"Exploding Kittens" co-creators Matthew Inman and Elan Lee break down how they continue to expand their popular tabletop gaming brand while expanding primary business into TV series and mobile gaming with Netflix.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Strictly Business Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business, media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer, TV
and video games. Jennifer Moss Belan Lee, a former Xbox designer,
and Matthew Inman, the award winning cartoonants behind the Oatmeal,
launched the first Exploding Kittens card game in twenty fifteen
via Kickstarter campaign and unexpectedly raised eight point seven million
(00:30):
dollars for the initial game in the first thirty days
of the campaign. Since then, they released nearly thirty tabletop
games under the Exploding Kitten's Company brand and a handful
of digital games, and it's sold more than thirty six
million games globally. On Friday, Netflix will launch its Exploding
Kittens TV series adaptation, which will coincide with updates to
(00:50):
its Exploding Kitten's mobile game for the streamer, incorporating playable
characters from the new show into the service. Here to
talk about the inner workings at its own Kittens the company,
and how their brand adapted its best selling tabletop game.
Entering Netflix series and video game are founders ill Unle
and matthew an Thank you both for joining me for
(01:24):
the strictly business podcast. I'm really excited to speak to you,
and I just kind of want to start off with
each of you could lay out your current holes and
then go a little bit into your background prior.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Matt, you want to start sure, So at Exploding Kittens,
I think my social title the chief creative officer the cartoonists.
I'm an artist. I worked on the original game with
the lawn. I should have had more coffee because I
can't think of what else. Yeah. Yeah, And then on
(01:57):
the Netflix series, I'm the showrunner. I wrote a bunch
of episodes and did a little bit of everything there.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
My name is Alan. I founded the company with Matt
about ten years ago. My current role is CEO, and
I'm also one of the producers on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Did I forget to mention I write and draw the oatmeal?
I did that little thing? Did I write draw the oatmeals? Ball?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Okay, Now, for any of our listeners who might not
be familiar, can you explain what Exploding Kittens is?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, let's see. Okay, So Exploding Kittens, I mean, first
and foremost, it's a card game, but it's also the
name of our company and also now the name of
a Netflix show. It started about ten years ago. Matt
and I were kind of looking for a new exciting
project to get involved in. I had this very rough
idea for a card game that at the time was
(02:52):
called Bomb Squad, and it was all It was like
Russian Roulette with a deck of cards. Matt decided very
wisely that the name Bob and Squad is no fun
at all. And the way he phrased it was, if
all you're scared of in this game are these explosive bombs,
it's just so on the nose, it's so obvious. Who cares?
(03:13):
What if instead the thing you were most afraid of
was cute, adorable, fuzzy little kittens And we call the
game Exploding Kittens instead, And that is literally how Exploding
Kittens was born. We put it up on Kickstarter expecting
to raise hopefully about ten thousand bucks. Instead we raised
almost nine million and thirty days started a company and
now are one of the largest independent game studios in
(03:35):
the world.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That anything you want to add to that story, as
the saying that Bomb Squad was.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
A bad name, Yeah, I mean, I guess, I see, yeah,
I get Alan and I were we kind of just
met at that point too, we were on vacation with
a mutual friend of ours and Alan had this poker
deck that has just sharpie marks on it, and we
played that game like the entire week while we are
on vacation. And I kind of had wanted to make
(04:04):
a game at that point, but I wasn't a game
designer and I didn't really have one. And for our
first game, it's still is our I think it's one
of the best things we've ever done in terms of gameplay, Like,
it's so fun, it's such a satisfying and unique game mechanic,
this sort of idea that you play until it's last
person standing. And yeah, and I was able to kind
(04:26):
of translate comics into cards back then, and that that
really helped us in the beginning too.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And Matt literally wrote a one panel comic for every
card in the game. I showed up with a poker deck.
Here's the King, the Queen, the aces et, cetera. And
Matt said, okay, so fifty two cards. I will draw
fifty two to one panel hilarious comics and that will.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Be the game.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
And yeah, that whole task, what was that? Matt? Ten days,
two weeks somewhere in that timeframe.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
We did it fast, and our company came together in
like six weeks from hey, this is Bomb Squad the
poker game to ek explaining kittens on the Internet. You know,
in a very short period of time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it was Yeah, that was that was fun. That
was literally us in a garage in the back of
my house. And now there's about one hundred people working
at the company and we have a big studio and
the biggest problem is remembering everybody's name.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And now you've released nearly thirty games, a handful of
digital games, including the Netflix Exploding mobile game.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, that's correct. Yeah, So I'd love.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
To know what the process becomes at that point, from
making a card game to making a digital game to
now making a show. And at what point Netflix got involved,
if they approached you, if you had talks with them,
what the kind of flow and order of events if
you remember.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, I can, I'll jump to the Netflix bit because
that's where I'm the most relevant. So in twenty nineteen,
we received an investment from Peter Turnham and to kind
of expand our our IP and he connected us with
Greg Daniels and might Judge and you know, up until
that point, it really wasn't terribly interested in making Exploding
(06:16):
Kitts into a TV series. It just wasn't something that
struck me as television material. I mean, it's a card game,
where as we just said, each card is its own
non secuity. It's they're all just independent jokes, don't really
a story. It'sn't really through line. It would be like
if I told you we're going to make connect for
into a movie, you'd be like, God, stop, you know, please,
(06:38):
don't you know? And what ended up happening was started
to think kind of in earnest about, regardless of the
card game, what's the show that I would want to watch?
And that is where I kind of flipped through an
old notebook and started schooling away. And I'd always kind
of had this idea in the back of my mind
of some sort of cat X related show and hear
(07:02):
me out. So when I had a girlfriend in my
twenties where she had a cat who kind of simultaneously
behaved like God in the house and also like Satan.
I think this is very reliable for most pet owners.
Your cat things, you own the house, but they also
seem to rule the underworld as well, so again, when
I thought, how can I make Exploding Kittens into a
TV series that I want to watch without ever having
played the game, that's where this idea of God and
(07:25):
the Devil being trapped in cat bodies on Earth came from.
So what I did was most television pitches, you know,
you have your little index cards and you nervously stand
in a room and try to recite your show in
front of a bunch of people. I don't really drive
that way, and I can draw, So I thought I
would draw my pitch in the form of a comic
(07:46):
that you could read like it's a It's about a
four minute read, like a tiny graphic novel, so you
could you read my show. We pitched it to seven
studios and six of them made offers on it right away,
and that's when kind of realized, I think I doesinthe
really really good here. That's how we connected eventually with Netflix.
And at the time Netflix was this was like twenty nineteen,
(08:09):
twenty twenty. Netflix was investing heavily in animation, I think,
and I think they doubled down on it because of
the pandemic, because you couldn't shoot anything live action, and
that's that's where it's the when you get touts home.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Just to add the even before that, like all we
ever really aspired to do, at least at first, was
let's make a bunch of card games. Like I really
like designing games, Matt really likes drawing games, come together
and we were able to create these really fun, exciting
things under the premise that, like, none of these games
should be entertaining. All every game we make should make
(08:42):
the people you're playing with entertaining instead. And armed with that,
we're able to create like some of the some of
the best selling games ever. It's really it's been a
it's been a really fun experience. And then once once
the Netflix show really solidified, like once it was like, oh,
we're doing this, Matt started to lead his team, the
(09:07):
show team, as far as like, all right, well, here's
what these characters sound like, here's how they behave, here's
how they move, here's here's what the world actually looks
like instead of just a bunch of static images. And
armed with that, we were able to start saying, okay, well,
now this is a world instead of just a bunch
of comics, this is an actual world. So that means
(09:27):
we can start making more games, more moving games. Right,
so like digital games, mobile games, VR games, we can
start exploring where else these characters might live and how
our audience might be able to experience them. And so
it was like this neat little one two punch, like,
let's start by building a really strong audience, building simple, fast,
(09:50):
easy fun party games. Expand that into the world of TV,
and then now we can expand that whole ip outwards
because we know what it looks and sounds like.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
As you became more and more familiar with the tabletop
game and that's where you started with and that's where
you grew, and that's where the success was. Going into
TV and going into gaming digital. What did you all
have to do to educate yourselves on understanding those worlds,
the business model of those things, and expanding the brand
into those sections where you had been strictly in tabletop
(10:23):
gaming before.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, I actually on once you go first you worked
at the Xbox, you can talk about all kinds off there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I think we knew, like all of us from hearing
all the stories, that there's not a huge amount of
money in season one. Season one is like establishing yourself.
It's building the team figuring out what this thing looks like,
trying your best to build an audience, investing heavily in marketing,
making sure you get the word out. It's really once
that thing takes off, which we really hope this does
(10:51):
because we've worked so hard at it. It's once that
takes off that you have more leverage, that you get
to start making more demands. Essentially. However, getting to that point,
there were a few things that were really important to us.
A typical TV deal, the network has a lot of
(11:11):
rules about merchandising, about what the show is called, about
how you talk about the show, and we were very
fortunate that we could walk into those deals saying, look,
this has to be called Exploding Kittens, has to has
to has to, which is very important to us. That's
the brand recognition. They totally agreed. They were like, yes,
has to, that's where the audience is going to come from.
(11:33):
You've got one of the best selling games in the world,
So cool, we're all in agreement there. It's good for them,
it's good for us. That was a really nice negotiation
point that was not contentious at all. But then the
second one was merchandising, which is like, look, We're going
to be the best partners ever and anything that comes
out of the show, out of these characters, we're all
(11:53):
going to participate in that. But it is very important
to us that you acknowledge we are a pre existing
company that only does merchandising. All we do is put
out card games out into the world, So we have
to be able to keep those things in their own
little box in order that we can keep running the company,
keep coming up with new ideas, and keep using those
(12:15):
ideas to generate new IP and new shows for Netflix.
So everyone was very good about that. But it was
non traditional, right, Like the standard version is all merchandising
that comes out of a show gets split up between
all the partners, and we had to cut out or
carve out pre existing ips and new games that we
create that weren't associated with the show. That was a
(12:38):
little bit of learning on both sides, right. Nobody was
used to that, but that's what that's what we clung
onto because it was so important and we knew that
as long as we can hold on to that, we
can then learn the rest of the process. Working closely
with the networks, working closely with Netflix to get the
best deal for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
We'll be back to work from the Exploding Kittens seen
actor this break.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, so kind of going through card games to digital
I know Alons kind of got a rich background, and
you know, he worked was a chief design officer at
the Xbox, so that there was a lot of stuff
that fit there for him. For me going from card
game to television, I had I've been working in comics forever,
which is very helpful because when you draw storyboards, which
(13:27):
become animatics, it's become cartoons animatics fen who doesn't know
they're They're kind of like a really crappy cartoon. They're
black and white. Usually the actors aren't even there yet,
so it's all this rough. I've done a ton of
storyboarding just in my career as a cartoonist, so I
had some skills there. And then I'd worked in elimination
for a couple of years on their movies, did some
punch up on their movies, so I had some experience there.
That being said, there was a lot of new disciplines
(13:49):
to learn. You know, writing a still web comic on
the Internet is very different from dealing with actors, writers,
sound design, fully score. There's a whole kind of arsenal thing.
So past four and a half years has been it's
like the greatest film class they've ever gone to, you know,
in a way, because I got to actively learn while
(14:10):
making show. The other thing that was probably where Robber
Mett road in terms of difficulty was when you make
a web comic, people hear when they read your comic,
they hear what ever voice they want to hear in
their head, and usually it's a very funny voice. It's
well written television or animation. They hear whatever voice the
actor is saying and or the way the character is moving,
(14:31):
and it can all break a joke or make a joke.
So that was where I had to be really diligent
and good about make sure the comedy comes through because
there's a ton of funny jokes that are written in script,
and then when they're own, you know, they're performed, they
can kind of change or breakdown that comes with you.
That's the same with the art, you know, creating really
rich style guides that I drop people a certain way.
(14:53):
You know, I had kind of a signature, kind of
inbred frog eyed look to everything that I drop, and
I needed to make sure that in bred frog eyed
was well ingrained into one in Netflix. It was you know,
it's on my office door talking.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
About the voices that brings me a question about passing
and how involved you all were in that process. If
Netflix had ideas right off the top, if you all
had ideas and kind of what it was based on,
and also fans of exploding kittens versus people are like,
I have no idea what this is. I've never heard
of this before, and kind of that barrier to entry
maybe with certain talent.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
We you know, initially Netflix and me were aligned that
we wanted to go after famous people, you know, celebrities,
and we did. We went after famous people and celebrities
and what do you get any and they're busy, you know,
like I mean that in a good way because it's
like a cat themed you know, it'd be like we're
(15:47):
making a movie out of them. I don't know, pick
the worst they imaginable. Let me paraphrase, paraphrase, I'm I'm
blowing this right now. We went out to the first
person who went out to to Boyce Godcat was Peter
d English and which had been amazing. I love him
and he was super interested, but he was shooting a movie.
And then the next person we went after was calling
Farrell again amazing, great shooting a movie. And then they
(16:11):
both got a bunch of awards. I think called Ferrol
literally maybe got nominated for an Oscar maybe one I
don't remember, and I was like, yeah, it's probably good.
You turned down the whole cat card game idea. You
were clearly busy something that matters. But sort of through
that process, what we kind of realized was we wanted
people who were funny. We don't care who they are
in terms of celebrity. So that's why we ended up
(16:32):
with like, for example, a good example of this, Mark
brooksh who plays the dad on the show. He plays Marv.
He's the voice. He might not know his name, but
if you saw him, you know who he is. He
was in the office. He also played the energy vampire
in What We Do in the Shadows, And that's the
kind of a lack of better word, black of the
energy we wanted from our characters was less about can
we shove Wesley Snipes in here. I don't know why
(16:53):
I picked him. I like him, but whatever, that's really
celebrity I can think of right now, Wesley Snipe versus
someone that maybe isn't quite as well known, but their
ability to perform a joke into a microphone was so good.
Tom Ellis is that way to shoo him. They were
all like funny, funny people. THAT'SI Sidar is another good example.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
So tom Ellis, though, Matt, I remember going through that
casting process and you like sending me all of these
recordings and these auditions, and for Godcat, you weren't even
there was not even a thought that went into that.
It was just like you heard that voice, and you're like, yeah,
this is Godcat, like this is one hundred percent sold.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, and he was offer only, so we never heard
him before. The table reads. So the table reads, I'm like,
there's no way this guy's not gonna not gonna like
fell it. And he didn't. I mean, if I said
that the right way, he was amazing. Like he We
could kind of get a sense of him too, because
tom Elise is Welsh, his accent is Welsh. He's funny
based on his previous shows Miranda Loose First and other things,
(17:54):
but he also has this simultaneous quality of being old
world founding but also being fresh and relevant. Another good
comparison to him might be someone like Matt Gardy also
on what we do in the Shadows, where he's got
this old world sound. But he also can like yell
at his phone for not charging fast enough, like I
can straddle those two. So Tom allis ended up being
(18:15):
absolutely perfect god Cat. He's also a very nice man
in person.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I originally thought it was a nice nod to the
inverse of him being Lucifer, that he'd be Godcat by them.
I mean, that's a big Lucifer fan, so that was.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think he's already getting hit with every single comment
thread on the internet about the show is like he
played the Devil, now it plays God That's like that dominates,
and I'm like, great, I like it. I think that
probably is helping our marketing a little bit because that's
such a funny topic to you know. The other thing
worth noting about Tom he has two cats at home
and their names are Kane and Abel, so it all
kind of fits into the theme of Godcat and Devil Cat.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Talking about exploding kittens, the brand and exploding Kitten is
the show and the digital game and remaining separate as
a company right now, how are you functioning when you
have this huge show coming out that is made by
the brand, but you're also still operating as a company
that does other things and is a merchandising company, a
game company, as you've said, So we're you're all's focuses
(19:18):
right now. How much are you split between different projects?
What does that look like internally?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, we should We should start by saying, every lawyer,
every accountant, every Hollywood agent for the last five years
has been begging us to change the name of the company,
so that is not the same name as everything else,
because you say exploiting kittens. Are you talking about the
show or the company, or the or the game or
one of the expansions. It's it drives everybody insane. Matt
(19:45):
and I refuse to change it because that's how it
was born, and we think it's very We.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Just like it.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
So, so, how is this whole thing functioning? It's it's
a it's I've I've done five startups in my life.
This is now by far the largest one, which makes
it really really hard to manage all of those things
because we have separate teams working on individual projects. Right
(20:10):
we have our largest team works on sorry, our largest team. Actually,
when the Netflix show was in full production, was nearly
one hundred people, so that was the actual largest team.
Second largest is game production, and then third is digital,
where we have a lot of external partners. The company
itself in order to function just has a lot of managers.
(20:33):
Like we really we started out in my garage, just
very few of us, and the whole idea was, let's
all be creative all day, every day, and we'll make
a game, and it's going to be somebody else's problem
to figure out how that thing is produced, how it's printed,
how it's shipped, how it gets on boats, how it
gets into stores. We don't care about any of that.
(20:53):
All we care about is gonna make fun stuff that
we like playing. And in the process of doing that,
we learned that we want to get good at everything.
We want to learn how to print, we want to
learn how to distribute, we want to learn how to
do sales, we want to learn how to do marketing,
like just all the stuff. And so now all of
that stuff is internal. We have all of these different
(21:15):
teams because we like all of that in one place,
but that means our team is very management heavy, like
we have someone in charge of every single one of
those things. And then we got another person in charge
of all of those managers, and then they all report
up to someone at the sea level, and it looks
a lot like a corporation at this point, much to
(21:35):
our dismay, but we just couldn't figure out any other
way to do all the things we want to do,
get good at all the things, have control of all
those things without having a whole lot of managers and
unfortunately a whole lot of meetings. Matt, have I accurately
depicted the misery that is our calendars these days?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, I mean I feel unwell, so I would say, yeah,
now you're you're at you And the question is kind
of like, what how do we kind of split up,
you know, making the show versus making a game. It's
that kind of idea. Yeah, I mean the show was
pretty siloed because like Netflix, the way they make sure
that they you know, they get a show and then
they I don't like one hundred people, and then when
the show's over, they kind of trail off its contractors.
(22:18):
So for me, I've always burned the vin nine oil,
so I was kind of putting the oatmeal cartooning aside
for the black couple of years. Just I don't have time,
and working most of the time as the showrunner and
working on the series and then kind of working at
DK when I have time. It's it's actually kind of
a fun balance because when I was doing the Oatmeal
(22:39):
full time the comic, I could go from creative drawing,
I'm the boss, I'm the creator. There's no meetings a
crap like that. And then when I when I had
to go to K and it was you know, are
all hands hr okr blah blah blah. You know I
could get into that world as well. Yeah, so long
story short, Uh, I just work a lot. Know, it's
(23:00):
not ever gonn answer, That's all I got. I will
also say I can draw really cast I know that
sounds like I'm bragging. I draw poorly quickly, and so
when I'm on the show or if I'm working on
card games, whatever it is, sometimes I'm at my speed,
my garb my speed of producing beautiful, palatable garbage is
very helpful. Kind of like when I talk palatable garbage,
(23:21):
you know that's my dad I used to call me.
He didn't call me that.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
We're garbage. Translated from the show for Digital What were
the aspects I know Elan with the Xbox background, but
the aspects for the digital game, and then also making
sure that remains separate from the show, because I know
that characters from the show will be incorporated into the
(23:45):
digital game, but the game itself still stands independent from
Netflix show. I know.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's a lot, right. Just imagine how much easier this
would be if our company had a different name. I know,
all right, So when we work on the digital stuff,
like look, first and foremost, we do physical games, right,
ink on cardboard, put it in a box, go have
a great time. And we actually resisted doing digital stuff
for a while because you know, I have a very
(24:14):
rich history in screens, with my history with the Xbox,
and this was kind of a departure from that. This
was kind of fun to say, like let's just make games, Like,
let's just make physical game when I think back to
my childhood playing games with my brothers and sisters, like
we're sitting around a table, we're throwing food, we're hiding
cards under the table, like all that fun stuff that
(24:35):
just doesn't happen with a screen and doesn't happen remotely.
So when it came time to start developing digital properties,
we had to think through this process of like, we
can't just do this for digital sake. There has to
be a reason. There has to be something about the
digital experience that's better than the physical experience, otherwise we
might as well not do it. And we started attacking
(24:57):
that on two fronts. Number one is digital had to
be more accessible in order to play, especially like during
the pandemic, in order to play this game when you
can't be in the same room as your friends, Digital
solves that problem. So we have to make sure there's
remote play, that there's lobbies that people can join and
they can make new friends. And we hit that hard.
(25:18):
We really really important to us to say one of
the reasons you're going to do this is because you
can't be in the same room as other people. And
then the second one was, let's use this as an
opportunity to create cards that literally cannot exist in the
real world. And my favorite example of that is in
the physical game, there's a card called shuffle really really simple.
(25:41):
You've got this deck of cards. One of them is bad,
the exploding kitten. You don't want to draw the exploding kitten.
And so if you know via playing a bunch of
other cards, that let you peak before you draw, you
know the top ones in Exploding Kitten.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So you play a shuffle card, you shuffle up the deck,
you hope you've moved the kitten somewhere where it's not
going to hurt you, and then you draw the card
to end your turn. Really straightforward, everybody understands what shuffle does.
In the digital version, not only can we put in
the regular shuffle card, but we can put in something
that can't exist in the real world, and that's a
card called fake shuffle. And what fake shuffle does is
(26:14):
when you play it, it looks to all the other
players like you just played a shuffle card, but really
what you've done is shuffled for you and nobody else.
Meaning when you draw a card, it will give you
a random card. But after that event, the rest of
the deck magically flips back into the state it was
before the shuffle happened. And so now for the next player,
(26:36):
these pining kitten is still right on top because nothing
was actually shuffled. That's not possible to do in the
real world. It would require blindfolds and leaving the room.
Oh my goodness, what a nightmare. But in digital it's
very easy, and so we've got a series of cards
like that, which really were the guiding light for us
in creating the digital experience to say, like, let's make
sure that this experience is not just mimic the physical one,
(27:00):
but enhances it in a way that would not otherwise
be possible.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Speaking about the digital game and the mechanics of that.
Netflix is very new to games still, they've been ramping
up and this was one of the ones that was
announced pretty early on and announced in connection with the
TV show. So I need to know what your experience
has been working with them, just from a company standpoint
on the gaming side versus the TV side, because they
(27:23):
are so new at the gaming stuff and they're still
growing that division.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I can say really quick the we have there's
two versions of Exploding at One is the one we
made years ago, and then there's the new Netflix one.
The one we made years ago was great, but there's
a lot of things that we didn't do just because
technically we couldn't or we didn't know how. Some of
the car mechanics you play they're familiar with when you
play physically in our game. We have other new ones,
(27:50):
and there's there's some lot of charm there, but Netflix
is the most faithful. Like if you play the physical
card game and you play the Netflix one, most were
very very close. So in that regard, it was easy
because they kind of took the physical game and just
recreated it as digital and it was easy and I
really like, this is the long way of saying, I
really liked the Netflix version, and working with them on
(28:13):
that app was pretty seamless. The our teams that Netflix
are so good. I mean they can clone things that
I make. They can, you know. The other thing was
helpful is the show is so kind of put this.
It's like so well structured and crafted versus the way
I do things. That translating that art over was as
an example when you I didn't know this, but when
(28:35):
you make an animated series, like if you're maybe making
The Simpsons back in whatever that was nineteen ninety something,
you do blueprint like a perhaps like a top down
bird's eye blue viewprint of the home. So like the
Simpsons probably had a blueprint of their home where the
doors swing open and on. We did that for our show.
Actually got to look at like architectural plants for where
the family lives, so that's like the level of fidelity
(28:57):
to some of these documents with regards to creating it.
When Netflix made an app out of the show and
out of the UK, it was the art was it
was easy.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Also, our interests were aligned, Like Netflix is releasing that
game for free, which means their motivation is build the
best experience you can, which amazingly is exactly our motivation. Right,
So when we first start on that thing, and like
you say, like it was in their initial launch portfolio,
(29:26):
right before they really knew very much, before they had
launched any other games. And as long as your interests
are aligned, as long as we get to sit down
with them and say, Okay, we're gonna learn a lot,
we're gonna build all kinds of cool stuff, but we
all want to build the best possible experience for people.
You want to, we want to. You can figure everything
(29:46):
else out because you're all working towards the same finish line.
So that worked really well for us.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now I just want to ask about, you know, the
tabletop industry. Hollywood is obviously not that connected to it,
but so much is being adapted from tabletop games at
this point that people are very interested in it. Looking
at it, and it's kind of a return to that
format because we're drawing from it in more modern media.
(30:15):
So I want to know how much you guys can
like kind of break down working in that industry and
crossing over into Hollywood and seeing the interest in things
pick up again in terms of the transmedia component of
that mean comes seeing the tabletop gaming community be a
very important one to furthering more modern IP.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah. Well, let's just talk about the background there for
a sec because Matt Now used to have this conversation
all the time. When we were building the company, like
ten years ago now, we talked a lot about like
what do we want to grow this into, like how
big and what are our aspirations? And the name that
kept coming up for us was Marvel. Not to say
(30:58):
we've reached nearly that, but their initial model was let's
build something cheap, fast and easy comics. Right like, they
cranked out a whole bunch of them. Those that worked,
they would continue to invest in, those that didn't would
elegantly exit, and then they'd move on to others. And
what that did was that allowed them to familiarize their
(31:20):
audience with worlds with characters, and then over the years,
in their case, many decades. They could then start working
on more elaborate versions of those worlds because their audience
already have the name recognition, and they could build that
fast and cheaply. Right. It costs so much less to
put out a comic book than it does a full
(31:41):
feature Hollywood movie. Right, So we looked at that model
and thought, if anything, I don't know if we can
ever achieve that, but that's a really nice goal. It
is easy for us to put out games. Games are
relatively inexpensive, especially compared to a TV show or movie.
So let's put out games that have characters and have
(32:02):
a little bit of edge to them and hint at
a world and build that audience familiarization, so that name recognition.
You might fall in love with a particular character from
a game because you've invited them into your home and
you interact with them night after night with your family
and friends. And so that model works really well for
us because this is an easy way for us to
(32:24):
get into your house, and then we can start expanding.
Then we can say, like exploding kinds cool, there's a
Netflix show. Now you can see those characters come to life.
And so this is just sort of the tip of
the iceberg for us. It's just starting to say, here's
what phase two looks like. Very established on phase one, right,
establish that name recognition. Now we're starting to dabble into
this larger world, which is a natural fit. It's much
(32:47):
more expensive, and you can only do it for those
titles that work really well. But again, like Marvel, we
get to double down on those that work well and
we get to elegantly sunset those that don't so that
we can spend our time on new things.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's importantly God, I hope there's another Battleship movie because
that was a winner. You know, we could be the
next Battleship movie. It would be great. Still comes out
in a week, let's find out. Maybe.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Guys, this is been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
and Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
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 Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business, media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer, TV
and video games. Jennifer Moss Belan Lee, a former Xbox designer,
and Matthew Inman, the award winning cartoonants behind the Oatmeal,
launched the first Exploding Kittens card game in twenty fifteen
via Kickstarter campaign and unexpectedly raised eight point seven million
(00:30):
dollars for the initial game in the first thirty days
of the campaign. Since then, they released nearly thirty tabletop
games under the Exploding Kitten's Company brand and a handful
of digital games, and it's sold more than thirty six
million games globally. On Friday, Netflix will launch its Exploding
Kittens TV series adaptation, which will coincide with updates to
(00:50):
its Exploding Kitten's mobile game for the streamer, incorporating playable
characters from the new show into the service. Here to
talk about the inner workings at its own Kittens the company,
and how their brand adapted its best selling tabletop game.
Entering Netflix series and video game are founders ill Unle
and matthew an Thank you both for joining me for
(01:24):
the strictly business podcast. I'm really excited to speak to you,
and I just kind of want to start off with
each of you could lay out your current holes and
then go a little bit into your background prior.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Matt, you want to start sure, So at Exploding Kittens,
I think my social title the chief creative officer the cartoonists.
I'm an artist. I worked on the original game with
the lawn. I should have had more coffee because I
can't think of what else. Yeah. Yeah, And then on
(01:57):
the Netflix series, I'm the showrunner. I wrote a bunch
of episodes and did a little bit of everything there.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
My name is Alan. I founded the company with Matt
about ten years ago. My current role is CEO, and
I'm also one of the producers on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Did I forget to mention I write and draw the oatmeal?
I did that little thing? Did I write draw the oatmeals? Ball?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Okay, Now, for any of our listeners who might not
be familiar, can you explain what Exploding Kittens is?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, let's see. Okay, So Exploding Kittens, I mean, first
and foremost, it's a card game, but it's also the
name of our company and also now the name of
a Netflix show. It started about ten years ago. Matt
and I were kind of looking for a new exciting
project to get involved in. I had this very rough
idea for a card game that at the time was
(02:52):
called Bomb Squad, and it was all It was like
Russian Roulette with a deck of cards. Matt decided very
wisely that the name Bob and Squad is no fun
at all. And the way he phrased it was, if
all you're scared of in this game are these explosive bombs,
it's just so on the nose, it's so obvious. Who cares?
(03:13):
What if instead the thing you were most afraid of
was cute, adorable, fuzzy little kittens And we call the
game Exploding Kittens instead, And that is literally how Exploding
Kittens was born. We put it up on Kickstarter expecting
to raise hopefully about ten thousand bucks. Instead we raised
almost nine million and thirty days started a company and
now are one of the largest independent game studios in
(03:35):
the world.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That anything you want to add to that story, as
the saying that Bomb Squad was.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
A bad name, Yeah, I mean, I guess, I see, yeah,
I get Alan and I were we kind of just
met at that point too, we were on vacation with
a mutual friend of ours and Alan had this poker
deck that has just sharpie marks on it, and we
played that game like the entire week while we are
on vacation. And I kind of had wanted to make
(04:04):
a game at that point, but I wasn't a game
designer and I didn't really have one. And for our
first game, it's still is our I think it's one
of the best things we've ever done in terms of gameplay, Like,
it's so fun, it's such a satisfying and unique game mechanic,
this sort of idea that you play until it's last
person standing. And yeah, and I was able to kind
(04:26):
of translate comics into cards back then, and that that
really helped us in the beginning too.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And Matt literally wrote a one panel comic for every
card in the game. I showed up with a poker deck.
Here's the King, the Queen, the aces et, cetera. And
Matt said, okay, so fifty two cards. I will draw
fifty two to one panel hilarious comics and that will.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Be the game.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
And yeah, that whole task, what was that? Matt? Ten days,
two weeks somewhere in that timeframe.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
We did it fast, and our company came together in
like six weeks from hey, this is Bomb Squad the
poker game to ek explaining kittens on the Internet. You know,
in a very short period of time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it was Yeah, that was that was fun. That
was literally us in a garage in the back of
my house. And now there's about one hundred people working
at the company and we have a big studio and
the biggest problem is remembering everybody's name.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And now you've released nearly thirty games, a handful of
digital games, including the Netflix Exploding mobile game.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, that's correct. Yeah, So I'd love.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
To know what the process becomes at that point, from
making a card game to making a digital game to
now making a show. And at what point Netflix got involved,
if they approached you, if you had talks with them,
what the kind of flow and order of events if
you remember.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, I can, I'll jump to the Netflix bit because
that's where I'm the most relevant. So in twenty nineteen,
we received an investment from Peter Turnham and to kind
of expand our our IP and he connected us with
Greg Daniels and might Judge and you know, up until
that point, it really wasn't terribly interested in making Exploding
(06:16):
Kitts into a TV series. It just wasn't something that
struck me as television material. I mean, it's a card game,
where as we just said, each card is its own
non secuity. It's they're all just independent jokes, don't really
a story. It'sn't really through line. It would be like
if I told you we're going to make connect for
into a movie, you'd be like, God, stop, you know, please,
(06:38):
don't you know? And what ended up happening was started
to think kind of in earnest about, regardless of the
card game, what's the show that I would want to watch?
And that is where I kind of flipped through an
old notebook and started schooling away. And I'd always kind
of had this idea in the back of my mind
of some sort of cat X related show and hear
(07:02):
me out. So when I had a girlfriend in my
twenties where she had a cat who kind of simultaneously
behaved like God in the house and also like Satan.
I think this is very reliable for most pet owners.
Your cat things, you own the house, but they also
seem to rule the underworld as well, so again, when
I thought, how can I make Exploding Kittens into a
TV series that I want to watch without ever having
played the game, that's where this idea of God and
(07:25):
the Devil being trapped in cat bodies on Earth came from.
So what I did was most television pitches, you know,
you have your little index cards and you nervously stand
in a room and try to recite your show in
front of a bunch of people. I don't really drive
that way, and I can draw, So I thought I
would draw my pitch in the form of a comic
(07:46):
that you could read like it's a It's about a
four minute read, like a tiny graphic novel, so you
could you read my show. We pitched it to seven
studios and six of them made offers on it right away,
and that's when kind of realized, I think I doesinthe
really really good here. That's how we connected eventually with Netflix.
And at the time Netflix was this was like twenty nineteen,
(08:09):
twenty twenty. Netflix was investing heavily in animation, I think,
and I think they doubled down on it because of
the pandemic, because you couldn't shoot anything live action, and
that's that's where it's the when you get touts home.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Just to add the even before that, like all we
ever really aspired to do, at least at first, was
let's make a bunch of card games. Like I really
like designing games, Matt really likes drawing games, come together
and we were able to create these really fun, exciting
things under the premise that, like, none of these games
should be entertaining. All every game we make should make
(08:42):
the people you're playing with entertaining instead. And armed with that,
we're able to create like some of the some of
the best selling games ever. It's really it's been a
it's been a really fun experience. And then once once
the Netflix show really solidified, like once it was like, oh,
we're doing this, Matt started to lead his team, the
(09:07):
show team, as far as like, all right, well, here's
what these characters sound like, here's how they behave, here's
how they move, here's here's what the world actually looks
like instead of just a bunch of static images. And
armed with that, we were able to start saying, okay, well,
now this is a world instead of just a bunch
of comics, this is an actual world. So that means
(09:27):
we can start making more games, more moving games. Right,
so like digital games, mobile games, VR games, we can
start exploring where else these characters might live and how
our audience might be able to experience them. And so
it was like this neat little one two punch, like,
let's start by building a really strong audience, building simple, fast,
(09:50):
easy fun party games. Expand that into the world of TV,
and then now we can expand that whole ip outwards
because we know what it looks and sounds like.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
As you became more and more familiar with the tabletop
game and that's where you started with and that's where
you grew, and that's where the success was. Going into
TV and going into gaming digital. What did you all
have to do to educate yourselves on understanding those worlds,
the business model of those things, and expanding the brand
into those sections where you had been strictly in tabletop
(10:23):
gaming before.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, I actually on once you go first you worked
at the Xbox, you can talk about all kinds off there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I think we knew, like all of us from hearing
all the stories, that there's not a huge amount of
money in season one. Season one is like establishing yourself.
It's building the team figuring out what this thing looks like,
trying your best to build an audience, investing heavily in marketing,
making sure you get the word out. It's really once
that thing takes off, which we really hope this does
(10:51):
because we've worked so hard at it. It's once that
takes off that you have more leverage, that you get
to start making more demands. Essentially. However, getting to that point,
there were a few things that were really important to us.
A typical TV deal, the network has a lot of
(11:11):
rules about merchandising, about what the show is called, about
how you talk about the show, and we were very
fortunate that we could walk into those deals saying, look,
this has to be called Exploding Kittens, has to has
to has to, which is very important to us. That's
the brand recognition. They totally agreed. They were like, yes,
has to, that's where the audience is going to come from.
(11:33):
You've got one of the best selling games in the world,
So cool, we're all in agreement there. It's good for them,
it's good for us. That was a really nice negotiation
point that was not contentious at all. But then the
second one was merchandising, which is like, look, We're going
to be the best partners ever and anything that comes
out of the show, out of these characters, we're all
(11:53):
going to participate in that. But it is very important
to us that you acknowledge we are a pre existing
company that only does merchandising. All we do is put
out card games out into the world, So we have
to be able to keep those things in their own
little box in order that we can keep running the company,
keep coming up with new ideas, and keep using those
(12:15):
ideas to generate new IP and new shows for Netflix.
So everyone was very good about that. But it was
non traditional, right, Like the standard version is all merchandising
that comes out of a show gets split up between
all the partners, and we had to cut out or
carve out pre existing ips and new games that we
create that weren't associated with the show. That was a
(12:38):
little bit of learning on both sides, right. Nobody was
used to that, but that's what that's what we clung
onto because it was so important and we knew that
as long as we can hold on to that, we
can then learn the rest of the process. Working closely
with the networks, working closely with Netflix to get the
best deal for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
We'll be back to work from the Exploding Kittens seen
actor this break.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, so kind of going through card games to digital
I know Alons kind of got a rich background, and
you know, he worked was a chief design officer at
the Xbox, so that there was a lot of stuff
that fit there for him. For me going from card
game to television, I had I've been working in comics forever,
which is very helpful because when you draw storyboards, which
(13:27):
become animatics, it's become cartoons animatics fen who doesn't know
they're They're kind of like a really crappy cartoon. They're
black and white. Usually the actors aren't even there yet,
so it's all this rough. I've done a ton of
storyboarding just in my career as a cartoonist, so I
had some skills there. And then I'd worked in elimination
for a couple of years on their movies, did some
punch up on their movies, so I had some experience there.
That being said, there was a lot of new disciplines
(13:49):
to learn. You know, writing a still web comic on
the Internet is very different from dealing with actors, writers,
sound design, fully score. There's a whole kind of arsenal thing.
So past four and a half years has been it's
like the greatest film class they've ever gone to, you know,
in a way, because I got to actively learn while
(14:10):
making show. The other thing that was probably where Robber
Mett road in terms of difficulty was when you make
a web comic, people hear when they read your comic,
they hear what ever voice they want to hear in
their head, and usually it's a very funny voice. It's
well written television or animation. They hear whatever voice the
actor is saying and or the way the character is moving,
(14:31):
and it can all break a joke or make a joke.
So that was where I had to be really diligent
and good about make sure the comedy comes through because
there's a ton of funny jokes that are written in script,
and then when they're own, you know, they're performed, they
can kind of change or breakdown that comes with you.
That's the same with the art, you know, creating really
rich style guides that I drop people a certain way.
(14:53):
You know, I had kind of a signature, kind of
inbred frog eyed look to everything that I drop, and
I needed to make sure that in bred frog eyed
was well ingrained into one in Netflix. It was you know,
it's on my office door talking.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
About the voices that brings me a question about passing
and how involved you all were in that process. If
Netflix had ideas right off the top, if you all
had ideas and kind of what it was based on,
and also fans of exploding kittens versus people are like,
I have no idea what this is. I've never heard
of this before, and kind of that barrier to entry
maybe with certain talent.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
We you know, initially Netflix and me were aligned that
we wanted to go after famous people, you know, celebrities,
and we did. We went after famous people and celebrities
and what do you get any and they're busy, you know,
like I mean that in a good way because it's
like a cat themed you know, it'd be like we're
(15:47):
making a movie out of them. I don't know, pick
the worst they imaginable. Let me paraphrase, paraphrase, I'm I'm
blowing this right now. We went out to the first
person who went out to to Boyce Godcat was Peter
d English and which had been amazing. I love him
and he was super interested, but he was shooting a movie.
And then the next person we went after was calling
Farrell again amazing, great shooting a movie. And then they
(16:11):
both got a bunch of awards. I think called Ferrol
literally maybe got nominated for an Oscar maybe one I
don't remember, and I was like, yeah, it's probably good.
You turned down the whole cat card game idea. You
were clearly busy something that matters. But sort of through
that process, what we kind of realized was we wanted
people who were funny. We don't care who they are
in terms of celebrity. So that's why we ended up
(16:32):
with like, for example, a good example of this, Mark
brooksh who plays the dad on the show. He plays Marv.
He's the voice. He might not know his name, but
if you saw him, you know who he is. He
was in the office. He also played the energy vampire
in What We Do in the Shadows, And that's the
kind of a lack of better word, black of the
energy we wanted from our characters was less about can
we shove Wesley Snipes in here. I don't know why
(16:53):
I picked him. I like him, but whatever, that's really
celebrity I can think of right now, Wesley Snipe versus
someone that maybe isn't quite as well known, but their
ability to perform a joke into a microphone was so good.
Tom Ellis is that way to shoo him. They were
all like funny, funny people. THAT'SI Sidar is another good example.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
So tom Ellis, though, Matt, I remember going through that
casting process and you like sending me all of these
recordings and these auditions, and for Godcat, you weren't even
there was not even a thought that went into that.
It was just like you heard that voice, and you're like, yeah,
this is Godcat, like this is one hundred percent sold.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, and he was offer only, so we never heard
him before. The table reads. So the table reads, I'm like,
there's no way this guy's not gonna not gonna like
fell it. And he didn't. I mean, if I said
that the right way, he was amazing. Like he We
could kind of get a sense of him too, because
tom Elise is Welsh, his accent is Welsh. He's funny
based on his previous shows Miranda Loose First and other things,
(17:54):
but he also has this simultaneous quality of being old
world founding but also being fresh and relevant. Another good
comparison to him might be someone like Matt Gardy also
on what we do in the Shadows, where he's got
this old world sound. But he also can like yell
at his phone for not charging fast enough, like I
can straddle those two. So Tom allis ended up being
(18:15):
absolutely perfect god Cat. He's also a very nice man
in person.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I originally thought it was a nice nod to the
inverse of him being Lucifer, that he'd be Godcat by them.
I mean, that's a big Lucifer fan, so that was.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think he's already getting hit with every single comment
thread on the internet about the show is like he
played the Devil, now it plays God That's like that dominates,
and I'm like, great, I like it. I think that
probably is helping our marketing a little bit because that's
such a funny topic to you know. The other thing
worth noting about Tom he has two cats at home
and their names are Kane and Abel, so it all
kind of fits into the theme of Godcat and Devil Cat.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Talking about exploding kittens, the brand and exploding Kitten is
the show and the digital game and remaining separate as
a company right now, how are you functioning when you
have this huge show coming out that is made by
the brand, but you're also still operating as a company
that does other things and is a merchandising company, a
game company, as you've said, So we're you're all's focuses
(19:18):
right now. How much are you split between different projects?
What does that look like internally?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, we should We should start by saying, every lawyer,
every accountant, every Hollywood agent for the last five years
has been begging us to change the name of the company,
so that is not the same name as everything else,
because you say exploiting kittens. Are you talking about the
show or the company, or the or the game or
one of the expansions. It's it drives everybody insane. Matt
(19:45):
and I refuse to change it because that's how it
was born, and we think it's very We.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Just like it.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
So, so, how is this whole thing functioning? It's it's
a it's I've I've done five startups in my life.
This is now by far the largest one, which makes
it really really hard to manage all of those things
because we have separate teams working on individual projects. Right
(20:10):
we have our largest team works on sorry, our largest team. Actually,
when the Netflix show was in full production, was nearly
one hundred people, so that was the actual largest team.
Second largest is game production, and then third is digital,
where we have a lot of external partners. The company
itself in order to function just has a lot of managers.
(20:33):
Like we really we started out in my garage, just
very few of us, and the whole idea was, let's
all be creative all day, every day, and we'll make
a game, and it's going to be somebody else's problem
to figure out how that thing is produced, how it's printed,
how it's shipped, how it gets on boats, how it
gets into stores. We don't care about any of that.
(20:53):
All we care about is gonna make fun stuff that
we like playing. And in the process of doing that,
we learned that we want to get good at everything.
We want to learn how to print, we want to
learn how to distribute, we want to learn how to
do sales, we want to learn how to do marketing,
like just all the stuff. And so now all of
that stuff is internal. We have all of these different
(21:15):
teams because we like all of that in one place,
but that means our team is very management heavy, like
we have someone in charge of every single one of
those things. And then we got another person in charge
of all of those managers, and then they all report
up to someone at the sea level, and it looks
a lot like a corporation at this point, much to
(21:35):
our dismay, but we just couldn't figure out any other
way to do all the things we want to do,
get good at all the things, have control of all
those things without having a whole lot of managers and
unfortunately a whole lot of meetings. Matt, have I accurately
depicted the misery that is our calendars these days?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, I mean I feel unwell, so I would say, yeah,
now you're you're at you And the question is kind
of like, what how do we kind of split up,
you know, making the show versus making a game. It's
that kind of idea. Yeah, I mean the show was
pretty siloed because like Netflix, the way they make sure
that they you know, they get a show and then
they I don't like one hundred people, and then when
the show's over, they kind of trail off its contractors.
(22:18):
So for me, I've always burned the vin nine oil,
so I was kind of putting the oatmeal cartooning aside
for the black couple of years. Just I don't have time,
and working most of the time as the showrunner and
working on the series and then kind of working at
DK when I have time. It's it's actually kind of
a fun balance because when I was doing the Oatmeal
(22:39):
full time the comic, I could go from creative drawing,
I'm the boss, I'm the creator. There's no meetings a
crap like that. And then when I when I had
to go to K and it was you know, are
all hands hr okr blah blah blah. You know I
could get into that world as well. Yeah, so long
story short, Uh, I just work a lot. Know, it's
(23:00):
not ever gonn answer, That's all I got. I will
also say I can draw really cast I know that
sounds like I'm bragging. I draw poorly quickly, and so
when I'm on the show or if I'm working on
card games, whatever it is, sometimes I'm at my speed,
my garb my speed of producing beautiful, palatable garbage is
very helpful. Kind of like when I talk palatable garbage,
(23:21):
you know that's my dad I used to call me.
He didn't call me that.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
We're garbage. Translated from the show for Digital What were
the aspects I know Elan with the Xbox background, but
the aspects for the digital game, and then also making
sure that remains separate from the show, because I know
that characters from the show will be incorporated into the
(23:45):
digital game, but the game itself still stands independent from
Netflix show. I know.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's a lot, right. Just imagine how much easier this
would be if our company had a different name. I know,
all right, So when we work on the digital stuff,
like look, first and foremost, we do physical games, right,
ink on cardboard, put it in a box, go have
a great time. And we actually resisted doing digital stuff
for a while because you know, I have a very
(24:14):
rich history in screens, with my history with the Xbox,
and this was kind of a departure from that. This
was kind of fun to say, like let's just make games, Like,
let's just make physical game when I think back to
my childhood playing games with my brothers and sisters, like
we're sitting around a table, we're throwing food, we're hiding
cards under the table, like all that fun stuff that
(24:35):
just doesn't happen with a screen and doesn't happen remotely.
So when it came time to start developing digital properties,
we had to think through this process of like, we
can't just do this for digital sake. There has to
be a reason. There has to be something about the
digital experience that's better than the physical experience, otherwise we
might as well not do it. And we started attacking
(24:57):
that on two fronts. Number one is digital had to
be more accessible in order to play, especially like during
the pandemic, in order to play this game when you
can't be in the same room as your friends, Digital
solves that problem. So we have to make sure there's
remote play, that there's lobbies that people can join and
they can make new friends. And we hit that hard.
(25:18):
We really really important to us to say one of
the reasons you're going to do this is because you
can't be in the same room as other people. And
then the second one was, let's use this as an
opportunity to create cards that literally cannot exist in the
real world. And my favorite example of that is in
the physical game, there's a card called shuffle really really simple.
(25:41):
You've got this deck of cards. One of them is bad,
the exploding kitten. You don't want to draw the exploding kitten.
And so if you know via playing a bunch of
other cards, that let you peak before you draw, you
know the top ones in Exploding Kitten.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So you play a shuffle card, you shuffle up the deck,
you hope you've moved the kitten somewhere where it's not
going to hurt you, and then you draw the card
to end your turn. Really straightforward, everybody understands what shuffle does.
In the digital version, not only can we put in
the regular shuffle card, but we can put in something
that can't exist in the real world, and that's a
card called fake shuffle. And what fake shuffle does is
(26:14):
when you play it, it looks to all the other
players like you just played a shuffle card, but really
what you've done is shuffled for you and nobody else.
Meaning when you draw a card, it will give you
a random card. But after that event, the rest of
the deck magically flips back into the state it was
before the shuffle happened. And so now for the next player,
(26:36):
these pining kitten is still right on top because nothing
was actually shuffled. That's not possible to do in the
real world. It would require blindfolds and leaving the room.
Oh my goodness, what a nightmare. But in digital it's
very easy, and so we've got a series of cards
like that, which really were the guiding light for us
in creating the digital experience to say, like, let's make
sure that this experience is not just mimic the physical one,
(27:00):
but enhances it in a way that would not otherwise
be possible.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Speaking about the digital game and the mechanics of that.
Netflix is very new to games still, they've been ramping
up and this was one of the ones that was
announced pretty early on and announced in connection with the
TV show. So I need to know what your experience
has been working with them, just from a company standpoint
on the gaming side versus the TV side, because they
(27:23):
are so new at the gaming stuff and they're still
growing that division.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I can say really quick the we have there's
two versions of Exploding at One is the one we
made years ago, and then there's the new Netflix one.
The one we made years ago was great, but there's
a lot of things that we didn't do just because
technically we couldn't or we didn't know how. Some of
the car mechanics you play they're familiar with when you
play physically in our game. We have other new ones,
(27:50):
and there's there's some lot of charm there, but Netflix
is the most faithful. Like if you play the physical
card game and you play the Netflix one, most were
very very close. So in that regard, it was easy
because they kind of took the physical game and just
recreated it as digital and it was easy and I
really like, this is the long way of saying, I
really liked the Netflix version, and working with them on
(28:13):
that app was pretty seamless. The our teams that Netflix
are so good. I mean they can clone things that
I make. They can, you know. The other thing was
helpful is the show is so kind of put this.
It's like so well structured and crafted versus the way
I do things. That translating that art over was as
an example when you I didn't know this, but when
(28:35):
you make an animated series, like if you're maybe making
The Simpsons back in whatever that was nineteen ninety something,
you do blueprint like a perhaps like a top down
bird's eye blue viewprint of the home. So like the
Simpsons probably had a blueprint of their home where the
doors swing open and on. We did that for our show.
Actually got to look at like architectural plants for where
the family lives, so that's like the level of fidelity
(28:57):
to some of these documents with regards to creating it.
When Netflix made an app out of the show and
out of the UK, it was the art was it
was easy.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Also, our interests were aligned, Like Netflix is releasing that
game for free, which means their motivation is build the
best experience you can, which amazingly is exactly our motivation. Right,
So when we first start on that thing, and like
you say, like it was in their initial launch portfolio,
(29:26):
right before they really knew very much, before they had
launched any other games. And as long as your interests
are aligned, as long as we get to sit down
with them and say, Okay, we're gonna learn a lot,
we're gonna build all kinds of cool stuff, but we
all want to build the best possible experience for people.
You want to, we want to. You can figure everything
(29:46):
else out because you're all working towards the same finish line.
So that worked really well for us.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now I just want to ask about, you know, the
tabletop industry. Hollywood is obviously not that connected to it,
but so much is being adapted from tabletop games at
this point that people are very interested in it. Looking
at it, and it's kind of a return to that
format because we're drawing from it in more modern media.
(30:15):
So I want to know how much you guys can
like kind of break down working in that industry and
crossing over into Hollywood and seeing the interest in things
pick up again in terms of the transmedia component of
that mean comes seeing the tabletop gaming community be a
very important one to furthering more modern IP.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah. Well, let's just talk about the background there for
a sec because Matt Now used to have this conversation
all the time. When we were building the company, like
ten years ago now, we talked a lot about like
what do we want to grow this into, like how
big and what are our aspirations? And the name that
kept coming up for us was Marvel. Not to say
(30:58):
we've reached nearly that, but their initial model was let's
build something cheap, fast and easy comics. Right like, they
cranked out a whole bunch of them. Those that worked,
they would continue to invest in, those that didn't would
elegantly exit, and then they'd move on to others. And
what that did was that allowed them to familiarize their
(31:20):
audience with worlds with characters, and then over the years,
in their case, many decades. They could then start working
on more elaborate versions of those worlds because their audience
already have the name recognition, and they could build that
fast and cheaply. Right. It costs so much less to
put out a comic book than it does a full
(31:41):
feature Hollywood movie. Right, So we looked at that model
and thought, if anything, I don't know if we can
ever achieve that, but that's a really nice goal. It
is easy for us to put out games. Games are
relatively inexpensive, especially compared to a TV show or movie.
So let's put out games that have characters and have
(32:02):
a little bit of edge to them and hint at
a world and build that audience familiarization, so that name recognition.
You might fall in love with a particular character from
a game because you've invited them into your home and
you interact with them night after night with your family
and friends. And so that model works really well for
us because this is an easy way for us to
(32:24):
get into your house, and then we can start expanding.
Then we can say, like exploding kinds cool, there's a
Netflix show. Now you can see those characters come to life.
And so this is just sort of the tip of
the iceberg for us. It's just starting to say, here's
what phase two looks like. Very established on phase one, right,
establish that name recognition. Now we're starting to dabble into
this larger world, which is a natural fit. It's much
(32:47):
more expensive, and you can only do it for those
titles that work really well. But again, like Marvel, we
get to double down on those that work well and
we get to elegantly sunset those that don't so that
we can spend our time on new things.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's importantly God, I hope there's another Battleship movie because
that was a winner. You know, we could be the
next Battleship movie. It would be great. Still comes out
in a week, let's find out. Maybe.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Guys, this is been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
and Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
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.
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