October 16, 2024 • 33 mins
Gamefam founder Joe Ferencz breaks down the metaverse game developer and publisher's strategy for harnessing and monetizing popular IP
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Strictly Business, writy's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business of media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer,
TV and video games. Jennifer Moss Jill Fernx is the
chief executive officer and founder at game Fam, a metaverse
game developer and publisher that creates connected experiences for gaming
platforms including Roblocks and Fortnite, and well known brands like
(00:30):
Mattel's Barbie Crunchy Roles, My Hero, Academia, and most recently,
the band Coldplay. Ferens founded game Fam in twenty nineteen
following years working in strategy roles at Mattel and Ubisoft,
and after beginning his career as an art director working
on licensed consumer products for sports properties including the NFL, NCAA,
(00:50):
and NHL. His game design and producing credits include He Man,
The Most Powerful Game in the Universe, Star Wars, Rebels,
recon Missions, and Hot Wheels Rates, which has over one
hundred million downloads. Here to talk about the inner workings
of game Fam. A CEO Joe Farns, thank you so
(01:18):
much for joining me today, Joe, I really appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So I'd love to just start out pretty high level
here for those who might not be familiar about what
you guys do, if you can just start off at
the top.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
What is gamecam Yeah, game fan is the leading professional
publisher of content for the Roadblocks and Fortnite platforms. We
are really a media network for reaching gen Z and
jen Alpha consumers that we run a huge portfolio of products,
with about one hundred thousand concurrent players playing our games
(01:53):
as we speak. We have multiple top games and top
genres on Roadblocks and a significant Fortnite portfolio as well.
We create business by both in app transactions where we
sell players various digital goods that they love and find valuable,
and we also build significant brand advertising programs for brands,
(02:14):
IP holders, theatrical campaigns, etc.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And then your background specifically, I'd love to get a
run down of that.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah. I've been in the gaming and pop culture business
my entire career, so a little bit over twenty years now.
Started as a graphic designer on sports licensed T shirts
and posters, went back to business school, interned at Disney,
did a postgraduate internship a Nintendo, spent two years at
Ubisoft working on franchise and IP strategy, and then went
(02:46):
to MATEL doing franchise development for three years. After that,
I jumped into the startup world about ten years ago
to work on a Star Wars kids game as a
chief product officer, and then worked on a huge, huge
mobile game, Subway Surfers for a year as a consultant,
and then went back to MATEL as a consulting executive
(03:07):
producer on Hot Wheels video games, putting the Hot Wheels
brand into twenty games over the course of five years,
including some huge hits from Microsoft's Sports franchise and EPICX
Rocket League franchise EA's need for Speed. And it was
during those years consulting and doing some startups in my
other time that I became aware of the Roadbox platform,
(03:32):
which back then had I believe thirty million monthly active users.
Now it has eighty million daily active users. And I
was at a point in my career where I had
worked on so many great brands and ips, starting in
sports licensing doing NFL license posters, and then working at
(03:52):
Ubisoft on licensing out and doing strategy for Assassin's Creed,
and then being a licensee of Star Wars and helping
grow the hot Wheels gaming business and helping relaunch he
man and I said, I want to try to get
into making new and wild stuff, and I think Roadblocks
(04:13):
is the place to do it. I think the platform
is going to explode. All the fundamentals are there, and
I think we've only been surprised at how big it
has gotten and how big it is likely to continue
to get. Oh, I just lost you for real.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Now what is your day to day at game fam
What is your role now?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So? I'm the CEO and founder of Gamevam, and my
main focus every day is ensuring that we have the
very best products in the market from a digital quality,
production values, player engagement, player monetization standpoint. We've won over
thirty awards in the last three years, including Fast Companies,
(04:58):
Most Innovative including five thousand and numerous awards for our
campaigns and the quality of our products, and that is
my passion, is making sure that we do the very
best work in our field. If you look at the
top ten all time brand games on Roadblocks, which you
can see on a website called rome Monitor that we own,
(05:21):
you will see that game fan has produced three of
the top ten all time brand games on Roadblocks number
one Sonic Speed Simulator, which just crossed a billion visits,
and I'm sure I'll talk more about a few of
these as we go. Barbie Dreamhouse Tycoon, which is number
six despite having come out less than a year ago,
and then number ten Hot Wheels, the first Roadblocks game
(05:43):
we ever developed at our studio. And we also have
produced three of the top five concerts Roadblocks concerts of
all time number one Sweetie's super Bowl Concert, number three,
Chainsmokers number four, twenty four k Golden. So that is
really what gets me excited every day is continuing to
(06:05):
do the best work in the space. And when I'm
not doing that, I'm working on how do we build
brand engagement programs to help bridge the gap between Hollywood
and the traditional forms of distributing content and this new
world of gaming as media that is just growing every
(06:27):
quarter right now.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So with the current state of gaming and everything, I
guess covered Unreal Facts yesterday, Unreal Engine had some announcements made.
I want you to know your current take on what
the most exciting thing going on right now is and
then maybe the biggest struggle facing the industry at the moment,
The most exciting thing going on right now is the
(06:50):
ability for small teams to.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Make incredible products, and that was the founding thesis of
our company, is that using the technology that companies like
Roadblocks and UEFN or Epic in this case through their
UEFN platform, are delivering to developers, we can create the
next generation of franchises, and we can bring along the
(07:14):
previous generation of franchises into this new world and the
innovators in the creative and media space. That is the
thing that is the most exciting that is happening. And
we can see that the usage of Roadblocks specifically continues
to grow quarter over quarter as the content offerings continue
to get better and better. So if you look at
(07:36):
some of our games like SpongeBob Simulator that we made
with our partners at Paramount, you'll see graphics that are
probably about PS three level PlayStation three levels, so about
two previous generations on console. But if you went back
three years from now, you would see graphics that we're
probably closer to a PS one, right, So the graphics
(07:57):
of these engines are improving exponents, and as the graphics improve,
they're retaining users older and older, and that's what's driving
the growth of Roblox and of Fortnite right now, the
challenges are that, similar to what's happened with streaming, similar
(08:17):
to what's happening with TikTok, is that the traditional distribution
channels that we're used to in the media business are changing.
They're changing from a business to consumer standpoint to appear
to peer standpoint. So what we've done as a company
is we have been trying to get out ahead of
(08:39):
this to ensure that all of the beloved IP and
characters that we've grown up on for the last fifty
years will have an entree into this new world of
peer to peer distribution. And we've been setting up networks
of authentic native development talent where we can provide that
layer of brands, SAE, safety, of best in class production,
(09:02):
but get that authenticity of that on the ground creator community.
And those are some of the ways that we've been
able to achieve so much success in original development of
IP based games at this company over the past five years.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So let's talk a little bit more about IP and
game VAM. I know you'd already mentioned, but I'd love
to dive in deeper to Sonic and to Barbie in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Absolutely two of my I've worked on so many great
projects in my career, you know, and you know not
to brag, but I had a chance to contribute, for example,
to the Forts Horizon three Hot Wheels expansion pack, which
was the number one Xbox exclusive on Metacritic back when
it came out. I won Editors Choice Awards for the
work I've done in the app Store. I've had so
(09:46):
many great opportunities and privileges to work with so many
great people, but to make our own hit products out
of the studio has been, of course, the biggest thrill
of my career. And Sonic Speed Simulator in Barb are
the two best examples of where we as a studio
dug in and put our absolute best efforts in place,
(10:08):
where we gave it everything we had in terms of
our creativity, in terms of polishing pixels, in terms of
designing game loops that retain and create value in thereby
monetized players, and those games have been just incredible in
terms of their of their success in these native platforms,
working against incredible competitors from you know, sixteen to twenty
(10:31):
five years old making games all day. Now, we're applying
that same push to my hero Academia. That's our next
big game that's coming up. So we're getting into the
anime space, which people in the know know if you know,
you know, anime is like the thing for gen Z
and Gen Alpha fans. It's been the thing for me
(10:54):
for over twenty five years. And I am not a
gen Z or Gen Alpha that's for sure. So it's
a area that we are deeply passionate about and place
to our strengths. But tell me what, what are you
curious about? Because I love to talk about these products,
So hashtag am.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Uh. You know when we were we last talked at
south By, you were doing a big thing on my
hero Academia. That's where that's where we actually first got
to talk about that project. So doing that, we're still
doing that. Yeah. So you know, one of the things
I love to talk about most when it comes to
gaming and IP is at the moment, you know, there's
(11:34):
a huge thing about taking gaming IP I bring it
into the traditional media space with TIL TV and film adaptations.
But here is a perfect example of the reverse and
using that existing IP. Now there's Sonic obviously went back
and forth. It contigues to but something like Barbie that
especially when you look at that and you don't always
(11:55):
know how that might work. Gaming has for a long
time been traditionally a mail space, and as female gamers
break in, there's different ways it goes about it at
different times. So when you're looking at IP that maybe
isn't traditionally either in the gaming space to begin with,
or something that you are with Sonic trying to reinvent
in gaming that has been done in multiple ways. What
(12:17):
are the two different ways you approach that an IP
that comes in and has not really been dealt with
that in the same way, and then another one where
you're trying to find something new to do with that IP.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Absolutely so, I've been working in a content strategy role
for geez about fifteen years now, whether it was at
whether it was during my MBA internship at Disney, or
whether it was as a franchise strategist at UBI Software,
a franchise development leader at Mattel and then running GameFan right,
So I'm constantly thinking about what is the fit between
(12:51):
it used to be taking gaming IP outside of gaming.
That's what I was focused on at Ubisoft when I
was consulting as an executive producer on Hot Wheels video
Games for five years. It was about how do we
take one of the world's best, maybe the world's best
toy brand and make it into a gaming brand. And
a lot of people said, a lot of a lot
of licensees that we spoke to and partners we spoke
(13:13):
to initially said Hey, this is just a toy brand,
This can't actually be a gaming brand. We knew that
that was not the case. Leadership at Mattel knew that
wasn't the case, but we had to find the right
story to tell. We had to find the right fit
for the brand. And I think when we look at
Sonic or Barbie or translating things into roadblocks because it
(13:34):
doesn't matter or Fortnite, it doesn't matter whether a brand
or ip comes from the gaming space or not. Roadblocks
in Fortnite are their own walled gardens of gaming content, right.
So I love Star Wars. I loved having a chance
to work on Star Wars in my career. But taking
(13:57):
Star Wars from theatrical to a great series like The
Mandalorian that requires a whole different mindset. And that's the
business that we're in. A game fan, is what is
that mindset when you take an IP from outside of
Roadblocks or Fortnite. It doesn't matter whether it's already a
gaming IP or whether it's an entertainment IP. In a
(14:18):
lot of ways, it still needs to be translated into
Roadblocks and Fortnite properly. So the first thing is should
this be its own game? And the answer maybe like
ninety nine plus percent of the time is definitely not.
For example, we're doing a campaign for a toy brand
(14:40):
called Hatchamle's right now in our hit social role play
game called Twilight Daycare on Roadblocks. Twilight Daycare on Roadblocks
is a game where everyone is in a daycare center
together and you can choose to play as a caretaker
or a baby. This is my favorite game portfolio of
our non IP game.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We'll be back with more from Game dam after this break.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
If you're a caretaker, you go and find a baby
crawling around on the floor, which is another player, right,
they're all players, And then you pick that baby up
and then you can see the baby has needs. What
kind of baby needs do they have? They need to
be fed, they need milk, they need to take a nap,
they need to have their diaper change. The type of
needs you would expect from a human baby, and if
(15:29):
you're a baby, you kind of just watch the caretaker
meet your needs mostly pass it, but you can interact
with them. You can emoji, so you can put up
little hearts or little crying faces. You can actually fight
them if they're trying to not with your fists, like no,
no punching, but like if they're trying to brush your teeth,
you can close your mouth and make it hard for
(15:50):
them to brush your teeth. So you actually play these
mini games together where you need to cooperate. So it's
a really fun game. It's head over two billion visits
since coming out three years ago. We acquired it from
a native creator who then became an employee at the company,
and we've been running it successfully and we run huge
brand campaigns in it regularly, so we're running one for
(16:12):
Hatch Males right now. Hatchamles is such a cool toy brand,
but it doesn't necessarily have enough cachet or enough gameplay
to do a standalone game. But even if it did right,
the level of investment and the likelihood of it taking
off is pretty low on robots. If you look at
the row monitor chart of the top branded games you
(16:34):
will see after you get down past the top ten
to twenty games out of over three hundred we track,
a lot of them have zero players in them and
never cracked even two three four million total play sessions,
while Twilight Daycare has you know, minimum half a million
to eight hundred thousand visits per day going down three
(16:55):
years two billion visits total. So if you're trying to
build a campaign, you should not make your own game.
If you're trying to build an IP, then maybe you
should make your own game. We'll talk about that, but first,
you know, we've delivered huge programs. So for SpongeBob for example,
yes we have a SpongeBob game, but when SpongeBob is
(17:15):
doing their twenty fifth anniversary, we need to do more
than just to engage the SpongeBob players in that game.
So we built a cross game program for SpongeBob that
delivered tens of millions of engagements to hype SpongeBob's twenty
fifth anniversary. This is really smart marketing. This is the
right use of Roadblocks as a media network as well
(17:40):
as a gaming platform. So that's the first thing we evaluate,
is it should Is there even a business case or
a need for a standalone game, and almost always you
will be better off engaging roadblocks users in a predictable
and measurable way, then you will be trying to launch
your own standalone game and what is arguably the most
(18:03):
competitive attention economy in the world today. So that's part one. Now,
if you are Sognic or you are Barbie and you
are an IP, that really does make sense to potentially
consider a standalone game. But we're What we do is
we try to match the native genres, find native developers
(18:27):
who want to work with gamefam who know these genres
and who are passionate about the IPS, pair them with
experienced producers and brand leaders internally, and then go out
and make one or sometimes now even more than one
game at a time together. What we're advising a lot
of our IP partners now is don't take one shot
(18:48):
on goal. If you're going to take one shot on goal,
game Fan is by far the most successful company so
far in the space of doing that. But we believe
that what IP partners you need to do now is
we are buildings where we are creating a suite of
entrees into the platforms, and that that is very similar
to what Lego and Disney have been doing and with
(19:09):
Turtles teams Ninja Turtles announced yesterday on the Epic platform,
which is building little mini platforms for your IP to engage,
and that's the best way to get a hit as well. Right,
the serendipity of these platforms is too substantial, too noisy
to bet everything on just one game. Now. Where that
(19:32):
doesn't make sense to do is maybe within My Hero Academia,
where we're going to spend maybe up to two years
developing what we hope will be a super product and
a tech stack that we can use for years to
come for servicing My Hero Academic and potentially other ips
from those partners. Very specific genre there, anime, and we
can talk more about that.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
That makes sense, yes, and let's let's talk more about
that right now, because I actually was wondering with some
something like Barbie and something that like Sonic it's more
of an evergreen eyep And then when you have something
like My Hero Academia where it's a continuing story and
there's lore, and there's there's new episodes and there's new seasons,
how the gaming part plays into that. What you guys
(20:14):
do in terms of canon what you guys talk about
about stories and working with the existing team building the
show to build a game alongside it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, I think actually I wanted to add one more thing,
if that's okay, to the previous question, which is to
just go a little deeper into Sonic specifically and Barbie,
because I think they're really important case studies on how
that process works. Right. So, with Sonic, we identified that
Sonic was a Sonic Sonics about Gotta Go Fast. We
(20:43):
found a subgenre on Roadblocks that we felt had not
been fully kind of developed to its peak potential from
a production value and game design standpoint, that had shown
some traction with players. We then brought in some developers
who had worked on that genre previous, who also had
to pass the litmus test of how much do you
(21:04):
love Sonic and frankly, we have some one of the
most knowledgeable people about Sonic in the world at the company,
which is its little It's amazing how deep their knowledge
of the Sonic lore is. And then from there we
were able to run through a beta testing process, validate
that users love the game, launched the game. The game
got up to the number two game on the platform
(21:26):
during its release window. The biggest launching Roadblocks history, and
the game is still the number one or number two
branded game on Roadblocks every day, competing with Barbie for
that title today. So we did the same thing on Barbie.
With Barbie, a lot of people thought, oh, maybe you
should make a fashion game or a role play game.
And since then the fashion genre has changed and there's
(21:48):
a massive fashion game now, but there's only one. And
we don't like to chase things where a genre consists
of one game as a content strategist. That is not
a good content strategy to me, right, you need to play,
You need to fish where the fish are. You need
to play where the players are. So with Barbie, we
know that Barbie has fashion, yes, role play yes, jobs yes,
(22:12):
but a lot of times people forget Barbie also has
the most famous single house in pop culture, the Barbie
dream House, and that house building is a great genre
on Roadblocks, right, So that's a one plus one equals
three opportunity. We analyzed and dissected the genre. We had
a clear thesis on what would make the Barbie game
(22:32):
pop off, and the Barbie Game certainly did, got up
to seventy thousand peak concurrent users at its release, it
became a top ten game on the Roadblox platform and
continues to be, as I said, the number one or
number two branded IP game on the platform every day today.
So that's kind of get a little more specific because
I think I spoke a little generally about it, which
I think is important for listeners to understand kind of
(22:54):
the meta strategy context here. But I wanted to get
specific with my hero Academia. An anime anime IP on
roadblocks has unbelievable potential. If you look at the top
twenty games on Roadbox at any given time, somewhere between
one third and half of them are anime themed games
(23:18):
where fans are taking anime ip and making their own
versions of those ips, and the demand for this type
of game is just incredible. This is an underserved player
base that is not having enough access to massively multiplayer
style of games. The reason why is a very good reason,
(23:42):
which is that the IP holders want only the very
best quality content associated officially with their IPS, and that's
an ethos that gamefam understands very well. Having worked on
huge brands myself throughout my career, I believe in that,
(24:05):
and I know how to guide teams to deliver against that.
So we set out to try to do what we've
done for Sonic and Barbie, but into the anime space
right now. And I think that as we continue to
grow here, we're going to see anime continue to be
a power force in US and international pop culture and
(24:29):
roadblocks and roadblocks, the roadblocks anime genre and the video
ecosystem surrounding it are a big part of why anime
is so popular right now.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Since working on them my here academia, have you had
other anime brands and IP approach you all about doing
the same thing or something similar?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
We have been in discussions with anime brands and ips.
We love anime as people, and we love anime as
game developers because the player community expects incredible things from
these games, and that is a challenge that we get
up very excited every day to try to rise to.
(25:14):
So I think that what we find though, is that
overall the anime companies are very careful about working here.
They have questions about the nature of the fan made games.
They have questions about the level of production values that
the platform can deliver, and how the IPS may need
to be adapted to the platforms, and so we're really
(25:37):
in an education phase right now, using my hero Academia
as kind of a glowing example of what we believe
anime can and should be on the Roadblocks platform, and
when it is released, I believe it will be one
of the biggest products ever delivered to the Roadblocks platform
and something that we're hoping we will be able to
(25:58):
show more of in the coming weeks and months with
some new trailers and some new updates to the beta
game that we are working on.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
In those conversations, what do you think really helped sway
and close that deal with country role to do it
and made them trust that you had this was the
right place and they used to wear the right hands
to put it in.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I think that our backgrounds, having worked at places like Mattel, Disney, Ubisaw,
Electronic Arts, Blizzard, that's the team we've built here. We
are best of the best group of veteran game developers,
and we've brought in a best of the best group
of gen Z game devs who grew up making and
(26:39):
playing Roadblocks games. We understand these ips, We play anime
games ourselves, and we have a deep level of respect
for not only the IP, but also for Japanese business culture,
(26:59):
which we've educated ourselves on. We've spent time on the
ground in Tokyo. We have on staff a Japanese translator.
So these are the things that I think over time.
And I won't tell you exactly how long it took
to secure the license, but let me tell you that
it was a process of building a relationship, educating them
(27:19):
on what roadblocks is and what our vision for my
hero academia is on roadblocks, and then building a really
robust process for bringing them along in the approvals process
in a way that they could be not only not
only find acceptable, but hopefully be extremely excited about how
(27:39):
we are doing it and what they're seeing from us.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Let's shift a little bit because I know there's something
that you're able to announce today and it has to
do with a totally different area and ip, there's a
collaboration you're doing with Coldplay. So what are you able
to tell me about that today?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah? So excited about this one. Been a Coldplay fan
for many years, being of the right cohort to have
been there when Yellow and Clocks first dropped down the
scene as such major hoop hits all those years ago.
Everybody knows those songs and everybody's followed Coldplay over the years,
(28:17):
so we've been working in the music space for a
long time. We've done the concerts. We just did an
event for Share last year that was really fun and
successful to be a part of. And so for the
Coldplay event, they are getting ready to release their new record,
Moon Music, and they are smartly looking to reach gen
(28:38):
Z and jen Alpha gamers where they live, which is
on roadblocks. So we have built a four game cross
game quest. So these four games in total. One of
them is called Car Dealership Tacoon, the number one driving
game in robox history, for example. In each game, there's
(28:58):
a specific quest to go on that involves interacting with
iconography that we have translated from Chris Martin's notebook into
in game three D assets. So one is that, and
then during the course of going on the quest, we
will have a rotation of four songs from Moon Music
(29:20):
playing in the background that you can jam to. And
when you complete the quest, not only do you get
Coldplay specific rewards within each game, but there's also cross
platform avatar rewards that you can use forever to show
off your Coldplay fandom that are limited so they have exclusivity,
they have rarity, they have value to players. And when
(29:43):
we ran a similar program, for example, for share just
in one game last year, we had over half a
million players come through the experience. We had millions of
minutes of engagement and fun, and as we know, shares
Record did very well. I'd like to think we had
a part to play in that process. This is the
(30:04):
new YouTube, the new Instagram, or the old TV, whatever
you want to say. This is where the eyeballs are.
Brands and ips need to be where users, bands, players,
consumers are and right now for gen Z and gen
Alpha that is Roadblocks eighty million daily active users spending
(30:29):
an average of one hundred and forty plus minutes per
user per day, which is substantially more than TikTok at
one hundred and ten and almost twice YouTube at seventy
minutes per day. So this is something that's been bubbling
up for years. Robots is almost twenty years old. A
lot of people don't realize that I started on the
(30:49):
platform playing games and learning about it back in twenty sixteen,
made my first Roadblocks game in twenty eighteen as a developer,
and then started game Bam and twenty nineteen with the
intention of ridging the gap that I knew was going
to form between Hollywood and these and new user generated
gaming content. So people have not always understood what it is.
(31:14):
It's not as easy for someone who didn't grow up
on it as it is to get on TikTok and
watch them dances and watch them sketches and hopefully some
cute animal videos as well, because I really like those.
That's really easy. Anyone can do that. But to play
a three D video game in all roadblocks games take
(31:35):
place in three D environments. Essentially, there's no games like
Candy Crush or Clash of Plans that take place in
kind of fixed camera or top down or menu based games.
Everything is like Fortnite. Everything is in a three D
space where you're moving around as an avatar, and it's
mostly played on the phone. Over seventy five percent of
users are playing on their phones and less on PC
(31:57):
and console. The PC and console as well. But for
someone who didn't grow up playing the style of game
to understand it, you really have to get into it.
And if you look at the history of the last
five years and companies that have followed in game fans,
footsteps of people from outside of this native sixteen to
(32:18):
twenty five year old developer community trying to make stuff.
There have been very few successes to show for it
because people look at it and they think it's simple,
but it's actually incredibly complex. It's just a new language.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business
Welcome to Strictly Business, writy's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business of media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer,
TV and video games. Jennifer Moss Jill Fernx is the
chief executive officer and founder at game Fam, a metaverse
game developer and publisher that creates connected experiences for gaming
platforms including Roblocks and Fortnite, and well known brands like
(00:30):
Mattel's Barbie Crunchy Roles, My Hero, Academia, and most recently,
the band Coldplay. Ferens founded game Fam in twenty nineteen
following years working in strategy roles at Mattel and Ubisoft,
and after beginning his career as an art director working
on licensed consumer products for sports properties including the NFL, NCAA,
(00:50):
and NHL. His game design and producing credits include He Man,
The Most Powerful Game in the Universe, Star Wars, Rebels,
recon Missions, and Hot Wheels Rates, which has over one
hundred million downloads. Here to talk about the inner workings
of game Fam. A CEO Joe Farns, thank you so
(01:18):
much for joining me today, Joe, I really appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So I'd love to just start out pretty high level
here for those who might not be familiar about what
you guys do, if you can just start off at
the top.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
What is gamecam Yeah, game fan is the leading professional
publisher of content for the Roadblocks and Fortnite platforms. We
are really a media network for reaching gen Z and
jen Alpha consumers that we run a huge portfolio of products,
with about one hundred thousand concurrent players playing our games
(01:53):
as we speak. We have multiple top games and top
genres on Roadblocks and a significant Fortnite portfolio as well.
We create business by both in app transactions where we
sell players various digital goods that they love and find valuable,
and we also build significant brand advertising programs for brands,
(02:14):
IP holders, theatrical campaigns, etc.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And then your background specifically, I'd love to get a
run down of that.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah. I've been in the gaming and pop culture business
my entire career, so a little bit over twenty years now.
Started as a graphic designer on sports licensed T shirts
and posters, went back to business school, interned at Disney,
did a postgraduate internship a Nintendo, spent two years at
Ubisoft working on franchise and IP strategy, and then went
(02:46):
to MATEL doing franchise development for three years. After that,
I jumped into the startup world about ten years ago
to work on a Star Wars kids game as a
chief product officer, and then worked on a huge, huge
mobile game, Subway Surfers for a year as a consultant,
and then went back to MATEL as a consulting executive
(03:07):
producer on Hot Wheels video games, putting the Hot Wheels
brand into twenty games over the course of five years,
including some huge hits from Microsoft's Sports franchise and EPICX
Rocket League franchise EA's need for Speed. And it was
during those years consulting and doing some startups in my
other time that I became aware of the Roadbox platform,
(03:32):
which back then had I believe thirty million monthly active users.
Now it has eighty million daily active users. And I
was at a point in my career where I had
worked on so many great brands and ips, starting in
sports licensing doing NFL license posters, and then working at
(03:52):
Ubisoft on licensing out and doing strategy for Assassin's Creed,
and then being a licensee of Star Wars and helping
grow the hot Wheels gaming business and helping relaunch he
man and I said, I want to try to get
into making new and wild stuff, and I think Roadblocks
(04:13):
is the place to do it. I think the platform
is going to explode. All the fundamentals are there, and
I think we've only been surprised at how big it
has gotten and how big it is likely to continue
to get. Oh, I just lost you for real.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Now what is your day to day at game fam
What is your role now?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So? I'm the CEO and founder of Gamevam, and my
main focus every day is ensuring that we have the
very best products in the market from a digital quality,
production values, player engagement, player monetization standpoint. We've won over
thirty awards in the last three years, including Fast Companies,
(04:58):
Most Innovative including five thousand and numerous awards for our
campaigns and the quality of our products, and that is
my passion, is making sure that we do the very
best work in our field. If you look at the
top ten all time brand games on Roadblocks, which you
can see on a website called rome Monitor that we own,
(05:21):
you will see that game fan has produced three of
the top ten all time brand games on Roadblocks number
one Sonic Speed Simulator, which just crossed a billion visits,
and I'm sure I'll talk more about a few of
these as we go. Barbie Dreamhouse Tycoon, which is number
six despite having come out less than a year ago,
and then number ten Hot Wheels, the first Roadblocks game
(05:43):
we ever developed at our studio. And we also have
produced three of the top five concerts Roadblocks concerts of
all time number one Sweetie's super Bowl Concert, number three,
Chainsmokers number four, twenty four k Golden. So that is
really what gets me excited every day is continuing to
(06:05):
do the best work in the space. And when I'm
not doing that, I'm working on how do we build
brand engagement programs to help bridge the gap between Hollywood
and the traditional forms of distributing content and this new
world of gaming as media that is just growing every
(06:27):
quarter right now.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So with the current state of gaming and everything, I
guess covered Unreal Facts yesterday, Unreal Engine had some announcements made.
I want you to know your current take on what
the most exciting thing going on right now is and
then maybe the biggest struggle facing the industry at the moment,
The most exciting thing going on right now is the
(06:50):
ability for small teams to.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Make incredible products, and that was the founding thesis of
our company, is that using the technology that companies like
Roadblocks and UEFN or Epic in this case through their
UEFN platform, are delivering to developers, we can create the
next generation of franchises, and we can bring along the
(07:14):
previous generation of franchises into this new world and the
innovators in the creative and media space. That is the
thing that is the most exciting that is happening. And
we can see that the usage of Roadblocks specifically continues
to grow quarter over quarter as the content offerings continue
to get better and better. So if you look at
(07:36):
some of our games like SpongeBob Simulator that we made
with our partners at Paramount, you'll see graphics that are
probably about PS three level PlayStation three levels, so about
two previous generations on console. But if you went back
three years from now, you would see graphics that we're
probably closer to a PS one, right, So the graphics
(07:57):
of these engines are improving exponents, and as the graphics improve,
they're retaining users older and older, and that's what's driving
the growth of Roblox and of Fortnite right now, the
challenges are that, similar to what's happened with streaming, similar
(08:17):
to what's happening with TikTok, is that the traditional distribution
channels that we're used to in the media business are changing.
They're changing from a business to consumer standpoint to appear
to peer standpoint. So what we've done as a company
is we have been trying to get out ahead of
(08:39):
this to ensure that all of the beloved IP and
characters that we've grown up on for the last fifty
years will have an entree into this new world of
peer to peer distribution. And we've been setting up networks
of authentic native development talent where we can provide that
layer of brands, SAE, safety, of best in class production,
(09:02):
but get that authenticity of that on the ground creator community.
And those are some of the ways that we've been
able to achieve so much success in original development of
IP based games at this company over the past five years.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So let's talk a little bit more about IP and
game VAM. I know you'd already mentioned, but I'd love
to dive in deeper to Sonic and to Barbie in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Absolutely two of my I've worked on so many great
projects in my career, you know, and you know not
to brag, but I had a chance to contribute, for example,
to the Forts Horizon three Hot Wheels expansion pack, which
was the number one Xbox exclusive on Metacritic back when
it came out. I won Editors Choice Awards for the
work I've done in the app Store. I've had so
(09:46):
many great opportunities and privileges to work with so many
great people, but to make our own hit products out
of the studio has been, of course, the biggest thrill
of my career. And Sonic Speed Simulator in Barb are
the two best examples of where we as a studio
dug in and put our absolute best efforts in place,
(10:08):
where we gave it everything we had in terms of
our creativity, in terms of polishing pixels, in terms of
designing game loops that retain and create value in thereby
monetized players, and those games have been just incredible in
terms of their of their success in these native platforms,
working against incredible competitors from you know, sixteen to twenty
(10:31):
five years old making games all day. Now, we're applying
that same push to my hero Academia. That's our next
big game that's coming up. So we're getting into the
anime space, which people in the know know if you know,
you know, anime is like the thing for gen Z
and Gen Alpha fans. It's been the thing for me
(10:54):
for over twenty five years. And I am not a
gen Z or Gen Alpha that's for sure. So it's
a area that we are deeply passionate about and place
to our strengths. But tell me what, what are you
curious about? Because I love to talk about these products,
So hashtag am.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Uh. You know when we were we last talked at
south By, you were doing a big thing on my
hero Academia. That's where that's where we actually first got
to talk about that project. So doing that, we're still
doing that. Yeah. So you know, one of the things
I love to talk about most when it comes to
gaming and IP is at the moment, you know, there's
(11:34):
a huge thing about taking gaming IP I bring it
into the traditional media space with TIL TV and film adaptations.
But here is a perfect example of the reverse and
using that existing IP. Now there's Sonic obviously went back
and forth. It contigues to but something like Barbie that
especially when you look at that and you don't always
(11:55):
know how that might work. Gaming has for a long
time been traditionally a mail space, and as female gamers
break in, there's different ways it goes about it at
different times. So when you're looking at IP that maybe
isn't traditionally either in the gaming space to begin with,
or something that you are with Sonic trying to reinvent
in gaming that has been done in multiple ways. What
(12:17):
are the two different ways you approach that an IP
that comes in and has not really been dealt with
that in the same way, and then another one where
you're trying to find something new to do with that IP.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Absolutely so, I've been working in a content strategy role
for geez about fifteen years now, whether it was at
whether it was during my MBA internship at Disney, or
whether it was as a franchise strategist at UBI Software,
a franchise development leader at Mattel and then running GameFan right,
So I'm constantly thinking about what is the fit between
(12:51):
it used to be taking gaming IP outside of gaming.
That's what I was focused on at Ubisoft when I
was consulting as an executive producer on Hot Wheels video
Games for five years. It was about how do we
take one of the world's best, maybe the world's best
toy brand and make it into a gaming brand. And
a lot of people said, a lot of a lot
of licensees that we spoke to and partners we spoke
(13:13):
to initially said Hey, this is just a toy brand,
This can't actually be a gaming brand. We knew that
that was not the case. Leadership at Mattel knew that
wasn't the case, but we had to find the right
story to tell. We had to find the right fit
for the brand. And I think when we look at
Sonic or Barbie or translating things into roadblocks because it
(13:34):
doesn't matter or Fortnite, it doesn't matter whether a brand
or ip comes from the gaming space or not. Roadblocks
in Fortnite are their own walled gardens of gaming content, right.
So I love Star Wars. I loved having a chance
to work on Star Wars in my career. But taking
(13:57):
Star Wars from theatrical to a great series like The
Mandalorian that requires a whole different mindset. And that's the
business that we're in. A game fan, is what is
that mindset when you take an IP from outside of
Roadblocks or Fortnite. It doesn't matter whether it's already a
gaming IP or whether it's an entertainment IP. In a
(14:18):
lot of ways, it still needs to be translated into
Roadblocks and Fortnite properly. So the first thing is should
this be its own game? And the answer maybe like
ninety nine plus percent of the time is definitely not.
For example, we're doing a campaign for a toy brand
(14:40):
called Hatchamle's right now in our hit social role play
game called Twilight Daycare on Roadblocks. Twilight Daycare on Roadblocks
is a game where everyone is in a daycare center
together and you can choose to play as a caretaker
or a baby. This is my favorite game portfolio of
our non IP game.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We'll be back with more from Game dam after this break.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
If you're a caretaker, you go and find a baby
crawling around on the floor, which is another player, right,
they're all players, And then you pick that baby up
and then you can see the baby has needs. What
kind of baby needs do they have? They need to
be fed, they need milk, they need to take a nap,
they need to have their diaper change. The type of
needs you would expect from a human baby, and if
(15:29):
you're a baby, you kind of just watch the caretaker
meet your needs mostly pass it, but you can interact
with them. You can emoji, so you can put up
little hearts or little crying faces. You can actually fight
them if they're trying to not with your fists, like no,
no punching, but like if they're trying to brush your teeth,
you can close your mouth and make it hard for
(15:50):
them to brush your teeth. So you actually play these
mini games together where you need to cooperate. So it's
a really fun game. It's head over two billion visits
since coming out three years ago. We acquired it from
a native creator who then became an employee at the company,
and we've been running it successfully and we run huge
brand campaigns in it regularly, so we're running one for
(16:12):
Hatch Males right now. Hatchamles is such a cool toy brand,
but it doesn't necessarily have enough cachet or enough gameplay
to do a standalone game. But even if it did right,
the level of investment and the likelihood of it taking
off is pretty low on robots. If you look at
the row monitor chart of the top branded games you
(16:34):
will see after you get down past the top ten
to twenty games out of over three hundred we track,
a lot of them have zero players in them and
never cracked even two three four million total play sessions,
while Twilight Daycare has you know, minimum half a million
to eight hundred thousand visits per day going down three
(16:55):
years two billion visits total. So if you're trying to
build a campaign, you should not make your own game.
If you're trying to build an IP, then maybe you
should make your own game. We'll talk about that, but first,
you know, we've delivered huge programs. So for SpongeBob for example,
yes we have a SpongeBob game, but when SpongeBob is
(17:15):
doing their twenty fifth anniversary, we need to do more
than just to engage the SpongeBob players in that game.
So we built a cross game program for SpongeBob that
delivered tens of millions of engagements to hype SpongeBob's twenty
fifth anniversary. This is really smart marketing. This is the
right use of Roadblocks as a media network as well
(17:40):
as a gaming platform. So that's the first thing we evaluate,
is it should Is there even a business case or
a need for a standalone game, and almost always you
will be better off engaging roadblocks users in a predictable
and measurable way, then you will be trying to launch
your own standalone game and what is arguably the most
(18:03):
competitive attention economy in the world today. So that's part one. Now,
if you are Sognic or you are Barbie and you
are an IP, that really does make sense to potentially
consider a standalone game. But we're What we do is
we try to match the native genres, find native developers
(18:27):
who want to work with gamefam who know these genres
and who are passionate about the IPS, pair them with
experienced producers and brand leaders internally, and then go out
and make one or sometimes now even more than one
game at a time together. What we're advising a lot
of our IP partners now is don't take one shot
(18:48):
on goal. If you're going to take one shot on goal,
game Fan is by far the most successful company so
far in the space of doing that. But we believe
that what IP partners you need to do now is
we are buildings where we are creating a suite of
entrees into the platforms, and that that is very similar
to what Lego and Disney have been doing and with
(19:09):
Turtles teams Ninja Turtles announced yesterday on the Epic platform,
which is building little mini platforms for your IP to engage,
and that's the best way to get a hit as well. Right,
the serendipity of these platforms is too substantial, too noisy
to bet everything on just one game. Now. Where that
(19:32):
doesn't make sense to do is maybe within My Hero Academia,
where we're going to spend maybe up to two years
developing what we hope will be a super product and
a tech stack that we can use for years to
come for servicing My Hero Academic and potentially other ips
from those partners. Very specific genre there, anime, and we
can talk more about that.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
That makes sense, yes, and let's let's talk more about
that right now, because I actually was wondering with some
something like Barbie and something that like Sonic it's more
of an evergreen eyep And then when you have something
like My Hero Academia where it's a continuing story and
there's lore, and there's there's new episodes and there's new seasons,
how the gaming part plays into that. What you guys
(20:14):
do in terms of canon what you guys talk about
about stories and working with the existing team building the
show to build a game alongside it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, I think actually I wanted to add one more thing,
if that's okay, to the previous question, which is to
just go a little deeper into Sonic specifically and Barbie,
because I think they're really important case studies on how
that process works. Right. So, with Sonic, we identified that
Sonic was a Sonic Sonics about Gotta Go Fast. We
(20:43):
found a subgenre on Roadblocks that we felt had not
been fully kind of developed to its peak potential from
a production value and game design standpoint, that had shown
some traction with players. We then brought in some developers
who had worked on that genre previous, who also had
to pass the litmus test of how much do you
(21:04):
love Sonic and frankly, we have some one of the
most knowledgeable people about Sonic in the world at the company,
which is its little It's amazing how deep their knowledge
of the Sonic lore is. And then from there we
were able to run through a beta testing process, validate
that users love the game, launched the game. The game
got up to the number two game on the platform
(21:26):
during its release window. The biggest launching Roadblocks history, and
the game is still the number one or number two
branded game on Roadblocks every day, competing with Barbie for
that title today. So we did the same thing on Barbie.
With Barbie, a lot of people thought, oh, maybe you
should make a fashion game or a role play game.
And since then the fashion genre has changed and there's
(21:48):
a massive fashion game now, but there's only one. And
we don't like to chase things where a genre consists
of one game as a content strategist. That is not
a good content strategy to me, right, you need to play,
You need to fish where the fish are. You need
to play where the players are. So with Barbie, we
know that Barbie has fashion, yes, role play yes, jobs yes,
(22:12):
but a lot of times people forget Barbie also has
the most famous single house in pop culture, the Barbie
dream House, and that house building is a great genre
on Roadblocks, right, So that's a one plus one equals
three opportunity. We analyzed and dissected the genre. We had
a clear thesis on what would make the Barbie game
(22:32):
pop off, and the Barbie Game certainly did, got up
to seventy thousand peak concurrent users at its release, it
became a top ten game on the Roadblox platform and
continues to be, as I said, the number one or
number two branded IP game on the platform every day today.
So that's kind of get a little more specific because
I think I spoke a little generally about it, which
I think is important for listeners to understand kind of
(22:54):
the meta strategy context here. But I wanted to get
specific with my hero Academia. An anime anime IP on
roadblocks has unbelievable potential. If you look at the top
twenty games on Roadbox at any given time, somewhere between
one third and half of them are anime themed games
(23:18):
where fans are taking anime ip and making their own
versions of those ips, and the demand for this type
of game is just incredible. This is an underserved player
base that is not having enough access to massively multiplayer
style of games. The reason why is a very good reason,
(23:42):
which is that the IP holders want only the very
best quality content associated officially with their IPS, and that's
an ethos that gamefam understands very well. Having worked on
huge brands myself throughout my career, I believe in that,
(24:05):
and I know how to guide teams to deliver against that.
So we set out to try to do what we've
done for Sonic and Barbie, but into the anime space
right now. And I think that as we continue to
grow here, we're going to see anime continue to be
a power force in US and international pop culture and
(24:29):
roadblocks and roadblocks, the roadblocks anime genre and the video
ecosystem surrounding it are a big part of why anime
is so popular right now.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Since working on them my here academia, have you had
other anime brands and IP approach you all about doing
the same thing or something similar?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
We have been in discussions with anime brands and ips.
We love anime as people, and we love anime as
game developers because the player community expects incredible things from
these games, and that is a challenge that we get
up very excited every day to try to rise to.
(25:14):
So I think that what we find though, is that
overall the anime companies are very careful about working here.
They have questions about the nature of the fan made games.
They have questions about the level of production values that
the platform can deliver, and how the IPS may need
to be adapted to the platforms, and so we're really
(25:37):
in an education phase right now, using my hero Academia
as kind of a glowing example of what we believe
anime can and should be on the Roadblocks platform, and
when it is released, I believe it will be one
of the biggest products ever delivered to the Roadblocks platform
and something that we're hoping we will be able to
(25:58):
show more of in the coming weeks and months with
some new trailers and some new updates to the beta
game that we are working on.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
In those conversations, what do you think really helped sway
and close that deal with country role to do it
and made them trust that you had this was the
right place and they used to wear the right hands
to put it in.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I think that our backgrounds, having worked at places like Mattel, Disney, Ubisaw,
Electronic Arts, Blizzard, that's the team we've built here. We
are best of the best group of veteran game developers,
and we've brought in a best of the best group
of gen Z game devs who grew up making and
(26:39):
playing Roadblocks games. We understand these ips, We play anime
games ourselves, and we have a deep level of respect
for not only the IP, but also for Japanese business culture,
(26:59):
which we've educated ourselves on. We've spent time on the
ground in Tokyo. We have on staff a Japanese translator.
So these are the things that I think over time.
And I won't tell you exactly how long it took
to secure the license, but let me tell you that
it was a process of building a relationship, educating them
(27:19):
on what roadblocks is and what our vision for my
hero academia is on roadblocks, and then building a really
robust process for bringing them along in the approvals process
in a way that they could be not only not
only find acceptable, but hopefully be extremely excited about how
(27:39):
we are doing it and what they're seeing from us.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Let's shift a little bit because I know there's something
that you're able to announce today and it has to
do with a totally different area and ip, there's a
collaboration you're doing with Coldplay. So what are you able
to tell me about that today?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah? So excited about this one. Been a Coldplay fan
for many years, being of the right cohort to have
been there when Yellow and Clocks first dropped down the
scene as such major hoop hits all those years ago.
Everybody knows those songs and everybody's followed Coldplay over the years,
(28:17):
so we've been working in the music space for a
long time. We've done the concerts. We just did an
event for Share last year that was really fun and
successful to be a part of. And so for the
Coldplay event, they are getting ready to release their new record,
Moon Music, and they are smartly looking to reach gen
(28:38):
Z and jen Alpha gamers where they live, which is
on roadblocks. So we have built a four game cross
game quest. So these four games in total. One of
them is called Car Dealership Tacoon, the number one driving
game in robox history, for example. In each game, there's
(28:58):
a specific quest to go on that involves interacting with
iconography that we have translated from Chris Martin's notebook into
in game three D assets. So one is that, and
then during the course of going on the quest, we
will have a rotation of four songs from Moon Music
(29:20):
playing in the background that you can jam to. And
when you complete the quest, not only do you get
Coldplay specific rewards within each game, but there's also cross
platform avatar rewards that you can use forever to show
off your Coldplay fandom that are limited so they have exclusivity,
they have rarity, they have value to players. And when
(29:43):
we ran a similar program, for example, for share just
in one game last year, we had over half a
million players come through the experience. We had millions of
minutes of engagement and fun, and as we know, shares
Record did very well. I'd like to think we had
a part to play in that process. This is the
(30:04):
new YouTube, the new Instagram, or the old TV, whatever
you want to say. This is where the eyeballs are.
Brands and ips need to be where users, bands, players,
consumers are and right now for gen Z and gen
Alpha that is Roadblocks eighty million daily active users spending
(30:29):
an average of one hundred and forty plus minutes per
user per day, which is substantially more than TikTok at
one hundred and ten and almost twice YouTube at seventy
minutes per day. So this is something that's been bubbling
up for years. Robots is almost twenty years old. A
lot of people don't realize that I started on the
(30:49):
platform playing games and learning about it back in twenty sixteen,
made my first Roadblocks game in twenty eighteen as a developer,
and then started game Bam and twenty nineteen with the
intention of ridging the gap that I knew was going
to form between Hollywood and these and new user generated
gaming content. So people have not always understood what it is.
(31:14):
It's not as easy for someone who didn't grow up
on it as it is to get on TikTok and
watch them dances and watch them sketches and hopefully some
cute animal videos as well, because I really like those.
That's really easy. Anyone can do that. But to play
a three D video game in all roadblocks games take
(31:35):
place in three D environments. Essentially, there's no games like
Candy Crush or Clash of Plans that take place in
kind of fixed camera or top down or menu based games.
Everything is like Fortnite. Everything is in a three D
space where you're moving around as an avatar, and it's
mostly played on the phone. Over seventy five percent of
users are playing on their phones and less on PC
(31:57):
and console. The PC and console as well. But for
someone who didn't grow up playing the style of game
to understand it, you really have to get into it.
And if you look at the history of the last
five years and companies that have followed in game fans,
footsteps of people from outside of this native sixteen to
(32:18):
twenty five year old developer community trying to make stuff.
There have been very few successes to show for it
because people look at it and they think it's simple,
but it's actually incredibly complex. It's just a new language.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
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