've got some Game Pros, I almost certainly wrote in them. I wrote in them for over 5 years. That was great little careers I was starting my screenwriting career. Um I've written film, television, comic books, um couple Emmy nominations for Robot Chicken. I used to buy the toys for Robot Chicken. Well, that's a dream job right there. It was the It's the best job in Hollywood. Truly the best job in Hollywood. Um Can I Can I pause a little bit on Robot Chicken cuz I loved Robot Chicken. I was in senior in

college when it came out and we were all such fans that at like when it came out, when I had a party after the second episode, I showed it to everyone cuz it was still so hilarious to me. It was like Robot Chicken and Chappelle's Show both came out kind of at the same time and were those things we just had to share with our friends cuz they were so funny and so for us. I'm just really excited you're here. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. Um and uh Brian, how about you? I'm also a writer. I've been working in television and animation and features. I'm tuned in mostly in the family and holiday space. Uh I've also known Hugh for 30 years. Uh we went to college together and I'm a long-term gamer who lost years to EverQuest and more years to World of Warcraft and then more years

to World of Warcraft again later when I went back on I've been Dungeons & Dragons since I was second grade, so I'm I'm deep into the fantasy gameplay genre. Yeah. I think that all of us, including Mila, actually are recovering World of Warcraft addicts. Like, I mean, problematic. Like, call a psychologist. We'll just like uninstall World of Warcraft addicts. Yeah, I actually Lisa, can I I ask you you and Mila played Wild together, right? We We all of us played Wild together. on a guild. Yeah, we had a we had a we had our own It was called Fatties. Uh-huh. That was our guild and we all, you know, we were always in the Fatties chat all the time. We did five-man raids, a lot of five-mans. And um With you, and a couple of other celebrities. Guys, This is this is my first ever stars, they're just like you moment. Stars,

they're just like you, they're in Wild raids and chatting with their friends on Discord all the time. And then Well, then play Wild until you're 20 minutes into the Black Morass and Mila just randomly announces that she has to go to the bathroom. And you need you need four other players and she's our main DPS. Just wanders away and we're literally sitting there like, "Did Did she really just leave? Did she just leave?" Watching your DPS plummet. And she's screaming from the bathroom, "I'll be right back." That's when you know you played Warcraft. And then we we also, like, we we we did a full LAN party, so everybody would come to our apartment cuz we had the best internet, even though we didn't have the best house. We just had the best internet. And we just I mean, like, the number like coax running through the house as we all just played together. It was so much fun. And then we had children and like Yeah. I'm familiar. Yeah. It was There was one night where we're playing It was not a full raid or anything. We just had a simple party going and it was a couple

of celebrities. Mila was among them. But none of them are using their Obviously, you're not playing with your real name. But someone joined our party and I don't remember the name, but I'm going to say the character's name was Chuck Norris. It was someone who claimed a celebrity name when they did Justin Timberlake, something like that. I don't remember what it was. I'm just like, "Oh my god, are you actually Chuck Norris?" The person's like, "No." And I'm like, "That's so weird though, cuz you could totally be in a party with a bunch of celebrities and you would never know." And everyone's cracking up and this, you know, some random you know, teen from Illinois is is in this group A-list celebrities and doesn't know it. That's amazing. Do you have there There are a number of uh Blizzard uh employees who listen, ex-EverQuest, ex-Warcraft people? Any messages for the game development community? Any requests or anything other than obviously all your life energy back? Yeah, it's like, "Thank you and also [ __ ] off." Like that's that's what I That's what I mean. Thank you for the years and um hours and like I mean and still. But also, "Oh,

that was hard." Yeah, there were There were days where I would clock a 16-hour day. Oh my goodness. I'll be a scree- I should switch careers to screenwriting. I haven't played 16 hours of video games in a month. Yeah. You can become a screenwriter and you'll have a lot of free time. That That is I will say that is one of the things about screenwriting. It's like when you're working, especially if you're staffed, you're working like crazy hours and when you're not, you're just not. So, these guys got um They got free time that I don't get, frankly, but they they do get a lot more free time. My first three Christmas movies were all made while I was gaming. While I was playing Warcraft. That's great. That uh That That explains uh the uh the Goblin subplot in Spookley the Christmas Pumpkin that I saw with my But uh Spookley there there's this uh my kids uh delve into the depths of horrible family entertainment on on uh

on Netflix and they love Spookley the Oh, this looks terrible. Yeah, it's I mean it's pretty bad. Um Okay, great. All right. So, let's let's uh start here. Uh what is Orchard Farms Orchard Farm and how did the company initially get involved in Web3? So, Orchard Farm is the company it is me and Mila and um our the partner Cammie Curtis who is not on the Web3 side. Um we started the company in oh gosh, 2015. Um That's right. Yep, and no, 2014. Um where Mila was uh she was pregnant. She tells the story. She was she was pregnant with her first kid and was like, "I'm going to be a lady of leisure." And after like a month and a half she was like, "This is I can't do it. I can't I need to be productive. I have to do stuff." Yeah. And she um as she says, she can't write. She can't you know, she's not she doesn't she's not really looking to direct at this point, but she knows what a good producer is because she's worked with good and she's worked with bad. And she's read hours and hours and done out I mean hundreds and thousands of hours

of television and film. Um and she thought, "You know what? I can really I really can produce." Um and she called Cammie who was her long-time manager. She called me and I had a different career and she was like, "Quit that great career and come and do this thing with with us." And I was like, "That's a terrible idea, but let's give it a shot." And this is a horrible idea. I am in idea. Let's I mean that's You're going to see a theme here where we have terrible ideas. We're like, "Let's [ __ ] do it anyway." I want to become a successful producer. Let me recruit my wow guildmate. Right. You know, that that is how the majority of video game companies are founded, actually. Yeah, so that's that's We, you know, in our first year we sold six shows, which was insane. That's a huge huge amount of shows in one in one season. With just kind of by like the seat of our pants and just trying to figure it all out. Right. Learned a lot, you know, moved our way through. And and then, you know, we've been we've had kind of similar success throughout, but we've also run up

against all of the frustrations that you run up against in film and television. The idea it's not it is not the best script that wins. It is not the best idea that wins. There's a lot of politics, there's a lot of other things, a lot of it's timing. Mhm. You know, there's just so you can we can develop things that we love with partners that we love and we believe in their their story and we believe in their idea. But the power isn't in the hands of the artist, the power is in the hands of a studio or a network. Right. So, when we when we had Star Our Cats, um we had it traditionally. Um it came to us as just like a regular TV show. We added Jane Fonda to it, which was like it's so amazing. Brilliant. I am going to do something. Yeah, add Jane Fonda to anything. That Oh, I am I would add add Jane Fonda to any game I'm making. That She's so cool. It's it's amazing. I feel like I have to like pinch myself sort of like, "Oh my god, Jane Fonda is doing our thing." Um we took it out with Jane Fonda traditionally and the combination of it

starring an 80-something-year-old woman who's not necessarily a demographic that people are looking for and there's anthropomorphized animals and there's weed content. So, the weed content is like every every Adult Swim show I watch. It does, but can I tell you something? Adult Swim says, "No hard hard pass on weed content." And I am like, "Sorry, you're Adult Swim. What do you mean hard pass on weed content?" Okay. So, that became like the the the industry "Talking french fries, yes. But if the talking frenchfries imbibe marijuana Explicitly, explicitly imbibe marijuana. Yeah. Yeah. So we obviously had an explicit, you know, marijuana content in in our show, but the marijuana is really just it's just like the it's it's the magical pill. It's not really Yeah, exactly. It's not really about that. But we also what we loved about the show is as much as it is silly and funny, it's also has deep heart. Mrs. Sterner has Alzheimer's and when these cats become aware, they do everything they can to save her and to to to be her family. And that's

really like like an amazing process. But we couldn't get we couldn't get any traction. And the traction we did get was so so low pay that it wasn't worth it for anybody on the team. Right. And Mila had the idea Ash and Sarah and Chris the creators, they're incredible creators and also incredible incredible animators of their own right. And um they could make the show. And so we were like, "Okay, we can make the show. Now what do we do with it? How do we get it to an audience? How do we do something a little bit noisy?" And it was Mila's idea that we do it as a an an attached to an NFT and um we put together an incredible team with um Morgan Beller from nWayPlay X and Mario Bajwa who's who works with Ashton at Sound. Um and then brought in Big Head Club to to kind of do our contract and our our um and our community and learned a ton along the way. Made a lot of good assumptions, made some bad assumptions. And but we're managed to to to do a thing that nobody had really done yet. And that was super exciting and then it

became sort of the the the starting gun as we ran into this space and and a huge amounts of learning. Got it. I um you know, you y'all won't know this about me, but my core background skill set is like as a monetization designer. So a big part of what attracts me about Web3 for gaming is new business models and the the of new business models to free and empower creators. And so, just as a um as a comparison, if you had taken if you had gotten an order for a pilot for Stoner Cats, right? That's kind of the equivalent of of building a vertical slice in game development. If you'd gotten an order for a pilot uh for that show, roughly how much money do you think you would have gotten from a um one of the key gatekeepers in order to make that? I

can tell you the offer we had on the the actual offer we had on the table, which was to make it a shorts. So, like like, you know, extrapolate that out. 5-minute shorts, they were going to pay the team Mhm. $5,000. $5,000 total. There are six people on this team. Yeah, so $5,000. Got it. And we were like, "No." Now, like, if you look at you know, like a typical fee on like a 30-minute Here's the thing with the animation, animation is not covered under most circumstances under the Writers Guild. So, the writers actually don't get paid a huge amount. And producers also like, this is not as much money particularly in adult animation as as unless you're unless you're on Fox, they absolutely are Zag or are Writers Guild signatories. But the other ones, they're not. And they they they the pay is not huge. Like the if they actually just to write the script, producers don't get paid when you write a script at all. So, we would have gotten nothing. Yeah. The writers would have gotten an amount not a huge amount, several thousand you

know, a few maybe you know, 20, 30,000 dollars to write that script. Um and then what if they picked up and actually started making they don't usually make just animated pilots, they make animated series. a season, yeah. Yeah, then you know, you'd get a a fee, but it's not as much money as people might think. What do you think the the roughly the budget for a season of Stoner Cats would have been through the traditional system. I mean, we we would have been uh 20 30 million. 20 30 million, got it. And but with that, you would have lost control Oh, entirely. Completely. And that money that that's budget that goes to production. I mean, which by the way is like, you know. Um but we would have we even in selling and writing the pilot, if they commission a pilot, then the studio then really owns that for Right. a a huge period of time and if not kind of in perpetuity. And they additionally take all of any sort of like ancillary um if there is ancillary content that's

made, the studio owns that. If there are if there's merchandise that's made, the studio owns that. All all of the ownership immediately then goes transfers to studio. If you have enough power, you can get a piece of that and if you don't, you don't get a piece of that. And And the reason I wanted to dig in is by comparison, when you did your initial minting on Stoner Cats, how much did you raise in that first mint? We made 8.2 million. We sent back um we we sent back 700 and some thousand um because we had to get we had a gas problem. Okay. And so people had a lot of failed mints and it would total was about $720,000. We took that and and made the people had failed failed mints whole because it just was the right thing to do. That's great. So, that's uh when when I talk about the business model like there's even though the total isn't as high as if you'd been I mean, one, it's it's I assume incredibly rare to actually get to that full season

order and get to that big budget, but not only did you raise $8 million directly from fans and kind of people who believed in the project, but you have complete ownership of the IP and where you take it from now on. I think I'm I think the biggest part is complete creative control. Yeah. You know, we had already made the the It was we had made we had we had already written the entire outline for the season. We'd already made the first episode. We already knew where the rest of the episodes were going. We like we we we had put a lot into it. So, it was a lot of just kind of recouping our own sort of output that we that we had put out. Um also, you know, we had partners who we had, you know, high-level partners on this in terms of our actors as well. So, there was a lot of kind of early talk about like, "It's such a celebrity cash grab." It is not. This is a labor of love and not a labor of of finance at all. Right. If it was a If it was a cash

grab, you wouldn't have felt compelled to make Make expensive animation. to nearly a million dollars, right? Yeah. of gas fee reimbursements. So, it's absolutely been a layer like a a labor of love. And the best part of it is that the show that's coming out and and I I I want I'm so proud of it. I hope people really get to see it. The show as it's coming out and as it gets put together and we're just about to put We've we we have actually made a cut that's puts all the episodes together, which is really how they should be watched as in one big like kind of movie-like chunk. So, as we're putting those together, it um it is exactly representative of what Ash, Siren, and Chris wanted it to be. It didn't have, you know, there was incredible feedback and incredible help from a community that like loved it and we got to hear what they liked and what they didn't like, but we didn't have the noise of a studio that we would normally have. Um so, it is something that is as a artist really exciting. Yeah, that's that's amazing. And um

Stoner Cats was was released on Ethereum. Uh Orchard Farm followed it up with The Gimmicks, which was another Web3 toon. Uh this one on Solana. I'm curious uh what led to um choosing Solona for that second project. Remember that $700,000 we paid back? Right. Yeah. So, as as we realized as we started talking to our our Stoner Cats community, we found that there were a lot of people where Stoner Cats was their first NFT. This was the thing that made them go, "Oh, maybe I actually do want to participate in this space. I I hadn't seen hadn't seen a use case that was compelling and this feels like a compelling use case." So, we and the idea of again bringing in more people talking about like being able to, you know, own this like great digital asset, that that was super exciting, but we wanted to bring people in. We knew we wanted to do a lot of on-chain actions with the Gimmicks. We wanted to do on-chain burning. We wanted to have our ridiculous on-chain token that we had. We wanted to do a bunch of which is, by the way, a social token.

It's not a It's not like a currency token. So, we wanted to do some really fun stuff on-chain. Gas was going to be a killer. Because even, you know, nobody wants to buy a like a $20 thing and have it cost another $45 in gas. This doesn't make any sense. So, we we were we looked at a lot of chains and we were looking at what was easy to use for a new person and what and what had low gas. And that was like the gas part of it was really really great. And then we had to get like most people who were in the Gimmicks, they'd never had a Solona NFT before. Right. So, we had a huge it again, get Phantom wallet. Yep, and all of that process and in learning what we learned from Stoner Cats and then watching people get botted since then. Like so, after Stoner Cats, the bot situation is becoming worse and worse and worse. Yeah. We purposely made the Gimmicks the slowest mint of all time. It was the nightmare of four days of my life trying to make sure that 10,000 tokens got into human beings. Right.

We did them for free, too. So, like we really wanted people coming in and participating and playing and pretend like having fun with us, experimenting with us. But that meant that we needed people to have it not just a bunch of wallets that they're dormant. We wanted human beings to come in and participate. So that meant we were doing full allow list day after day after day, wallet collection day after day after day to make sure that real people got it in the hands. And and I feel like we really were successful. We have a small, mighty, excited community who has now engaged on chain over 700,000 times with between voting and our social token since since we launched a few months ago. That's great. What having gone through those two minting experiences on two different chains, these are exactly the same sorts of experiences web3 developers are having right now even even if it's games and

not animation and pure NFTs. Like what are some of the key things you took away or key learnings you had in mind as you went on to approach this third web3 project which is Armored Kingdom? Yeah. I I Yeah, we we really see and this is the way that we talk about this all the time is we we actually don't love the idea that like we don't we don't feel that NFT as speculative asset is the use. What we feel like is NFT as as a piece of digital ownership is the use. So it's actually consumptive use as an NFT. So so with the Gimmicks you can write a character, you get to own this little thing, you get to be part of this community, you get to vote. Like it's a use piece. And so for Armored Kingdom, the NFTs, the game piece NFTs will be game pieces for our game. So that just seems to make absolute sense. It's just a way to own something digitally. So in order to get normal people out to come in and come and play play in this way and see the benefit because we actually really do see there is a benefit, you have to make it low

friction. And so, when we started looking at chains for for Armor Kingdom, again, gas was a huge thing. It had to be that that that could not be an issue. It couldn't cost more than just a few cents to for people to to be able to mint. And then, it had to be green. That was important to us. You know, there are real legitimate concerns on the electricity use on the chain. Um And then, thirdly, that lived out your values as a company. Yeah, that that's right. That's right. And then, the other thing that we really liked, like when we were talking to all of them, is this kind of near wallet experience where you can use your email, you can like a normal person who's never experienced crypto at all can come in and mint an Armor Kingdom comic, mint an Armor and you know, when we get to like minting packs, not feel like they're actually even engaging in cryptocurrency. And hopefully, at some point, just like really not engaging at all in

cryptocurrency. Really being able to buy a totally fiat as opposed to like fiat to crypto to you know, just like full fiat and be able to buy a digital asset with just whatever their their you know, local currency is. That's that's the goal. Yeah. It doesn't feel like a web 3 project product. It feels like a web 2 product with the benefits of web 3 behind it. Got it. So, yeah, it sounds like environmental impact, ease of use, low friction, low gas, these were all the considerations and that led to you guys choosing the NEAR protocol as your as Armor Kingdom. Okay. So, how did these experiences with Stoner Cats and the Gimmicks lead to you guys wanting to say like, "Well, we've we've made TV, we've made movies, we've made animation, and now we've made web 3 products. Let's make our lives really easy and make a video game that's a comic, that's a blockchain ecosystem, and a show. Right.

Like, well, because we're insane. Once again, terrible ideas, let's [ __ ] do it. So, that's that's where we That's That's our sweet spot. Right. Um and and I'll I'll pass it on to Hugh in a second for like where where the idea for Armored Kingdom the the IP came from, but I will say we have just like we have talked about games nonstop for years. What could we build? What could we do? How could Like we are like avid real gamers, and we are also avid storytellers. And we don't think that people like there are very few IPs that have really hit that. It's it's um it's funny. I was actually talking to somebody yesterday who had said, you know, Magic the Gathering is a game without a really an IP, and uh like Poke like other kinds of games, you know, Pokémon is an IP that has a game, but it's not like the game is only okay. Magic the Gathering is an incredible game, but like they've never been able to really explore that IP in interesting, exciting ways in terms of like I can tell you uh embarrassingly that I

uh once upon a time read the Magic the Gathering novelizations, and I do not remember much about them other than them being very silly. What happens is it's like, "And then he played a black land. And then it was so-and-so's turn." Right. He reached into his pouch and felt the aura of the land and summoned a juggernaut. And I like, even though I was 12, I was like, "I love this, and this is stupid." I remember both those thoughts at the same time. And we've had some friends who have been on multiple iterations of making the TV show, of trying to make a TV show, and they just it just has not come together. And it just seems like if you can design those things together, if you can design I mean, obviously comics and animation tie together easily. Like everybody sort of knows that. It's It's really kind kind seamless way to to do that. But he would actually come up with this idea how many years ago? You, like many years ago as a toy product.

Yeah, go go ahead here. You can explain where it came from. Well, you know, I described my background and in addition to all of that, I co-hosted the Activision podcast for a while and that's why I was watching Skylanders take off. Yeah. And I just thought, you know, I thought I could do it better, you know? Um I thought that I I knew how to engross players of all ages, but particularly young kids who were into Skylanders in a in a more effective way. There was given my background, I wanted to be story driven. I wanted to be character driven. And like Magic the Gathering, Skylanders were clearly designed around the toys first, you know, and plugged into this, but I wanted to do a story driven, character driven story. How about that? Um being able to integrate between video games, action figures, you know, Robot Chicken, all my background, I wanted to combine it all into one thing. Um and when we brought it out there, the idea would be that characters would

uh use this armor that was designed with magnets that could have fixed to any kind of any size body. And so I got a lot of pushback with the action figures saying that the magnets were too expensive. I was like Mhm. these people aren't having vision. This is, you know, the So when Lisa started this company and I started to look at what this technology can do, um I brought her this intellectual property, um but again, it wasn't designed around the technology. It was hey, here's characters first, here's a story world first, and let's take the best of what this new technology can do to drive this story even further and to integrate it into all of these wonderful things. So we have the benefit of having a story first, you know, characters, a plot, all of that kind of stuff, and we're able to build all these other worlds out from that, rather than retroactively generating a story around technology or product or what you know, what have you. So, that's been fun, because when we needed it, there for the taking,

instead of racking our brains on how to, you know, thread a a really small needle, create a story around something that a game, for example, can do. Mhm. And I'll say, you know, here, by the way, we're married. I don't know if you guys figured it out, but you can figure that out. Um he Weird coincidence. figure that out by how you're not in the same room for this interview. If you want me to just bang on my floor, you'll hear about this set. I'm literally sitting directly over him. Um but he um he's an avid collector, so he understands, which by the way, is a nightmare, but it understands a collector's um mindset. And so, when he was developing Armor Kingdom, like in the the sort of toy space, all he was thinking about is that collector mindset. And this really feels, like in the same way we, by the way, we've got thousands of Magic cards laying around this house, we've got, you know, thousands of comic books everywhere in this house. Like all of these things are kind of tying together as one. It it just feel it feels to us, and then and then as much as like we, all we want to do is make like we love making narrative

content, and we love telling stories, but we really do feel like a a television show is the absolute best advertisement for a game that you could ever have. Mhm. Um and, you know, the Hollywood knows well, games make a lot more money than movies indeed do. So, we that that's really kind of the way that we feel about that. And then and then we brought Brian in. I don't know if you you do you want to talk about how how Brian came in and started working through what what what the game sort of situation would look like. Obviously, you've got this armor build mechanism that these toys were built around. As as we've discussed, massive World of Warcraft players, we know that that kind of armor build could work so well in terms of gameplay. And so that's where Brian came You have the first hand experience of of going on that intense raid trying to get that legendary loot and then the famous person goes to the bathroom and your your DPS goes down and you can't you can't get that loot and that inspired you to make your own

game. I mean that's really it. That's really it. I we there was something like there's something in that story that we tell like It needs to be playable on the phone so that this never happens again. I can tell you exactly what inspired us. When Burning Crusade came out Yeah. we were out at midnight with Mila outside a game store in whatever the cold waiting for them to to release the you know the the 12:01 copies of the game. Right. Right across the street from the Robot Chicken Studios actually. Oh. Yeah. We all got online with our characters that at this point this is sort of the first big expansion right? So we had been playing through the this the existing world. Q and I were beta players. Mhm. We had been playing this world for a long time. And so we all had like our perfectly built sets our perfect you know tier gear you know the best weapons you could have everything. We you know we get our group we march through the the the portal and you know

we're we're heading towards the you know the the first camp there is and there's you know there's you know sort of random spawn mobs and we kill whatever the first mob was the green you know nothing mob and we go to loot it and it has a green item that has stats that are better than my tier combined [ __ ] that I spent Right. grinding through you know a castle multiple multiple multiple times going through Skull Man 20 30 times to get my hat that sort of thing. Yeah I had full tier two from Blackwing Lair you know the full Yeah. Yeah just with Benediction I was a priest I didn't have an anathema staff. And then you wander in the Burning Crusade in green gears beating with your You get a piece of trash and you're like, "God damn it." Yeah, so that that to me really crystallized the So what was So what do you do? Like I had the the the two daggers. I've forgotten the names of the daggers, but they're the most epic daggers before the Crusade came out. You just put them in the bank.

You're never going to use them again because this one is one damage more than that one. So these are useless. Yeah. You know, even though you tried really hard to get them. So that really got me focused on this idea of I hate disposable loot. I hate that you grind and and get this stuff and at the end of the day one of two things happens. Either you get something better and just throw it away or you get to a point where literally everyone on the server is dressed exactly like you. Yeah. You know, I'm a I'm a I'm a gnome rogue and I'm standing next to another gnome rogue and I'm standing next to another gnome rogue and we've picked different hair colors, but we're wearing the exact same armor, wielding the exact same weapon because if we don't have exactly that then we're not geared up correctly for the raid and we're useless. So you know, I wanted a game where you can advance your equipment where where you know, your sword has a story that you put time into the sword. You're making the sword

more valuable that way. Um and I also wanted it wanted it to be like I'm focused on becoming like, you know, this versus that. You know, I I I want you know, I'm specialization. Specialization in in what you're doing and if you just want to collect you know, this armor like let's say you know, the the the armor is the NFTs and the artwork is fantastic. So if you just really like the artwork, you could just collect the armor and make a suit of armor with a cool ass weapon on a figure that just looks [ __ ] awesome and you don't have to play the game at all. Yeah. Or, you can, you know, play and you know, maybe you're the person type of person who wants to have like a a sick looking hammer that maybe isn't as as great stats out of the out of the boxes, you know, there's other thing. But, if you work on it, you can make this hammer more, you know, more valuable than that other thing that someone just opened. So, um you're not going to have that green you stumble upon that makes you throw away the thing you spent 6 months on. Yeah.

Yeah, in um in when I'm talking to other game designers and economy designers, uh especially having worked in in free-to-play, like this is normally purchase regret is a is a problem. Like there's a challenge that we're constantly trying to get you to spend new money and that almost always requires the invalidation of your previous stuff. And so, like Burning Crusade, you want people to buy the expansion and they need to play the expansion to get the best gear cuz all their previous gear is now lower tiered than that and that gets everybody to move onto the next expansion content. And that's part of what I really um my hypothesis around Web 3 and why I'm so excited about it as a designer is because I think that the um ownership mechanism forces us to not do that, to never invalidate the previous money and time and investment players have spent. And because of the secondary

revenue stream on on sales, it'll allow us to make the money in a different way that's more respectful to our players and allow us to really focus on on their long-term journey and not like, "Oh, well, I need them to buy this new thing. How do I get them to buy the new thing?" I fill it with stuff more powerful than than everything they have. And and for sure there's going to be equipment that is, you know, starter equipment that you get right off the bat that you're going to end up replacing, but that's why we have a whole crafting system where you can, you know, use that to generate the materials to make your other equipment better once you're done using it. It doesn't just go sit in a bank someplace and or, you know, get sold to a a vendor and Yeah. to go over. allows that like as you're leveling yourself up, you can you can just sell it. You can like you don't have to just sit it in a bag and have it just be be dead there. You can go and sell your lower level stuff which like the same thing, you know, when you buy a bunch of magic cards is, you know, a lot of it is

stuff that you end up not not wanting, but like you know, he and I like I don't know, whatever couple years ago he just like packaged up whole bulk sales of our magic cards and we were able to sell them which like to be able to do that in a digital experience is great too as opposed to like when I go through my Hearthstone decks and I'm like that's just wasted It it it it fights like the existential dread you might have before you make a purchase that a lot of time prevents me from making a purchase. Like why am I going to spend $15 in Princess Tale this week? I know I'm going to regret it when I look at my credit card bill, right? So why bother? Um let me let me take a step back for a second because we've been talking a lot about Armored Kingdom without uh stopping to describe it. So how how would you describe Armored Kingdom to somebody who hasn't heard about the project before? I would say it is a um mythic fantasy with a whiff of sci-fi IP multi

multimedia sort of IP company where we have comic books and animation and a TCG all of which feed each other and that is empowered through web 3, but not um not just a speculative web 3 web 3 product. So that's um that's sort of how I describe it like when I'm talking to somebody who understands what web 3 is. If not, I have to talk about like, and then you get an NFT and it's you get on it digitally. But, we do want that experience to not even feel like that. But, that's what that's what we see it as being. We um is the animation and the comics feed the game, the game feeds the animation and the comics, and all of this stuff work works together sort of seamlessly because it's designed from the ground up that way. So, even in terms of gameplay, these characters that you're going to meet in the comics, the way that they play the way that they play they're playing like you know all of their sort of play mechanisms come from story. So, it'll feel intuitive to you. So, when you go to play a certain

kind of character, intuitively you'll go, oh I understand that this character would be more magical. I understand that this character would be more brute force. Whatever those kinds of game plays that it feel intuitively make sense and that you can feel immersed in this world. Okay. And and we know um on the game side of things, obviously World of Warcraft is a big inspiration. Um I don't know how far along you are with the with the design of the trading card game, but like what are the other some of the other games that you look to for inspiration for what the gameplay will be for Kingdom? Honestly, Dungeons and Dragons is a is a huge thing. One of the things we set out to to change um there are a lot of Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone, uh top-down tabletop card games where what you are emulating is just two people playing cards on a table. Yeah. Um and and we didn't want to do that. Now, you know, our we're not locked in on our

visuals yet, but we definitely want it to be more immersive. I My complaint with Magic the Gathering, and I played a lot of Magic the Gathering, and I think this is the reason that it doesn't work as a TV show or whatever, is when you're playing Magic, you're you're not fighting, you're telling people to fight. You know, you're putting out an ogre and then the ogre is going to fight against this other mage. And the yeah, you have Planeswalkers and stuff like that. But you're you're just there's a there's a level of disconnect and we wanted to get rid of that. We want the the players to feel like more like World of Warcraft or EverQuest or where it's like I'm fighting this person. I'm trying to hit them with my sword as opposed to I tell my soldier to try and hit him with his sword. Got it. So so something probably more like Slay the Spire. Oh, we talk about Slay the Spire all the a lot of Slay the Spire, yeah. It's that's my that's my drug of choice right now. Yeah. Yeah, I had to

after about 70 hours I had to kick a Slay the Spire habit for a while. It's just it's it's the that game you can open up What's that? 70 hours is just a weekend for us. Ascension tanned on all four characters. Wow. Wow. That's great. Try Inscription. Have you played Inscription? Inscription, I just bought it last night for this year. going to love it. So that I can play You're going to love it. Got it. So Slay the Steam Deck? Yeah, Steam Deck's fun. How'd you get it? I pre-registered for it the day they opened up pre-registrations and over a year later I was privileged enough to be able to spend $400 or whatever it was. for waiting for my opportunity to spend $400. I I know it's stupid cuz I have like an expensive gaming PC, but it's really nice to lay down on the couch and play a triple A game right next to your face. I love it. It's great. Stupidity is my my

language. I don't buy things that aren't stupid. It's a policy. Um How do these When I When it So okay, so uh how do the various elements of this um ecosystem play together? Like, what what if anything is the intersection and interaction between game, comic, and um show um for Armored Kingdom? So, now the So, for the next few months, we're releasing a uh a a comic a week. And the comic The current comics that are they they've already been written and they're they're being animated or they're being um uh illustrated right now. Um so, the current comics are really backstory. It's really just understanding It's immersing in the world. We're getting people, you know, used to and excited and immersed in the world. The characters that you meet in the comics you will start seeing inside the game. The the um animation which we have the we have the season 1 Animation is long. It takes It takes a

long time. Yeah. Um so, we as we built But as we're building out season 1 of the of the animation, we are making sure that those things tie into what we're planning on the game. So, the great thing is because both of those things take a long time, we can develop those things together. Yeah. What I'm super excited about is um comics don't take quite as long. So, as we're we're up and running as the game is up and running and we want to do some narrative play that like more kind of immediately informs the game, we can do that in a comic book format um and and it'll help like make that even more exciting and more immersive. So, that's And And Ooh, this is alpha. We haven't talked about this yet. Ooh. making a little um a little a little tabletop RPG Ooh. with this as well. So, people can can can experience it in a few ways. But all of those things they will all absolutely tie together because the same group of people on the creative top-down building it. That's great. I um Do you all have similar tabletop

experiences uh and love? What are some of the tabletop inspirations and any fun anecdotes about uh famous people being just like us and playing tabletop RPGs or games as well. I want to jump in super quick just to say it's not a comic a week. Oh, sorry. My god, did I say that? I meant comic a month. Sorry. I apologize. Brian was just like he was just about to evacuate his bowels. Like comic a week, I am screwed. Yeah, I know I I played D&D and Star Wars and GURPS and GURPS the Wild Card game and Vampire the Masquerade for a hot minute. Um I played all those role-playing games. I actually made a board when I was living I didn't ever told you guys about this, but when I was living in Phoenix with my D&D group, we also made a board game called Slacker. Um that was super fun that we never did anything with. We just spent a bunch of

time and money and made the board game and it was awesome and then I moved to LA. Yeah, a lot of time gaming, a lot you know, I DM'd for many years. When we were when you and I were talking for the animated series and for the comic book character design and stuff, we we'd pull references and I'd be oh, yeah, you got to look up this kind of monster, that kind of monster. He's like, how do you know this? I'm like, oh, yeah, that's original Monster Manual or that's Fiend Folio. Right. I have all these monsters memorized, all these pictures, you know, we're going back forever. That's great. Did you guess I knew Vecna was coming to Stranger Things ahead of time? I'm surprised that they went Demogorgon, Mind Flayer, Vecna because Demogorgon is way up there. Vecna is about here and and and Mind Flayer would be relatively low and they've kind of screwed up the the power leveling of Vecna.

Right. I will say a a lot of writers play D&D. I think I think it actually like it, you know, that the people who like so much of writing is sitting around going, "What if?" Right. And then like like then like you letting your imagination run wild and then having an editor that comes like your editor comes in and fixes that up. But so much of writing is what if, what if, what if. And these these sort of role-playing games are a lot of like just imagination, storytelling, um and and then there is the great sort of math of those games. So they really do have a tree and they have a math and so does an episode. So does a pretty a season of television is a really a math problem that you're solving as much as it is a story problem that you're solving. So they they really tie into each other. Not as many actors I don't know as many actors who play them. I mean I know there's like a few groups that like are putting in popular um Dungeons & Dragons teams and groups. That's where Mila draws the line. Right. not play Dungeons & Dragons. She does not play um

Like she's like, "Oh no, I play pretend for my career, so I don't need Yeah, it's not relaxing for me. What about like uh Settlers of Catan or uh any of the The first name of our Wait, wait. The very first name of our company was Brick for Sheep. That's what we called it before we called it Orchard Farm. Because all we played a lot. take multiple um Settlers of Catan combine the packs the decks to get the the game together to make massive full I mean we really played a lot. Mila once threw me out of her house over a Settlers of Catan game. We're not [ __ ] around. Yeah, no, we don't [ __ ] around with Settlers of Catan. This is life or death Settlers of Catan in our house. And you just taught the kids and our 10-year-old who's the youngest is a shark. Mine are Mine are six, four, and two and the six- and four-year-old have played Settlers Junior with their grandparents and as a huge nerd, that was like a really exciting moment to

watch a 6-year-old girl teach her grandmother how to trade uh swords for molasses in in that one. It's amazing. That's so cool. Um So, I I know you you uh um recently did you announced the project at Consensus, and you did a physical comic giveaway and a minting on the Near protocol, right? How did How did the uh minting go? How did How did that experience compare to your Gimmicks and Stoner Cats experiences? Well, I mean, it was it was um we didn't want to limit it. So, like that was the like that was a little bit nicer. The um we I think it went really well. We We minted about about 30,000. The physical was really fun. Brian was actually at Consensus like not getting COVID amazingly, um but talking people through. We had a scan, you know, you could scan comic, go in, open up your wallet, get your mints. Um the the we pre We were pre-filling for gas

because we didn't want people to have to even deal with that sort of issue. Which that we did have a couple people going in and trying to mine 50 cents of gas at a time. So, you had to, you know, kind of deal with a little of those those things that come up. We knew that those things would come up. We knew that the potential of somebody just putting in another email and another email and another email to try to We knew that that was there. Um we also were like, 50 cents, really? Like, I'll give you $200 to just stop being annoying. Right. So, but you know, whatever. Um we have an incredible community um developer Jess who's who's on our team who has been So, he's incredible. So, he was, you know, in in Discord helping people as frustrations happened. So, you know, obviously I think Jess welcomed me on Discord, and then it's I I I'm just a lurker. I lurk in like 80 projects so that uh but Jess was Fantastic. Yeah. I was there day one and it was nice to get a personalized welcome message. Oh. Great. Um so I mean I think we have we took

some learnings we're actually as we're really coming at the end of this month we're going to do a issue one and we are restructuring how we want that meant to look. So basically like our whole goal is that by the time we're minting NFTs that like anything that anybody pays for Right. that experience be just as smooth and slick as possible. So it's the great thing of doing free mints is that it gives you a chance to try and iterate and and and make it better make the experience better. Got it. What what how how have been your interactions with the community and the community response to the comic and and the artwork you've dropped so far and the narrative you've dropped so far? I think they're super excited about it. Um There's a lot of there's a whole in our Discord if you've been to the Discord there's a whole fan art section where they're meaning up the stuff and and we had there was someone in the Discord I forgot who it was but someone you know we we have the first comic that came out and we have descriptions of the of the races and one of the races in our game is called the War E. But the War E does not appear in

the first comic. Mhm. And there people on there who are have already declared themselves War E. Right. Like well I identify with the War E and I'm like you haven't even seen them yet. Like they don't show up for a while. For all you know it's a race of worm worshipping cannibals. Is that who you are? That's who I am inside. No Yeah. We actually have a bunch of a lot of what we have coming up and planned is you know that we're excited that that we'll start rolling out in the next like several weeks is includes things that that um let people dig in a little bit deeper to the content to be and let people kind of co-create with us some of the content as well. So you know like scrolling video of like um of like frame by frame of of the comic and you know, with different kinds of voiceover letting these guys kind of talk about what talk through what they were thinking they, you know, were working on the comic. Letting people come in and voiceover the comic comic if they want. Lot you know, trying to give people fun experiences to be able to participate as we're building the game

and as we're building the other the other experiences that come along with it. And, you know, we do want the Discord to grow organically. We want it to be real people coming in. We want it to grow slowly. I really believe deeply that I'd rather have 500 incredibly excited, motivated people who want to participate with us than 50,000 bots sitting in a Discord with real people and participating in this. Um you and Brian as as you work on this story world, do you professional storytellers and writers what are some of the games that you think do narrative or do storytelling best? Like I know that the there are countless examples of horrible stories in games. Like what are ones that you've experienced that inspire you as writers or you say like I'm on a meet or exceed the bar set by X or Y? I think number one of all time is almost indisputably Star Wars: Knights of the

Old Republic. You know, the old BioWare RPG. Yeah. Um Horizon: Zero Dawn recently. Um And then there's more wide-open games that let you tell your own story like Skyrim that are really exciting as well. Yeah. Um you know, you don't always need to be led hand to hand through a narrative. Even something as crazy as Grand Theft Auto, you can play it your way. Yeah. Um so yeah, so my goal, you know, we've got two years the story mapped out. Like we came into this with a story I don't want to say in stone, but very well mapped out. And we want to let our gamers and our viewers and everybody put themselves in this world. That's the wonderful thing about Star Wars. Yes, it's a very linear, very clear story, the Skywalker saga, but then you've got this huge world you can open up and kids can either play as Darth Vader or they can play as themselves in the Star Wars world. Yeah. So, uh that was a long circuitous way of saying that of course I love great

storytelling in games, comics, and all this stuff. We're sort of like going both avenues of creating a world for people and telling our story. The interesting thing is I think that we're not even giving into the story that I've created even through the first five issues of the comic. We're just creating the world. Yeah. Um with the specific Like you know if you see the issue number zero comic, it's narrated by the lead character of the franchise. Which right now she's still a young girl. You don't even realize that she has the importance that she has. So, um yeah, I think we're we're building a world first, introducing the gamer, the player, whatever have you into it, letting them carve out their own little niche of this world, and then we're going to start telling a story, and they can integrate themselves into it how they choose. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, we're also laying out the game on multiple different paths at the same time, right? So, we're going to have um the PvP sort of the combat system of the game, uh which is heavily in you know NFT-based.

But then we also want a rogue-like a Slay the Spire Mhm. ish uh game that is not heavily NFT-based, where you're you're playing through the various kingdoms and you're fighting people that you've met in the comics and met in the animated series, but you're not playing as one of you're yourself, but you're you know fighting against this king or that hero or whatever. And then we also have an adventure series that that's coming up, where the the idea there is that you're playing as the main characters from the show, doing things that you saw in the show, but also side quests and stuff as a way to ideally earn, you know, crafting materials or just a little another avenue of play-to-earn that isn't, you know, if you are very into PvP, great, play the PvP play it nonstop, have fun. If you would rather, you know, play through some sort of adventure game, awesome, we've got that covered, too. You know, it all kind of revolved around the central combat mechanic, but lots of different ways to interface with the with the universe. Got it. I'm

I think also one last thing, we're super all super inspired by games like Inscription or even Slay the Spire, which has a twist, you know, story-driven twist that sort of throws the gameplay on its on its ear or whatever. Inscription is all about that. And so we're looking at ways to do that, to let the narrative lead surprising gameplay twist and turns. Very cool. Um what what have been the reaction from your peers in the entertainment industry? I I want to ask because I work in technology, I've done only games, only technology for 20 years, and I have people who listen to this podcast or know me uh and know that I've shifted to web 3, and they're like, "Ethan, you're a crazy person, like you have lost your mind." And these are all technology people. So I'm just I like I I'm just so curious what what the reaction has been when when you've told

other people in in this more traditional, non-tech based media, like, "Oh, yeah, we've we we raised $8 million selling these pictures of cats." Or we're doing a transmedia uh game multi-game tabletop game comic like, "We're on Discord." I assume a lot of your peers don't even know what Discord is. So like, what what has been the reaction to uh exploring kind of this frontier of of entertainment? Well, there's there's two two Well, a couple things. First off, there's a lot of incoming after Stoner Cats and they continue By the way, there continues to be. People are just waking up to like it's been a year. Articles still come out about Stoner Cats about it sort of being a paradigm shift. Still get people coming in kind of with incoming on that front. And they all are like, "That seems so easy." And you're like, "That's it's so deeply not easy. So cool, but let's talk through what like the real challenges are." There I think it falls into a couple buckets. One is, "Let me duplicate what you've already done." And right. Right.

That's that's not it. That's never the duplicating is never going to be it. It's got to be iterating. Um or you're crazy. And I will say that we have a couple our our kind of Shout out to our traditional TV agent who's like, "Stop talking to me about this." Um I won't need ever need to talk to you about this again. And he's like, "Not interested in this conversation at all." So, it really just depends on the person's point of view. I I try not to like beat anybody over the head of like, "This is the future." And you know if it's the future or not. But um instead I want to make a product that feels like a consumer product and just show it to them. Prove it that this that this that this is the thing. My my experience, there's a friend that you and I also went to college with who's very traditional media. He He's currently editing his own TV series that he wrote and directed. And I tried to explain this project to him and he doesn't understand it at all.

You know, I'm just like, "Okay, so you know, it's this IP and it's they're going to sell these NFTs." And he's like, "But but why?" But but who wants them and why? And I'm like, "Well, you know, use it for this, use it for that." But but why? Every every time I try to explain, he just doesn't Right. Right. doesn't You know, there's just something that isn't connecting. Yeah. The The surprising part to me actually, my my brother works for EA. He I don't know, does things there. Um, he Genius. where within EA he sits? but I don't know if I'm allowed to talk because he's really like cagey about like ask you after just to see if I know him or know no mutual built all the loot boxes, right? Um No, he doesn't. Let's not talk about that. Next Let's not talk about that. Next subject. He But he But he But he also I don't know where he's going. Um, but he also like when I try to talk as a gamer, to me it makes utter sense. Right. The the like

the being able to take a like a owning something digitally for real. The kids understand this ownership. Like watch them in Fortnite buy skins and buy you like spend those dollars in there all day long and they can't ever sell it and they can't trade it and they can't like they can't upgrade it. They can't do like Oh, this maybe they can't, but they can't do a whole lot of other stuff with it. But in a real world I can. Like if I have a real collectible card game, I can actually do something with it. It takes that real world utility and actually improves upon it. The only way we want to we want to do it is if it actually makes it better and we do think it makes it better. I am surprised when gamers have all this kickback to it. I know they feel like it's a cash grab and I understand like if I've already paid 80 bucks for a game, I don't want to pay another however much money in game to do other stuff to to buy these NFTs. I understand that that thing too. But if you're building it from the ground up, I actually think it's a huge benefit and not I don't get the kickback. I I I would tell you as as someone who's been kind of on on the the experimental slash bleeding edge of

of monetization for a long time, I would tell you or give you the advice not to worry too much about what the core of game develop game players are saying because it's hard when you're one of them and you're like reading IGN or reading Kotaku and they're like Diablo Immortal is ruining Diablo and we all hate it. Like, you read it, you read the press that's for the the core people who this hobby is their identity. Like, it sounds like everyone on this call, being a gamer is part of all of our core identities. And then and they're like, "They've ruined Diablo. It'll never be a success. Blizzard is screwed up royally. I'm never buying another Blizzard product again." And on and on and on. And then a month later comes out, Diablo Immortal made $50 million in a month. Right? Like, the vocal the There's a vocal minority who are gamers like us, who are very allergic and and rightfully so to

changing business models. Because whenever a new business model emerges, there's a lot of abuse of it, and it brings in new people, and it's not necessarily for them. But like And so those words can sting because you identify with the person speaking them, but they're not necessarily the actual They They They're not speaking for the majority of all gamers. Right? I mean, it's It really aren't. There's a couple of Diablo Immortal is so interesting right now, right? Like, it came out, everybody's playing it. I'm playing it. You don't need to put money into it to enjoy it. That is absolutely true. All the video game journalists one I used to be, a very esteemed member have taken this hard line against monetization in games in general. And then you've got this Twitch streamer who spent $25,000 and doesn't get the super rare legendary gem. But excuse me, excuse me. I'm just getting over COVID. Yeah, excuse me. You don't need that gem to enjoy the game. You don't need the very, very best gear.

In fact, there was a great opinion piece on Kotaku if you like a week ago or whatever saying how much they were loving Diablo Immortal. Sorry, guys. Love the game. And it was a couple of them, if I recall, speaking together. But there's a hardcore collection of gamers that won't be happy until they have the very very best gear. And those people are compulsive addicts. There's almost nothing you can do to help them, you know? And by selling them something, you may be saving them thousands of hours of grinding. And there had that may be you know, that may be a terrible thing. They just walk down the street and see somebody wearing, you know, the spectral tiger, you know, whatever gear. But the truth of the matter is maybe you're not healthy if you're putting in that much time. Maybe you don't need it that bad, you know? Right. Um so, you know, as you know, Fortnite has no monetization. It's all um uh what do you call it? No power-based monetization. Right, exactly. It's all all cosmetic. Cosmetic, that's the word I'm looking

for. Sorry. And they make a billions, you know? And most gamers like, "Yeah, you're wearing the blah blah blah." But people love it. So, let them love it, you know? That's my theory. I feel like the the same issues that you have with like they they you know, the the the the vocal loud minority. It's it's also NFT Twitter is the same thing. Right. Just people are loud, they're angry, they're they they don't want their paradigm to be shifted. They think of it this is a certain way. But like Web3, by the way, it's so early. We don't even know what everybody's going to want to really I hate that but like that so early like whatever. But it is. I don't think we've landed on what the real full use case that the world is going to actually adopt at this point. We're all experimenting. And but but I will the learning that I had from Stoner Cats is I ran away from that that feedback early and that was a mistake. And so, the thing that I learned in watching the Gimmicks is I was in Discord and I was listening and going, "That's [ __ ] That's [ __ ] That's [ __ ] That is a legitimate concern." And I need to address that. Legitimate concern. That's a problem. That's something I can improve on and I'm going to improve on that. But like having to wipe have to

really critically think and wipe away what is just noise. Also know what my North Star is, but then do be able to actually incorporate good feedback. I think that's really an important lesson to not be afraid of all of the criticism. And and like to you all of us get thicker skins than we have cuz it's not easy to be criticized. And the other the other thing with the whole grinding versus pay thing is how much is your time worth? Right. I am a grinder. I because I don't have kids and I'm never a job where, you know, I'll have a show that's supposed to go and it'll be a show that's supposed to go for a year of me waiting for the show that's supposed to go and I can't do anything else. And I'm just waiting waiting and waiting. So, anything to eat up hours of the day. in the wrong line of business. Yeah, it's just you know, grind grind grind grind grind. But I totally get it if you if you have a real job Hey. you make $100 an hour and, you know, you come home and you put the kids to bed or whatever and you sit down and play the

game and you're going to play the game for 2 hours. Grinding for 2 hours you earn, you know, 15 cents worth of content. Yeah. Or you just spend $10 and buy stuff and you can get and start playing and it's, you know, a tenth of 1 hour of your time instead of, you know, grinding through the whole thing. I totally get spending that money. It makes perfect sense to me. Also, ideally people want both options. Also, the truth of the matter is all video games are grinds. What you want to do is find a game that's fun to grind. You know, going back to Pac-Man, you know, you're playing the same board over and over and over and over. Is it fun or is it not? You know, I'll tell you what, none of these games are more expensive than Pac-Man. That was a quarter for, you know, a 90-second experience if you were good, you know? Right. So, it's just a matter of whether it's a fun experience and you pay for fun experiences, you know? I am my opinion. Um so, you know, I you all have been

very generous of your time. So, I want to try and get to the two wrap-up questions uh cuz I think we could probably talk for another hour easily without missing a beat. Um, but uh, what do we have to look forward to next with Armored Kingdom? You've got the monthly comic drops, you've got the Discord community where you're encouraging the fans to co-create this world with you. Uh, what's what's next? What's on the road map? Um, we are working diligently on the game. And um, but that's that's that's months out. So, like everybody chill, just come and play and have fun with us. Um, we will have a lot more in um, fun interactive community experiences for people to come in and like and play with us. So, in the immediate future, it's absolutely comic books. It's conversations with all of us. We are like in there talking. It is um, we are going to I I Jess will kill me if I say what's next. Um, but it is She's like, "Don't steal my alpha."

That's exa- that's exactly right. Um, Jess is working really hard on a community experience that people will want to be really in on. And I'm not going to say anything more than that what that is because he'll kill me. Um, and uh, and then additionally, we're starting working on the animated series and we'll start dropping kind of hints on what that's going to look like and where that's going to be. Awesome. Um, and and just a closing question is, you know, this audience is primarily experienced game developers. No, we're hiring. That's Yeah, exactly. That was my question. Who are you looking for? Who are you hiring? If someone's like, "I want to build this transmedia uh, experience, uh, uh, what are what are you looking for? What are your needs right now?" We're Now, we're kind of in deep with a couple of people, but we are still looking for uh, um, a game producer. Like somebody to come in and and EP with us. So, that that that will make sure that our

um, to be sort of our team in in talking in sort of combining all of these things together make sure our expectations are realistic to make sure our communication is clear. So that we are talking in the right language to everybody. So we are really looking for that person to come in and steer ship. We have it We're really looking at one really big high-level hire right now. Got a lot of other pieces in place. Got a lot of other people that we are bringing in within this next week and two. Um but right this minute there's that one key person that we are looking for. We would like somebody who has built games, who has a lot of deep interest in Web3 if not a lot of experience. We have a lot of experience we can kind of help on that. But um but who who is will come in in a very big executive managerial position to help us build this. Got it. Well, if you've been listening for the past hour and you're thinking, "That's me. I'm that person." Just uh uh hit me up on the Deconstructor Fun Slack or on LinkedIn and I will happily forward you on to the

Orchard Farm team and the Realm of the Kingdom team. All right. Y'all, this was uh so exciting for me. I I would I would greedily take another hour. I I hope y'all come back in the future so we can talk even more about it. And uh I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day watching Robot Chicken, probably. We should do a watch party when the game drops, for sure. Well, I think before that I mean we're going to start doing some little like leaky stuff. We'll like let's have We'll talk. We'll talk. Awesome. All right, thanks so much everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye, friends. Bye. Bye-bye.