Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
Speaker 1: the business, media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer, TV
Speaker 1: and video games. Jennifer Moss Belan Lee, a former Xbox designer,
Speaker 1: and Matthew Inman, the award winning cartoonants behind the Oatmeal,
Speaker 1: launched the first Exploding Kittens card game in twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: via Kickstarter campaign and unexpectedly raised eight point seven million
Speaker 1: dollars for the initial game in the first thirty days
Speaker 1: of the campaign. Since then, they released nearly thirty tabletop
Speaker 1: games under the Exploding Kitten's Company brand and a handful
Speaker 1: of digital games, and it's sold more than thirty six
Speaker 1: million games globally. On Friday, Netflix will launch its Exploding
Speaker 1: Kittens TV series adaptation, which will coincide with updates to
Speaker 1: its Exploding Kitten's mobile game for the streamer, incorporating playable
Speaker 1: characters from the new show into the service. Here to
Speaker 1: talk about the inner workings at its own Kittens the company,
Speaker 1: and how their brand adapted its best selling tabletop game.
Speaker 1: Entering Netflix series and video game are founders ill Unle
Speaker 1: and matthew an Thank you both for joining me for
Speaker 1: the strictly business podcast. I'm really excited to speak to you,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of want to start off with
Speaker 1: each of you could lay out your current holes and
Speaker 1: then go a little bit into your background prior.
Speaker 2: Matt, you want to start sure, So at Exploding Kittens,
Speaker 2: I think my social title the chief creative officer the cartoonists.
Speaker 2: I'm an artist. I worked on the original game with
Speaker 2: the lawn. I should have had more coffee because I
Speaker 2: can't think of what else. Yeah. Yeah, And then on
Speaker 2: the Netflix series, I'm the showrunner. I wrote a bunch
Speaker 2: of episodes and did a little bit of everything there.
Speaker 3: My name is Alan. I founded the company with Matt
Speaker 3: about ten years ago. My current role is CEO, and
Speaker 3: I'm also one of the producers on the show.
Speaker 2: Did I forget to mention I write and draw the oatmeal?
Speaker 2: I did that little thing? Did I write draw the oatmeals? Ball?
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, for any of our listeners who might not
Speaker 1: be familiar, can you explain what Exploding Kittens is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's see. Okay, So Exploding Kittens, I mean, first
Speaker 3: and foremost, it's a card game, but it's also the
Speaker 3: name of our company and also now the name of
Speaker 3: a Netflix show. It started about ten years ago. Matt
Speaker 3: and I were kind of looking for a new exciting
Speaker 3: project to get involved in. I had this very rough
Speaker 3: idea for a card game that at the time was
Speaker 3: called Bomb Squad, and it was all It was like
Speaker 3: Russian Roulette with a deck of cards. Matt decided very
Speaker 3: wisely that the name Bob and Squad is no fun
Speaker 3: at all. And the way he phrased it was, if
Speaker 3: all you're scared of in this game are these explosive bombs,
Speaker 3: it's just so on the nose, it's so obvious. Who cares?
Speaker 3: What if instead the thing you were most afraid of
Speaker 3: was cute, adorable, fuzzy little kittens And we call the
Speaker 3: game Exploding Kittens instead, And that is literally how Exploding
Speaker 3: Kittens was born. We put it up on Kickstarter expecting
Speaker 3: to raise hopefully about ten thousand bucks. Instead we raised
Speaker 3: almost nine million and thirty days started a company and
Speaker 3: now are one of the largest independent game studios in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: That anything you want to add to that story, as
Speaker 1: the saying that Bomb Squad was.
Speaker 2: A bad name, Yeah, I mean, I guess, I see, yeah,
Speaker 2: I get Alan and I were we kind of just
Speaker 2: met at that point too, we were on vacation with
Speaker 2: a mutual friend of ours and Alan had this poker
Speaker 2: deck that has just sharpie marks on it, and we
Speaker 2: played that game like the entire week while we are
Speaker 2: on vacation. And I kind of had wanted to make
Speaker 2: a game at that point, but I wasn't a game
Speaker 2: designer and I didn't really have one. And for our
Speaker 2: first game, it's still is our I think it's one
Speaker 2: of the best things we've ever done in terms of gameplay, Like,
Speaker 2: it's so fun, it's such a satisfying and unique game mechanic,
Speaker 2: this sort of idea that you play until it's last
Speaker 2: person standing. And yeah, and I was able to kind
Speaker 2: of translate comics into cards back then, and that that
Speaker 2: really helped us in the beginning too.
Speaker 3: And Matt literally wrote a one panel comic for every
Speaker 3: card in the game. I showed up with a poker deck.
Speaker 3: Here's the King, the Queen, the aces et, cetera. And
Speaker 3: Matt said, okay, so fifty two cards. I will draw
Speaker 3: fifty two to one panel hilarious comics and that will.
Speaker 2: Be the game.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that whole task, what was that? Matt? Ten days,
Speaker 3: two weeks somewhere in that timeframe.
Speaker 2: We did it fast, and our company came together in
Speaker 2: like six weeks from hey, this is Bomb Squad the
Speaker 2: poker game to ek explaining kittens on the Internet. You know,
Speaker 2: in a very short period of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was Yeah, that was that was fun. That
Speaker 3: was literally us in a garage in the back of
Speaker 3: my house. And now there's about one hundred people working
Speaker 3: at the company and we have a big studio and
Speaker 3: the biggest problem is remembering everybody's name.
Speaker 1: And now you've released nearly thirty games, a handful of
Speaker 1: digital games, including the Netflix Exploding mobile game.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, So I'd love.
Speaker 1: To know what the process becomes at that point, from
Speaker 1: making a card game to making a digital game to
Speaker 1: now making a show. And at what point Netflix got involved,
Speaker 1: if they approached you, if you had talks with them,
Speaker 1: what the kind of flow and order of events if
Speaker 1: you remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can, I'll jump to the Netflix bit because
Speaker 2: that's where I'm the most relevant. So in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: we received an investment from Peter Turnham and to kind
Speaker 2: of expand our our IP and he connected us with
Speaker 2: Greg Daniels and might Judge and you know, up until
Speaker 2: that point, it really wasn't terribly interested in making Exploding
Speaker 2: Kitts into a TV series. It just wasn't something that
Speaker 2: struck me as television material. I mean, it's a card game,
Speaker 2: where as we just said, each card is its own
Speaker 2: non secuity. It's they're all just independent jokes, don't really
Speaker 2: a story. It'sn't really through line. It would be like
Speaker 2: if I told you we're going to make connect for
Speaker 2: into a movie, you'd be like, God, stop, you know, please,
Speaker 2: don't you know? And what ended up happening was started
Speaker 2: to think kind of in earnest about, regardless of the
Speaker 2: card game, what's the show that I would want to watch?
Speaker 2: And that is where I kind of flipped through an
Speaker 2: old notebook and started schooling away. And I'd always kind
Speaker 2: of had this idea in the back of my mind
Speaker 2: of some sort of cat X related show and hear
Speaker 2: me out. So when I had a girlfriend in my
Speaker 2: twenties where she had a cat who kind of simultaneously
Speaker 2: behaved like God in the house and also like Satan.
Speaker 2: I think this is very reliable for most pet owners.
Speaker 2: Your cat things, you own the house, but they also
Speaker 2: seem to rule the underworld as well, so again, when
Speaker 2: I thought, how can I make Exploding Kittens into a
Speaker 2: TV series that I want to watch without ever having
Speaker 2: played the game, that's where this idea of God and
Speaker 2: the Devil being trapped in cat bodies on Earth came from.
Speaker 2: So what I did was most television pitches, you know,
Speaker 2: you have your little index cards and you nervously stand
Speaker 2: in a room and try to recite your show in
Speaker 2: front of a bunch of people. I don't really drive
Speaker 2: that way, and I can draw, So I thought I
Speaker 2: would draw my pitch in the form of a comic
Speaker 2: that you could read like it's a It's about a
Speaker 2: four minute read, like a tiny graphic novel, so you
Speaker 2: could you read my show. We pitched it to seven
Speaker 2: studios and six of them made offers on it right away,
Speaker 2: and that's when kind of realized, I think I doesinthe
Speaker 2: really really good here. That's how we connected eventually with Netflix.
Speaker 2: And at the time Netflix was this was like twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Netflix was investing heavily in animation, I think,
Speaker 2: and I think they doubled down on it because of
Speaker 2: the pandemic, because you couldn't shoot anything live action, and
Speaker 2: that's that's where it's the when you get touts home.
Speaker 3: Just to add the even before that, like all we
Speaker 3: ever really aspired to do, at least at first, was
Speaker 3: let's make a bunch of card games. Like I really
Speaker 3: like designing games, Matt really likes drawing games, come together
Speaker 3: and we were able to create these really fun, exciting
Speaker 3: things under the premise that, like, none of these games
Speaker 3: should be entertaining. All every game we make should make
Speaker 3: the people you're playing with entertaining instead. And armed with that,
Speaker 3: we're able to create like some of the some of
Speaker 3: the best selling games ever. It's really it's been a
Speaker 3: it's been a really fun experience. And then once once
Speaker 3: the Netflix show really solidified, like once it was like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're doing this, Matt started to lead his team, the
Speaker 3: show team, as far as like, all right, well, here's
Speaker 3: what these characters sound like, here's how they behave, here's
Speaker 3: how they move, here's here's what the world actually looks
Speaker 3: like instead of just a bunch of static images. And
Speaker 3: armed with that, we were able to start saying, okay, well,
Speaker 3: now this is a world instead of just a bunch
Speaker 3: of comics, this is an actual world. So that means
Speaker 3: we can start making more games, more moving games. Right,
Speaker 3: so like digital games, mobile games, VR games, we can
Speaker 3: start exploring where else these characters might live and how
Speaker 3: our audience might be able to experience them. And so
Speaker 3: it was like this neat little one two punch, like,
Speaker 3: let's start by building a really strong audience, building simple, fast,
Speaker 3: easy fun party games. Expand that into the world of TV,
Speaker 3: and then now we can expand that whole ip outwards
Speaker 3: because we know what it looks and sounds like.
Speaker 1: As you became more and more familiar with the tabletop
Speaker 1: game and that's where you started with and that's where
Speaker 1: you grew, and that's where the success was. Going into
Speaker 1: TV and going into gaming digital. What did you all
Speaker 1: have to do to educate yourselves on understanding those worlds,
Speaker 1: the business model of those things, and expanding the brand
Speaker 1: into those sections where you had been strictly in tabletop
Speaker 1: gaming before.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually on once you go first you worked
Speaker 2: at the Xbox, you can talk about all kinds off there.
Speaker 3: I think we knew, like all of us from hearing
Speaker 3: all the stories, that there's not a huge amount of
Speaker 3: money in season one. Season one is like establishing yourself.
Speaker 3: It's building the team figuring out what this thing looks like,
Speaker 3: trying your best to build an audience, investing heavily in marketing,
Speaker 3: making sure you get the word out. It's really once
Speaker 3: that thing takes off, which we really hope this does
Speaker 3: because we've worked so hard at it. It's once that
Speaker 3: takes off that you have more leverage, that you get
Speaker 3: to start making more demands. Essentially. However, getting to that point,
Speaker 3: there were a few things that were really important to us.
Speaker 3: A typical TV deal, the network has a lot of
Speaker 3: rules about merchandising, about what the show is called, about
Speaker 3: how you talk about the show, and we were very
Speaker 3: fortunate that we could walk into those deals saying, look,
Speaker 3: this has to be called Exploding Kittens, has to has
Speaker 3: to has to, which is very important to us. That's
Speaker 3: the brand recognition. They totally agreed. They were like, yes,
Speaker 3: has to, that's where the audience is going to come from.
Speaker 3: You've got one of the best selling games in the world,
Speaker 3: So cool, we're all in agreement there. It's good for them,
Speaker 3: it's good for us. That was a really nice negotiation
Speaker 3: point that was not contentious at all. But then the
Speaker 3: second one was merchandising, which is like, look, We're going
Speaker 3: to be the best partners ever and anything that comes
Speaker 3: out of the show, out of these characters, we're all
Speaker 3: going to participate in that. But it is very important
Speaker 3: to us that you acknowledge we are a pre existing
Speaker 3: company that only does merchandising. All we do is put
Speaker 3: out card games out into the world, So we have
Speaker 3: to be able to keep those things in their own
Speaker 3: little box in order that we can keep running the company,
Speaker 3: keep coming up with new ideas, and keep using those
Speaker 3: ideas to generate new IP and new shows for Netflix.
Speaker 3: So everyone was very good about that. But it was
Speaker 3: non traditional, right, Like the standard version is all merchandising
Speaker 3: that comes out of a show gets split up between
Speaker 3: all the partners, and we had to cut out or
Speaker 3: carve out pre existing ips and new games that we
Speaker 3: create that weren't associated with the show. That was a
Speaker 3: little bit of learning on both sides, right. Nobody was
Speaker 3: used to that, but that's what that's what we clung
Speaker 3: onto because it was so important and we knew that
Speaker 3: as long as we can hold on to that, we
Speaker 3: can then learn the rest of the process. Working closely
Speaker 3: with the networks, working closely with Netflix to get the
Speaker 3: best deal for everybody.
Speaker 1: We'll be back to work from the Exploding Kittens seen
Speaker 1: actor this break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so kind of going through card games to digital
Speaker 2: I know Alons kind of got a rich background, and
Speaker 2: you know, he worked was a chief design officer at
Speaker 2: the Xbox, so that there was a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: that fit there for him. For me going from card
Speaker 2: game to television, I had I've been working in comics forever,
Speaker 2: which is very helpful because when you draw storyboards, which
Speaker 2: become animatics, it's become cartoons animatics fen who doesn't know
Speaker 2: they're They're kind of like a really crappy cartoon. They're
Speaker 2: black and white. Usually the actors aren't even there yet,
Speaker 2: so it's all this rough. I've done a ton of
Speaker 2: storyboarding just in my career as a cartoonist, so I
Speaker 2: had some skills there. And then I'd worked in elimination
Speaker 2: for a couple of years on their movies, did some
Speaker 2: punch up on their movies, so I had some experience there.
Speaker 2: That being said, there was a lot of new disciplines
Speaker 2: to learn. You know, writing a still web comic on
Speaker 2: the Internet is very different from dealing with actors, writers,
Speaker 2: sound design, fully score. There's a whole kind of arsenal thing.
Speaker 2: So past four and a half years has been it's
Speaker 2: like the greatest film class they've ever gone to, you know,
Speaker 2: in a way, because I got to actively learn while
Speaker 2: making show. The other thing that was probably where Robber
Speaker 2: Mett road in terms of difficulty was when you make
Speaker 2: a web comic, people hear when they read your comic,
Speaker 2: they hear what ever voice they want to hear in
Speaker 2: their head, and usually it's a very funny voice. It's
Speaker 2: well written television or animation. They hear whatever voice the
Speaker 2: actor is saying and or the way the character is moving,
Speaker 2: and it can all break a joke or make a joke.
Speaker 2: So that was where I had to be really diligent
Speaker 2: and good about make sure the comedy comes through because
Speaker 2: there's a ton of funny jokes that are written in script,
Speaker 2: and then when they're own, you know, they're performed, they
Speaker 2: can kind of change or breakdown that comes with you.
Speaker 2: That's the same with the art, you know, creating really
Speaker 2: rich style guides that I drop people a certain way.
Speaker 2: You know, I had kind of a signature, kind of
Speaker 2: inbred frog eyed look to everything that I drop, and
Speaker 2: I needed to make sure that in bred frog eyed
Speaker 2: was well ingrained into one in Netflix. It was you know,
Speaker 2: it's on my office door talking.
Speaker 1: About the voices that brings me a question about passing
Speaker 1: and how involved you all were in that process. If
Speaker 1: Netflix had ideas right off the top, if you all
Speaker 1: had ideas and kind of what it was based on,
Speaker 1: and also fans of exploding kittens versus people are like,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what this is. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of this before, and kind of that barrier to entry
Speaker 1: maybe with certain talent.
Speaker 2: We you know, initially Netflix and me were aligned that
Speaker 2: we wanted to go after famous people, you know, celebrities,
Speaker 2: and we did. We went after famous people and celebrities
Speaker 2: and what do you get any and they're busy, you know,
Speaker 2: like I mean that in a good way because it's
Speaker 2: like a cat themed you know, it'd be like we're
Speaker 2: making a movie out of them. I don't know, pick
Speaker 2: the worst they imaginable. Let me paraphrase, paraphrase, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: blowing this right now. We went out to the first
Speaker 2: person who went out to to Boyce Godcat was Peter
Speaker 2: d English and which had been amazing. I love him
Speaker 2: and he was super interested, but he was shooting a movie.
Speaker 2: And then the next person we went after was calling
Speaker 2: Farrell again amazing, great shooting a movie. And then they
Speaker 2: both got a bunch of awards. I think called Ferrol
Speaker 2: literally maybe got nominated for an Oscar maybe one I
Speaker 2: don't remember, and I was like, yeah, it's probably good.
Speaker 2: You turned down the whole cat card game idea. You
Speaker 2: were clearly busy something that matters. But sort of through
Speaker 2: that process, what we kind of realized was we wanted
Speaker 2: people who were funny. We don't care who they are
Speaker 2: in terms of celebrity. So that's why we ended up
Speaker 2: with like, for example, a good example of this, Mark
Speaker 2: brooksh who plays the dad on the show. He plays Marv.
Speaker 2: He's the voice. He might not know his name, but
Speaker 2: if you saw him, you know who he is. He
Speaker 2: was in the office. He also played the energy vampire
Speaker 2: in What We Do in the Shadows, And that's the
Speaker 2: kind of a lack of better word, black of the
Speaker 2: energy we wanted from our characters was less about can
Speaker 2: we shove Wesley Snipes in here. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I picked him. I like him, but whatever, that's really
Speaker 2: celebrity I can think of right now, Wesley Snipe versus
Speaker 2: someone that maybe isn't quite as well known, but their
Speaker 2: ability to perform a joke into a microphone was so good.
Speaker 2: Tom Ellis is that way to shoo him. They were
Speaker 2: all like funny, funny people. THAT'SI Sidar is another good example.
Speaker 3: So tom Ellis, though, Matt, I remember going through that
Speaker 3: casting process and you like sending me all of these
Speaker 3: recordings and these auditions, and for Godcat, you weren't even
Speaker 3: there was not even a thought that went into that.
Speaker 3: It was just like you heard that voice, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is Godcat, like this is one hundred percent sold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was offer only, so we never heard
Speaker 2: him before. The table reads. So the table reads, I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's no way this guy's not gonna not gonna like
Speaker 2: fell it. And he didn't. I mean, if I said
Speaker 2: that the right way, he was amazing. Like he We
Speaker 2: could kind of get a sense of him too, because
Speaker 2: tom Elise is Welsh, his accent is Welsh. He's funny
Speaker 2: based on his previous shows Miranda Loose First and other things,
Speaker 2: but he also has this simultaneous quality of being old
Speaker 2: world founding but also being fresh and relevant. Another good
Speaker 2: comparison to him might be someone like Matt Gardy also
Speaker 2: on what we do in the Shadows, where he's got
Speaker 2: this old world sound. But he also can like yell
Speaker 2: at his phone for not charging fast enough, like I
Speaker 2: can straddle those two. So Tom allis ended up being
Speaker 2: absolutely perfect god Cat. He's also a very nice man
Speaker 2: in person.
Speaker 1: I originally thought it was a nice nod to the
Speaker 1: inverse of him being Lucifer, that he'd be Godcat by them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big Lucifer fan, so that was.
Speaker 2: I think he's already getting hit with every single comment
Speaker 2: thread on the internet about the show is like he
Speaker 2: played the Devil, now it plays God That's like that dominates,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, great, I like it. I think that
Speaker 2: probably is helping our marketing a little bit because that's
Speaker 2: such a funny topic to you know. The other thing
Speaker 2: worth noting about Tom he has two cats at home
Speaker 2: and their names are Kane and Abel, so it all
Speaker 2: kind of fits into the theme of Godcat and Devil Cat.
Speaker 1: Talking about exploding kittens, the brand and exploding Kitten is
Speaker 1: the show and the digital game and remaining separate as
Speaker 1: a company right now, how are you functioning when you
Speaker 1: have this huge show coming out that is made by
Speaker 1: the brand, but you're also still operating as a company
Speaker 1: that does other things and is a merchandising company, a
Speaker 1: game company, as you've said, So we're you're all's focuses
Speaker 1: right now. How much are you split between different projects?
Speaker 1: What does that look like internally?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should We should start by saying, every lawyer,
Speaker 3: every accountant, every Hollywood agent for the last five years
Speaker 3: has been begging us to change the name of the company,
Speaker 3: so that is not the same name as everything else,
Speaker 3: because you say exploiting kittens. Are you talking about the
Speaker 3: show or the company, or the or the game or
Speaker 3: one of the expansions. It's it drives everybody insane. Matt
Speaker 3: and I refuse to change it because that's how it
Speaker 3: was born, and we think it's very We.
Speaker 2: Just like it.
Speaker 3: So, so, how is this whole thing functioning? It's it's
Speaker 3: a it's I've I've done five startups in my life.
Speaker 3: This is now by far the largest one, which makes
Speaker 3: it really really hard to manage all of those things
Speaker 3: because we have separate teams working on individual projects. Right
Speaker 3: we have our largest team works on sorry, our largest team. Actually,
Speaker 3: when the Netflix show was in full production, was nearly
Speaker 3: one hundred people, so that was the actual largest team.
Speaker 3: Second largest is game production, and then third is digital,
Speaker 3: where we have a lot of external partners. The company
Speaker 3: itself in order to function just has a lot of managers.
Speaker 3: Like we really we started out in my garage, just
Speaker 3: very few of us, and the whole idea was, let's
Speaker 3: all be creative all day, every day, and we'll make
Speaker 3: a game, and it's going to be somebody else's problem
Speaker 3: to figure out how that thing is produced, how it's printed,
Speaker 3: how it's shipped, how it gets on boats, how it
Speaker 3: gets into stores. We don't care about any of that.
Speaker 3: All we care about is gonna make fun stuff that
Speaker 3: we like playing. And in the process of doing that,
Speaker 3: we learned that we want to get good at everything.
Speaker 3: We want to learn how to print, we want to
Speaker 3: learn how to distribute, we want to learn how to
Speaker 3: do sales, we want to learn how to do marketing,
Speaker 3: like just all the stuff. And so now all of
Speaker 3: that stuff is internal. We have all of these different
Speaker 3: teams because we like all of that in one place,
Speaker 3: but that means our team is very management heavy, like
Speaker 3: we have someone in charge of every single one of
Speaker 3: those things. And then we got another person in charge
Speaker 3: of all of those managers, and then they all report
Speaker 3: up to someone at the sea level, and it looks
Speaker 3: a lot like a corporation at this point, much to
Speaker 3: our dismay, but we just couldn't figure out any other
Speaker 3: way to do all the things we want to do,
Speaker 3: get good at all the things, have control of all
Speaker 3: those things without having a whole lot of managers and
Speaker 3: unfortunately a whole lot of meetings. Matt, have I accurately
Speaker 3: depicted the misery that is our calendars these days?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I feel unwell, so I would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: now you're you're at you And the question is kind
Speaker 2: of like, what how do we kind of split up,
Speaker 2: you know, making the show versus making a game. It's
Speaker 2: that kind of idea. Yeah, I mean the show was
Speaker 2: pretty siloed because like Netflix, the way they make sure
Speaker 2: that they you know, they get a show and then
Speaker 2: they I don't like one hundred people, and then when
Speaker 2: the show's over, they kind of trail off its contractors.
Speaker 2: So for me, I've always burned the vin nine oil,
Speaker 2: so I was kind of putting the oatmeal cartooning aside
Speaker 2: for the black couple of years. Just I don't have time,
Speaker 2: and working most of the time as the showrunner and
Speaker 2: working on the series and then kind of working at
Speaker 2: DK when I have time. It's it's actually kind of
Speaker 2: a fun balance because when I was doing the Oatmeal
Speaker 2: full time the comic, I could go from creative drawing,
Speaker 2: I'm the boss, I'm the creator. There's no meetings a
Speaker 2: crap like that. And then when I when I had
Speaker 2: to go to K and it was you know, are
Speaker 2: all hands hr okr blah blah blah. You know I
Speaker 2: could get into that world as well. Yeah, so long
Speaker 2: story short, Uh, I just work a lot. Know, it's
Speaker 2: not ever gonn answer, That's all I got. I will
Speaker 2: also say I can draw really cast I know that
Speaker 2: sounds like I'm bragging. I draw poorly quickly, and so
Speaker 2: when I'm on the show or if I'm working on
Speaker 2: card games, whatever it is, sometimes I'm at my speed,
Speaker 2: my garb my speed of producing beautiful, palatable garbage is
Speaker 2: very helpful. Kind of like when I talk palatable garbage,
Speaker 2: you know that's my dad I used to call me.
Speaker 2: He didn't call me that.
Speaker 1: We're garbage. Translated from the show for Digital What were
Speaker 1: the aspects I know Elan with the Xbox background, but
Speaker 1: the aspects for the digital game, and then also making
Speaker 1: sure that remains separate from the show, because I know
Speaker 1: that characters from the show will be incorporated into the
Speaker 1: digital game, but the game itself still stands independent from
Speaker 1: Netflix show. I know.
Speaker 3: It's a lot, right. Just imagine how much easier this
Speaker 3: would be if our company had a different name. I know,
Speaker 3: all right, So when we work on the digital stuff,
Speaker 3: like look, first and foremost, we do physical games, right,
Speaker 3: ink on cardboard, put it in a box, go have
Speaker 3: a great time. And we actually resisted doing digital stuff
Speaker 3: for a while because you know, I have a very
Speaker 3: rich history in screens, with my history with the Xbox,
Speaker 3: and this was kind of a departure from that. This
Speaker 3: was kind of fun to say, like let's just make games, Like,
Speaker 3: let's just make physical game when I think back to
Speaker 3: my childhood playing games with my brothers and sisters, like
Speaker 3: we're sitting around a table, we're throwing food, we're hiding
Speaker 3: cards under the table, like all that fun stuff that
Speaker 3: just doesn't happen with a screen and doesn't happen remotely.
Speaker 3: So when it came time to start developing digital properties,
Speaker 3: we had to think through this process of like, we
Speaker 3: can't just do this for digital sake. There has to
Speaker 3: be a reason. There has to be something about the
Speaker 3: digital experience that's better than the physical experience, otherwise we
Speaker 3: might as well not do it. And we started attacking
Speaker 3: that on two fronts. Number one is digital had to
Speaker 3: be more accessible in order to play, especially like during
Speaker 3: the pandemic, in order to play this game when you
Speaker 3: can't be in the same room as your friends, Digital
Speaker 3: solves that problem. So we have to make sure there's
Speaker 3: remote play, that there's lobbies that people can join and
Speaker 3: they can make new friends. And we hit that hard.
Speaker 3: We really really important to us to say one of
Speaker 3: the reasons you're going to do this is because you
Speaker 3: can't be in the same room as other people. And
Speaker 3: then the second one was, let's use this as an
Speaker 3: opportunity to create cards that literally cannot exist in the
Speaker 3: real world. And my favorite example of that is in
Speaker 3: the physical game, there's a card called shuffle really really simple.
Speaker 3: You've got this deck of cards. One of them is bad,
Speaker 3: the exploding kitten. You don't want to draw the exploding kitten.
Speaker 3: And so if you know via playing a bunch of
Speaker 3: other cards, that let you peak before you draw, you
Speaker 3: know the top ones in Exploding Kitten.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: So you play a shuffle card, you shuffle up the deck,
Speaker 3: you hope you've moved the kitten somewhere where it's not
Speaker 3: going to hurt you, and then you draw the card
Speaker 3: to end your turn. Really straightforward, everybody understands what shuffle does.
Speaker 3: In the digital version, not only can we put in
Speaker 3: the regular shuffle card, but we can put in something
Speaker 3: that can't exist in the real world, and that's a
Speaker 3: card called fake shuffle. And what fake shuffle does is
Speaker 3: when you play it, it looks to all the other
Speaker 3: players like you just played a shuffle card, but really
Speaker 3: what you've done is shuffled for you and nobody else.
Speaker 3: Meaning when you draw a card, it will give you
Speaker 3: a random card. But after that event, the rest of
Speaker 3: the deck magically flips back into the state it was
Speaker 3: before the shuffle happened. And so now for the next player,
Speaker 3: these pining kitten is still right on top because nothing
Speaker 3: was actually shuffled. That's not possible to do in the
Speaker 3: real world. It would require blindfolds and leaving the room.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, what a nightmare. But in digital it's
Speaker 3: very easy, and so we've got a series of cards
Speaker 3: like that, which really were the guiding light for us
Speaker 3: in creating the digital experience to say, like, let's make
Speaker 3: sure that this experience is not just mimic the physical one,
Speaker 3: but enhances it in a way that would not otherwise
Speaker 3: be possible.
Speaker 1: Speaking about the digital game and the mechanics of that.
Speaker 1: Netflix is very new to games still, they've been ramping
Speaker 1: up and this was one of the ones that was
Speaker 1: announced pretty early on and announced in connection with the
Speaker 1: TV show. So I need to know what your experience
Speaker 1: has been working with them, just from a company standpoint
Speaker 1: on the gaming side versus the TV side, because they
Speaker 1: are so new at the gaming stuff and they're still
Speaker 1: growing that division.
Speaker 2: Well, I can say really quick the we have there's
Speaker 2: two versions of Exploding at One is the one we
Speaker 2: made years ago, and then there's the new Netflix one.
Speaker 2: The one we made years ago was great, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of things that we didn't do just because
Speaker 2: technically we couldn't or we didn't know how. Some of
Speaker 2: the car mechanics you play they're familiar with when you
Speaker 2: play physically in our game. We have other new ones,
Speaker 2: and there's there's some lot of charm there, but Netflix
Speaker 2: is the most faithful. Like if you play the physical
Speaker 2: card game and you play the Netflix one, most were
Speaker 2: very very close. So in that regard, it was easy
Speaker 2: because they kind of took the physical game and just
Speaker 2: recreated it as digital and it was easy and I
Speaker 2: really like, this is the long way of saying, I
Speaker 2: really liked the Netflix version, and working with them on
Speaker 2: that app was pretty seamless. The our teams that Netflix
Speaker 2: are so good. I mean they can clone things that
Speaker 2: I make. They can, you know. The other thing was
Speaker 2: helpful is the show is so kind of put this.
Speaker 2: It's like so well structured and crafted versus the way
Speaker 2: I do things. That translating that art over was as
Speaker 2: an example when you I didn't know this, but when
Speaker 2: you make an animated series, like if you're maybe making
Speaker 2: The Simpsons back in whatever that was nineteen ninety something,
Speaker 2: you do blueprint like a perhaps like a top down
Speaker 2: bird's eye blue viewprint of the home. So like the
Speaker 2: Simpsons probably had a blueprint of their home where the
Speaker 2: doors swing open and on. We did that for our show.
Speaker 2: Actually got to look at like architectural plants for where
Speaker 2: the family lives, so that's like the level of fidelity
Speaker 2: to some of these documents with regards to creating it.
Speaker 2: When Netflix made an app out of the show and
Speaker 2: out of the UK, it was the art was it
Speaker 2: was easy.
Speaker 3: Also, our interests were aligned, Like Netflix is releasing that
Speaker 3: game for free, which means their motivation is build the
Speaker 3: best experience you can, which amazingly is exactly our motivation. Right,
Speaker 3: So when we first start on that thing, and like
Speaker 3: you say, like it was in their initial launch portfolio,
Speaker 3: right before they really knew very much, before they had
Speaker 3: launched any other games. And as long as your interests
Speaker 3: are aligned, as long as we get to sit down
Speaker 3: with them and say, Okay, we're gonna learn a lot,
Speaker 3: we're gonna build all kinds of cool stuff, but we
Speaker 3: all want to build the best possible experience for people.
Speaker 3: You want to, we want to. You can figure everything
Speaker 3: else out because you're all working towards the same finish line.
Speaker 3: So that worked really well for us.
Speaker 1: Now I just want to ask about, you know, the
Speaker 1: tabletop industry. Hollywood is obviously not that connected to it,
Speaker 1: but so much is being adapted from tabletop games at
Speaker 1: this point that people are very interested in it. Looking
Speaker 1: at it, and it's kind of a return to that
Speaker 1: format because we're drawing from it in more modern media.
Speaker 1: So I want to know how much you guys can
Speaker 1: like kind of break down working in that industry and
Speaker 1: crossing over into Hollywood and seeing the interest in things
Speaker 1: pick up again in terms of the transmedia component of
Speaker 1: that mean comes seeing the tabletop gaming community be a
Speaker 1: very important one to furthering more modern IP.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, let's just talk about the background there for
Speaker 3: a sec because Matt Now used to have this conversation
Speaker 3: all the time. When we were building the company, like
Speaker 3: ten years ago now, we talked a lot about like
Speaker 3: what do we want to grow this into, like how
Speaker 3: big and what are our aspirations? And the name that
Speaker 3: kept coming up for us was Marvel. Not to say
Speaker 3: we've reached nearly that, but their initial model was let's
Speaker 3: build something cheap, fast and easy comics. Right like, they
Speaker 3: cranked out a whole bunch of them. Those that worked,
Speaker 3: they would continue to invest in, those that didn't would
Speaker 3: elegantly exit, and then they'd move on to others. And
Speaker 3: what that did was that allowed them to familiarize their
Speaker 3: audience with worlds with characters, and then over the years,
Speaker 3: in their case, many decades. They could then start working
Speaker 3: on more elaborate versions of those worlds because their audience
Speaker 3: already have the name recognition, and they could build that
Speaker 3: fast and cheaply. Right. It costs so much less to
Speaker 3: put out a comic book than it does a full
Speaker 3: feature Hollywood movie. Right, So we looked at that model
Speaker 3: and thought, if anything, I don't know if we can
Speaker 3: ever achieve that, but that's a really nice goal. It
Speaker 3: is easy for us to put out games. Games are
Speaker 3: relatively inexpensive, especially compared to a TV show or movie.
Speaker 3: So let's put out games that have characters and have
Speaker 3: a little bit of edge to them and hint at
Speaker 3: a world and build that audience familiarization, so that name recognition.
Speaker 3: You might fall in love with a particular character from
Speaker 3: a game because you've invited them into your home and
Speaker 3: you interact with them night after night with your family
Speaker 3: and friends. And so that model works really well for
Speaker 3: us because this is an easy way for us to
Speaker 3: get into your house, and then we can start expanding.
Speaker 3: Then we can say, like exploding kinds cool, there's a
Speaker 3: Netflix show. Now you can see those characters come to life.
Speaker 3: And so this is just sort of the tip of
Speaker 3: the iceberg for us. It's just starting to say, here's
Speaker 3: what phase two looks like. Very established on phase one, right,
Speaker 3: establish that name recognition. Now we're starting to dabble into
Speaker 3: this larger world, which is a natural fit. It's much
Speaker 3: more expensive, and you can only do it for those
Speaker 3: titles that work really well. But again, like Marvel, we
Speaker 3: get to double down on those that work well and
Speaker 3: we get to elegantly sunset those that don't so that
Speaker 3: we can spend our time on new things.
Speaker 2: It's importantly God, I hope there's another Battleship movie because
Speaker 2: that was a winner. You know, we could be the
Speaker 2: next Battleship movie. It would be great. Still comes out
Speaker 2: in a week, let's find out. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Guys, this is been wonderful.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
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