In this episode, host Kalie Moore sits down with Julia Palatovska, Co-Founder and CEO of Dorian, to explore one of the most underappreciated shifts in entertainment: the convergence of user-generated content, interactive storytelling, and female-first fandoms. As microdrama consumption explodes globally, Julia argues that the real opportunity isn’t just in passive viewing but in turning audiences into creators and stories into interactive, monetizable experiences. She breaks down how Dorian is building a no-code platform that enables creators from cosplayers to webcomic artists, to launch games, iterate in real time, and generate meaningful income through free-to-play mechanics typically reserved for professional studios.
They also dive into why most UGC platforms fail to translate creation into commercial success, how Dorian shifted from volume to unit economics, and what it takes to build a true creator marketplace from scratch. Along the way, Julia challenges long-standing assumptions in gaming from the industry’s blind spot around women players to the over-indexing on mechanics over narrative and shares why human-made content still outperforms AI in creator-driven ecosystems. The conversation ultimately paints a picture of a new kind of platform: one where the next billion-dollar IP for Gen Z women might not come from a studio, but from a solo creator with a laptop and a deeply engaged fandom.
We’d also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv.
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
Kalie: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Kalie Moore. Today's episode sits at the intersection of two, of some of the most interesting shifts that are happening in entertainment right now, which are the rise of UGC platforms and the explosion of female-first serialized content.
Last week, the New Yorker estimated that over a 10th of humanity has now watched a micro drama. The global market outside of China is on track to hit 9.5 billion by 2030, with the US alone projected at 3.8 billion. And this is driven overwhelmingly by women aged 30 to 60 who are binging on romance, CEO arcs, and revenge stories from their phone.
But what's missing in almost all of these conversation is that games layer, and that's where Dorian comes in. Dorian is a no-code UGC platform built for an audience that the games industry has spent decades misunderstanding. Gen Z women, romantasy readers, dating sim fans, solo cosplayers, two-person art teams, and web comic creators are turning hobbies into real business on the platform.
One solo cosplayer's title, Shark Bait, which is a dating sim where players romance humanoid sharks, has more than a million fans. And another game called Slash Fic has earned more than three million dollars in its first year. My guest today is Julia Palatovska, who's the founder and CEO of Dorian. Julia has a really fascinating background.
She started in games at G5 Games in Eastern Europe. She took the company through an IPO, and she spent years as a VC at London Venture Partners. And now she's building the platform she might have one day had invested in. She's making some deliberately contrarian set of bets, prioritizing storytelling over mechanics in a mechanic-obsessed industry, leaning into human-made art, and building bottom-up with creators who, in some cases, earn more on Dorian than most venture-backed game studios ever will.
Today, we're gonna talk about what it actually takes to build a UGC games platform, what the micro drama boom is missing, and what male-led studios consistently get wrong about women gamers. It's my pleasure to welcome Julia, founder and CEO of Dorian, to the podcast.
Julia: Hi. Happy to be here. I'm a big fan of Naavik, so I'm very excited to chat with you today.
Kalie: Well, I have a ton of questions for you, so let's go ahead and dive in. I wanna start first with your background. So, you started in games at G5 Games, and I think you spent nearly seven years there, and you helped take the company to a public listing in Stockholm. You come from Eastern Europe, where this kinda outcome isn't the norm.
What did that experience teach you about what's possible when an industry is at the right phase of growth, and how does that shape how you think about Dorian today?
Julia: This experience basically inspired me to start Dorian because my background is very unlikely. First of all, because in Eastern Europe, we are traditionally detached from capital markets.
So, something like funding, venture capital, doing IPO is not a common, dinner conversation topic. And it's still like, you know, there's turbulent, political environment. It has always been for my entire life in Eastern Europe. And then, capital markets are not really available. It's getting a little better, but it's not great.
Most of the companies from this region are typically bootstrapped, which is, which is not bad. It might be great, but I definitely benefited from my quite unusual journey from joining this games company that was extremely successful, especially considering the origins, and then joining UBC Fund, and then being able to move to San Francisco.
There's a whole center of finding an opportunity and start my own company. But basically, Dorian was inspired by this experience because I feel that even though I should take credit for my own drive and ambition, I think that I benefited a lot from the growth of the games industry and learning how to succeed in this market, how you can become financially successful and profitable as G5 was, and then how this can be translated to people from unusual backgrounds, just like myself, that are now thriving on Dorian.
It was not a straightforward journey, but I want to make it more straightforward for more people.
Kalie: And then drilling in, one of the things that you mentioned to me when we had a prep call was that free-to-play monetization is something you really excelled at coming out of G5. Can you tell me a little bit about how that operator background, particularly when it comes to free-to-play, kind of shaped what you're building today?
Julia: I think that free-to-play monetization is sort of the magic behind what we're doing for creators because we, made the game creation accessible, but we also made, monetization and understanding your fans more accessible for creators who do not have technical backgrounds. On Dorian, they get free analytics tools.
They can understand how to launch and then improve their games for free-to-play monetization. Obviously, free-to-play monetization has been carrying the games industry, and its growth for like at least my lifespan. And it's been exciting to see how people can tap into this for their games, and this basically, I think, makes games more inclusive.
As an example, you do not have to be very famous or have millions of, of followers to be successful with free-to-play game monetization. If you want to sell as a creator, if you want to sell a ticket or a book or anything, you really need to put a lot into marketing, and some people do succeed at this or have good luck and get publishers that promote.
This definitely serves mostly, like, top 1%, and then everyone else really struggles to sell something upfront, like a book or even a chapter online. Whereas with free-to-play monetization, you can get your fans to try the experience for free and decide when they want to support you. We call this patronage on Doriane, so basically when, when they want to become patrons.
And this also kind of feeds into inclusivity of the medium, where different people can become patrons at different points of the same experience, of the same game, and vote with the dollar for whatever storyline, whatever character they want to consume more of which definitely proves to work for us the best.
Kalie: It's great. We're gonna dive a lot deeper into monetization, but I have one last background question for you. You came from venture capital side at London Venture Partner. What made you decide to leave VC to take a chance to build your own company?
Julia: I think that I'm very much of a builder, and I'm very entrepreneurial at heart.
That's probably a story for a different podcast, but I started my first company when I was 16. It was also in games, but educational games. It was with my childhood friend, and that was a lot of fun. We actually became a sustainable business for a couple of years. But, I think that I was, when I was with LVP, I had a chance to look at and work with fantastic startups.
I think that because LVP was one of the first game-focused investors with a very smart founding team, we had an advantage of g-getting to see everyone who wanted to raise money in games. And I was, first of all, constantly inspired. Second of all, I did work with LVP portfolio companies, and I always felt I was the happiest when I was working with the teams.
Oftentimes, as an early-stage VC with operations background, you kind of plug in yourself into some, some of the teams where you have a good fit, pr-professionally and also can f- like, basically fill some holes in their operations. And I always was like, "Oh my God, I want to be with you guys working together."
So, this is when I was the happiest, and I realized I was itching to go back into building. And then another part of it, VC job is fantastic and very respectable. And of course, VC investors are some of the smartest people in the industry. But at the same time, the job is judging people and companies.
You're kind of like, you sit back, and you judge everyone else. And I think that at some point, I was like, "Well, I, I want to be building," because I think that this kind of gets into this territory when you get detached from the reality of building, and you're judging too much, if that makes sense. So, I think that I prefer building to judging, even though judging, of course, is important part of, anyone's job.
Kalie: Yeah. I, I...
Julia: Trust me, I get it, too.
Kalie: Let's, let's shift to what it actually takes to build a UGC platform. So, on our prep call, you shared something really interesting with me, that most UGC platforms fail because they never graduate from optimizing for volume to optimizing for commercial success. Can you walk us through that distinction, and what does that actually mean operationally?
Julia: It's, I think that there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings of what it takes to build a UGC games platform because there are so few of us and even fewer that are showing real traction. Roblox is obviously the pioneer of this, and they have had tremendous success i-in this space.
Dorian has learned a ton from Roblox. But then, of course, there are quite a few Roblox followers that wanted to compete with them. Quite a few, either haven't got anywhere or outright failed. I think that we're definitely enjoying this advantage of building in a very different vertical that our team deeply understands and has a lot of demand.
Because if you think about it, there are millions of artists who are posting on Instagram and Webcomics. This group alone is huge enough, if, if even small percent of artists become game creators, that's a huge category. But we also have writers, cosplayers, voice actors, and all of these people are fantastic at storytelling, but s- usually struggle to monetize, across these whole groups.
And then unlocking game monetization for them is where the magic happens, and another part of it is replay value and player agency. But back to your question about platforms. Every platform that is building for UGC creation starts with volume. Our first metric was we, I obsessively checked how many episodes were released every day, and this is what we discussed at every team meeting.
And then we, we were onboarding more and more creators from different groups that I described. It was a huge shift when we enabled very cool art management system in our back end. And in addition to writers, we could onboard artists. That was a big, a difference because art sells much better than a wall of text.
So that's, that auto-automatically unlocked a big market for us. But then we were onboarding different groups of creators, searching for something that really helps us unlock growth, commercially, so not just with engagement and creation. And once we saw Great unit economics for some of the games, which happened throughout several waves of creators.
Thousands and thousands of game episode, episodes released. And then also, tools that were all created with our no-code philosophy. Basically, we would try different things with small group of creators, helping some, and then we would democratize those tools for anyone to use independently.
Once we saw unit economic working, this is when, real growth started, and then we stopped looking at the number of episodes released and started looking at commercial success of the games, because this is obviously important for any business to become commercially successful. But then, in most cases, for other platforms, you, you would see that they optimize, they still report the number of games, but it never translates into commercial success, apart from, like, Roblox and maybe... I think UFO is reporting growth of revenue as well.
Kalie: So, is it fair to say that you kind of went from looking at number of creators, number of episodes, to what is a commercially viable metric here? So, does that mean, is revenue your North Star now?
Julia: Revenue is definitely very important, a-and it is so, for our creators, because majority… We have, of course, people who just want to try, the platform and express themselves creatively.
There are quite a few of those. But lots of people, obviously are looking to become sustainable as content creators, and this is very hard, increasingly so now. Even if you are very popular, you oftentimes really cannot generate revenue. And as Dorian is unlocking, so this at very different level with our pat-patrons, supporting creators and making creation succ-uh, s-successful and sustainable, I think that this is where, what creators are looking for.
They are looking for a sustainable income because you can create beautiful art for so long as a passion project, but if you constantly have to struggle and cannot really focus on this, you cannot grow and improve your craft. And when we see creators not worrying about, what they're gonna eat tomorrow they definitely can become much better and much more professional as game creators.
And this is what the industry needs. We need profitable games right now.
Kalie: I love what you said about improving your craft, and we touched on this data-driven perspective when we talked briefly about your background in free-to-play games. So, I know that you've said before that in some cases there are, in a Dorian game, there's up to 100 versions of one episode, and I believe that's based on the data that you provide creators.
I'd love to talk a little bit more about what that iteration loop looks like for the creator and what do you have to do as a platform to make that possible?
Julia: So that was by design. In order to democratize free-to-play game creation, you've got to figure out how to mimic a professional studio process.
So the idea from the very beginning between me and Jordan, our CTO, my co-founder, was, okay, how can we democratize creation of free-to-play games, not any games, because his background is also mostly mobile free to play. Usually it would be it's, it's team of multiple people, right? You've got, apart from writer and artist, you've got engineers, you've got designers, you've got analysts, and then you would usually A/B test the hell out of your free-to-play game to figure out where to monetize, what is the pricing, what should be different.
Like, what is the level design? What is the economy? And we m- made it so that our creators can see their data in a very accessible format, and for free. Once your game is out, you are going to see how many players started playing your episode, how many finished, so basically completion rate. You will be able to see where players spend money, what is the conversion rate at those monetization points what is approximate revenues that you generate from those, how many people landed on each monetization point.
Point, and you can definitely learn a lot out of this, both business-wise and creatively. As an example, if you, for example, create multiple,, character storylines where you can level up multiple characters, this, adds to a lot of writing, and writing content is obviously time-consuming. So, for example, if certain storyline doesn't get any traction, you might decide, as an example, to kill off this character.
And th-this can be an interesting creative outcome, right? But then you definitely, as you look at all of this data, you definitely become better, and that's the reason why early episodes in every successful game usually have dozens, if not over hundred of the versions of the first episode, so that you can retain as many players as early as possible because obviously first, second episode really matter for your entire performance.
And as creators do this, they become so much better. They can upload new versions and A/B test them without having to do a new build. Sometimes, early on, they do this every day. Imagine how much faster you as a solo person controlling the whole process, how much faster you become good at your craft compared to even optimized professional team process where some information is still siloed.
I like to say that a control fix do make some of the best games on Doriane because they can control the entire process, and if they hold their vision really close to heart, and they can understand the whole process that I described solo, those make some of the strongest games because the vision is not diluted by the team.
Kalie: Yeah. And I wanna talk about the makeup of the players and then also creators. I know that you have-- your platform is majority women. Do you have stats that you could share?
Julia: Absolutely. So, on the creator side, we have 90% female and queer creators. And then on the fandom side, it's very similar.
It's close to 90% women, and about 60% are Gen Z women, so it would be the sweet spot is 18 to 25 And that's a fantastic audience to work with because they are usually not into kids games anymore. And then they're not served very well by the industry because while there are quite a few games for women, especially on mobile, those tend, the most successful ones usually tend to skew a little older, whereas this audience is one of the least served in games.
And then as they explore, sorry, they explore their fantasies and their sexuality, they are also looking for more agency because this age group is very fluid in how they perceive, sexuality and, fantasies around this, and this is where games serves them better than linear narratives where you are locked with one storyline, one love interest, whatever this is.
Kalie: So, they're a very underserved market, which in some ways feels crazy because they're also a very engaged market. And I know we had lots of conversations in our prep call of how the games industry is, isn't doing themselves any favors reaching this audience. You shared a story with me about, uh, about...
I'll, I'll let you tell it if you're open to it, about a conversation you had regarding, are women gamers mainstream?
Julia: Yeah, so the story was that someone told me that they're currently serving games audien- oh, sorry, someone told me that they're currently serving a female audience, but they want to go mainstream.
And I found it very peculiar because women are half of the population and that was a mobile game and app developer, so especially on mobile gamers are 50, at least 50% women, right? So, I think that first of all, you need to know who your target audience is. Of course, there are great examples of generalist apps and games in entertainment, but generally speaking, still, you serve certain group betters than others.
And then, women being... Like, th- there's this perception that female audience is smaller than it actually is. But it's massive. It's underserved. There are so many opportunities, and when you know who your target audience is, you're likely gonna get more engaged audience and you're likely to serve them better.
And especially considering that most of the games industry is dominated by male developers working for m- skewing male games for male gaze, I think that saying that women are not, like, niche is still a huge misconception.
Kalie: Absolutely. I also wanna talk about niche fandoms that aren't so niche. So, I think a perfect example of this is Shark Date, which I mentioned at the top.
So, it's a dating sim about a humanoid ro- a humanoid shark, and it's built by a solo developer, and it has more than a million fans. I wanna hear from your perspective why that game works and what kind of the sweet spot is between niche communities and mainstream.
Julia: I think that as internet is getting more rather than less fragmented, right, we've got fandoms living everywhere, and there is definitely, you're right, there is a sweet spot where, like, it's big enough to be a great market, but in the same, not big enough to be, like, disengaged and diluted.
And this is fantastic for generally for UGC accretion and for UGC games because obviously the advantage of a platform like Dorian is that you can make something faster with smaller budget. You can experiment faster, and you do not have to fundraise for this. And this means that you can reach fandoms that a bigger studio that is working with a big budget just can not know how to first of all, they would consider this too niche, and second of all, they often wouldn't have this genuine connection.
So I think that a good example would be TikTok, where if you are using TikTok, your feed is gonna be very different from my feed, even when we are relatively close demographic. If we're totally different demographic, it's gonna be even more different, but whenever I look at,, our feeds with my close friends- friends, I would always see a huge difference.
So, this is similar that you are going to have different people wanting different things, and then they would have different fantasies. So, there is dual benefit here. First of all, you can get a fan become a great game creator. Rose Magpie, a Shark Bait creator, is a fantastic example. They understood this hyper-obsession.
They understand the fantasy. They are great at world-building. They're also cosplayers, or they, they're fantastic at the character design. And they really hit the spot for this fandom that nobody else could, because they're so connected to this fandom. And then the second benefit is agency and choice within the game.
I did mention that maybe if it's, like, too niche of a storyline, you might want to kill off the character. But at the same time, sometimes we see that the le- least,, mainstream character out of a selection of characters might get fewer players, but the most engaged players and the, the highest paying players because they appreciate feeling seen and represented, and they might...
Basically, the patronage per player would be the highest out of all com- especially compared to mainstream. So again, you can serve smaller fandom, smaller group really well and make them feel seen and understood like nowhere else.
Kalie: That's a great answer. I also feel like gaming, and I'd love to hear your take on this too, I feel like gaming's missing the mark even when it comes to more mainstream cultural touch points.
Like, so romantasy is exploding in, like, BookTok on TikTok, right? I, I, I know everyone's algorithm is different, but, like, I'm getting fed, and actually everyone I know in the demographic of women in their 30s is getting fed BookTok content. Why do you think the games industry has been so slow to jump on these moments when I really think the cultural demand is obvious?
Julia: I think it possibly is because most of the studios just do not understand the audience that well. And of course, there is some companies or sm- like solo developers that they work in this direction. I have connected in the last year, have connected to a few women working on their games, inspired, very inspired by Love and Deep Space and its success.
But it's definitely still very much a minority. And then there is a problem of, getting funding, so that's something that Dorian is solving. Then generally speaking, funding is drying out in games, and then this particular direction, again, is very much misunderstood because checks are usually signed by, male res- male investors, male VCs.
And again, this is not to say that there is anything wrong with male investors. It's more that we need more women investors understanding the space. But it's very unlikely to happen. It's just, I guess, wishful thinking in current market. So I think that it's just lack of understanding and lack of re- , representation in the industry, but that's something that I'm very, very passionate about and I'm working to solve because we're building an ecosystem where people can build successful games without fundraising, uh, build profitable, re- real profitable businesses.
And I think that this can solve bigger problems in the industry, hopefully by bringing better returns. The studio's growing organically and growing quite fast, bringing new voices to the industry and hopefully bringing new fandoms. Because as I mentioned, we're tr- as we're trying to convert webcomic creators into game creators, we are also seeing increasing interest from webcomic fans following these creators into game and appreciating what games can give them as a medium.
Kalie: Are you seeing the industry, and by that I maybe mean a games VC, do you see people being more open to investing in these kind of studios because the micro drama space has heated up so much? Have, have you seen kind of the crossover between investor interest in micro drama space overall kind of bleeding into games VC?
Julia: I think that we are s- definitely going to see a lot of shift in how anything gets funded. We're at, at a point when a lot of changes are happening. Different ways to fund your work are emerging, but we have to prove that this works for everyone's benefit because as an industry, we need to demonstrate returns so that there are different ways to fund your work.
But I think that, as we are seeing success cases and what I'm seeing happening right now, in particular i-in Roblox, I think that Roblox is actually generating success cases and returns beyond any expectation when it would be similar situation, but for a more mature platform. It's a solo developer demonstrating phenomenal profitability and in some cases M&A, outcomes that are fantastic.
Investors are definitely paying more attention. Still catching up because as someone who is building a UGC games platform, I can definitely say is that whatever the audience, whatever the space, it doesn't have to be, female. For most people, for most grown-ups, it's hard to understand how to deal with this.
But as we are, Euroblocks and Dorian generating the successful case studies, people are paying attention and catching up, and there are more and more conversations. Um, we connected because of WorldBuilder Summit that happened last week. That was one of the best events I attended in a while because of the energy.
And, um, people who are new to the industry, who understand their niche, who have real engagement, and they're, they're unaware about what is going on in the rest of the industry. Very optimistic fast learners. It's, it's fantastic to see this. And I can-- I could see some total newbies in the industry and also very experienced and professional people building, let's say, on Roblox, um, and some on Dorian as well.
Dorian presentation was actually great at WorldBuilder Summit. They learn so fast because of what UGC games platforms can offer, and that's truly exciting compared to Is the rest of the industry where the growth has slowed down. UGC games is definitely one of the bright spots and pockets of growth happening right now.
Kalie: I completely agree. At GDC, same thing, that the, the only bright s- one of very few bright spots was all about UGC. So, this is, I think, a perfect way to dive deeper into the creators and the creator economy and your platform strategy. So, can you start by walking us through the economics from a creator's perspective?
So, someone shows up tomorrow maybe as a webcomic artist with a few thousand followers. What does the path actually look like from first sketch to a profitable game, and how long does that typically take?
Julia: It's still, it still depends on a creator. But I think that... So, we have a lot of templates shared with creators.
We have a lot of materials. We have benchmarks that creators get, and we are obviously trying to help them streamline their journey from the first experiment to success. So I would say that people who take this seriously, which is a lot of our creators, do get to meaningful numbers in their first year, meaning, like, from the day when they register their account to the end of the first 12 months.
Oftentimes, they can generate, they can build games that generate, let's say, a low six figures in this timeframe, which I think is very fast. And then, I find that usually it's great to build more than one game and have a portfolio of games, because if someone likes your games, likes your art style, or likes your storytelling style, they will likely check out multiple of your games, and they will play many of your games.
So, the discovery works quite well if you have a profile and multiple games in there, and it definitely helps you grow significantly if you build a portfolio. And then, the beauty of the medium is that you can try multiple, what we call, pilots early on. You will be able to see your data very quickly.
We recommend experimenting with multiple pilots and then, once you see something working, and getting good engagement data, people can continue. So, the beauty is that pilot will take you a few days. We recommend to just ship things as fast as possible and learn as you go, as opposed to trying to polish for months and months and then not learn throughout.
Kalie: So, I, I wanna jump in here 'cause I think this is really interesting. Like, you have very much the startup mentality, move fast, break things, iterate. But in my experience when I work with creators, they're, they're artists, and it's a very different mindset. It's like they have a vision in mind, they wanna create it, and they want it to be perfect before shipping.
Have you noticed that? And how do you... h-how do you coach creators through that mindset shift?
Julia: They, it, it does happen. People are all different, obviously. People are different, and everyone has their own style. It's, it can be both extremes, a very experimental mindset and very polished perfectionist mindset, and everything in between.
But I think that for creators to see, first of all, they want to see their data. That's exciting. They can ship something quickly, so that's, like, low barrier to ship. They would usually see is that top creators did have quite a few experiments, like pilots that they shift before their big break.
So, this helps with the culture of trying things out. People who are shipping a lot of Tik- TikTok or Instagram posts tend to be better at this. And then I think majority of the people, once they understand that compared to a book or a comic, they need to let go of control and give control to players.
People really appreciate this once they make the switch. We had a fantastic discussion recently with one of the potential IP licensing partners, where their team is used to protect big productions with very big budgets. And they were fascinated to hear that actually in the game you have to Really go with your fans and see what your fans are doing, and you do not have to have this, like, one perfect vision where you tell a player, a user, a consumer how it's gonna go.
You can have branching storytelling, especially traditional writers, traditional media writers, right? They're like, "I have to have this, like, perfect vision that, I know from the beginning to end how it's gonna go." In the case of a game, it's gonna go differently for different players if you designed well.
And as you work with your players and you look at engagement data, your vision is definitely gonna change, 100% guarantee it, it's gonna change. And the more you lean into this, the more liberating it, this mindset is because games are nonlinear medium, and because games give agency to your players. And this is actually easier to write for a game than to write for, say, a show.
Kalie: Okay, absolutely. I do think one other difference between shows or micro dramas than games that I'd like to touch on briefly is how accepting the community is when it comes to AI. So, I, I know I cited The New Yorker article at the top of this episode, but in it, ReelShort has said it plans to replace 75% of human actors with AI for its Chinese titles.
Dina, I know your community feels the exact opposite of that. What do you make of that divergence, and what does it say about who's on your platform?
Julia: I think that the beauty of UGC content is on any platform. I would like to bring TikTok again. People connect to creators. Even though, on Dorian, creators are building the worlds, the, the worlds that are independent from the creator personality oftentimes, you can very much see creator's voice and style and humanity through Dorian games more so than, let's say, studio-produced games that do not have a one distinct voice as a creator, which sometimes still happens at studio games, but less so than on Dorian.
And because of this, fans appreciate human art very much so compared to AI. Now, as a platform, it's our goal to give creators everything that they need to succeed, and they can also decide which tools they would use outside of Dorian. But we did see is that when it's recognizable human art style, people connect with this much more than something that is AI-made.
And again, you cannot be sure, but sometimes fans, like you can-- there is still s-something about AI art in many cases that you can recognize even if you cannot prove, right? So, fans react the worst to this because they feel that the reason why they're on Dorian is because they want to connect with creators, because they want this true, authentic, creative voice and style that they love.
And they do not care for too much polish. They do not necessarily care for this, like, studio production level, but they care about the creator. And I do like to compare this to in fashion, to fast fashion versus true artisans and, brands that craft their items much more. It's very different economics, and fast fashion companies can be phenomenally successful.
But I see Dorian becoming more of a place where people see themselves as artisan, artists, and they see themselves as through, like, they, they take a lot of pride in their craft, and they have this very human element versus fast fashion of AI. And I think that since fans recognize it and appreciate it, that's great.
Artists love making art. They do this anyway. They would produce their art whether or not they are paid for this. But when they can turn this into su-a sustainable income on Dorian and it's compulsion for them to create, it's great that they do so from scratch. There is definitely some magic in it
Kalie: I think the analogy between fast fashion and artisan fashion is a perfect example here.
Uh, we only have about 10 minutes left, so I wanna get into some quick questions. What has been your hardest scaling challenge?
Julia: I think that it's for a platform. We're building a marketplace, and this is very different from building a game studio, a very different problem, and very few examples apart from Roblox of how to do this.
And with Roblox, we know how many years it took to get anywhere, and it's n- not uncommon for any UGC, especially games platform. So, balancing out two sides, fans and creators, so basically demand and supply, is a challenge because, you have to take care of both. You have to provide those creators with something that they can use to build a success.
You have to constantly... This goal is constantly shifting. What is a success? What fans want? What are the trends? And then making sure that fans also is there for creators for, for, for creators to be motivated to create, they need fans. So, balancing this out is not, not of, for a faint of heart, for sure.
And this catch-22 is a constant challenge for a platform, especially with this level of complexity. When it's not making just videos, for example, it's making full-fledged games.
Kalie: So now I wanna talk a little bit about what's next for Dorian. So, you've said that your hope is that the next billion-dollar IP for Gen Z women gets built on Dorian.
What would have to be true for that to happen, and how close are you to that goal?
Julia: We are very excited to see more and more complex games on the platform. The platform now supports no-coding creation of very sophisticated games. We're approaching feature parity of what you can build in Dorian with Love and Deep Space.
We're not quite there yet, but it's a billion-dollar game. And then, of course, as, uh, the toolset is so sophisticated, creators can make a lot of variations of that. You-- I'm not suggesting that you just should Try to copy a lot of Deep Space, because I don't think that straight copying is gonna work.
You need to find your angle as a creator. But as we are supporting more complexity, we're also seeing interest from more and more exciting creators. First of all, there is a huge community of fans of loving Deep Space amongst artists who are making fan art, amongst cosplayers, and these are some of the best people to tap into the fandoms when they're making fan art of loving Deep Space or cosplay loving Deep Space, and just have their own vision built on those experiences with those fandoms.
We work with quite a few new creators coming from these fandoms with millions of followers joining Dorian to build games with deeper RPG elements, with more interesting, relationship, systems. You can build some things that would be very similar to complexity of Baldur's Gate 3 relationships on Dorian.
And there are a few projects working in this direction. There is nothing yet that fully adopts all of the features that we have built in the last year, but you can build complex relationship systems. You can add very interesting RPG mechanics. You can build deep leve- leveling systems. You can combine and now idle animations, a video of just static art.
You can make fully animated game, fully video game. You can build something like Bandersnatch, for example, or, but m- with more mechanics. So, you can combine so many mediums and elements on the platform that I'm hoping to see more in this direction. RPG is definitely something that I'm super excited about.
We've got a person like, for example, Ryan Kaufman, who used to be narrative director at Telltale for many years working on Dorian. So, we have really exciting creators coming from, all walks of life, and different experience levels. And as usual with UGC, you do not know who is gonna be the next big hit maker.
They can be someone who is a cosplayer with millions, millions of followers. They can be someone who is no name, totally h-homegrown. They can be some-someone coming from the industry who doesn't see opportunities in the industry elsewhere and just wants to bet on themselves and build their own IP, based on previous experience.
But definitely more and more creators are joining, and there is lots you can do, and I hope that we will see the next big hits for s- especially for this demographic coming from Doriane.
Kalie: That's really exciting. So, with the new mechanics, like the RPG mechanics, are you also actively targeting different types of fandom, you know, outside the romanticy or the dating sims, or are you still staying true to those categories?
Julia: We definitely see that one of the biggest motivations for the audience is developing relationships with characters. It's,... We tend to see very character-centric motivation and your fictional relationships being centered as is. That's true across the whole BookTok and romantic space, right? And Doriane just adds more depth and interactivity to this.
And then if we look at, say, Love and Deep Space, this is still true that the main motivation, despite this being quite a core game, the main motivation is storytelling. So, I think I am big believer that if you want to build an iconic world, iconic characters, like let's say Baldur's Gate 3 and Astarion, that drives so much fantasies, fan art attention for years.
You need to make sure that storyline is central, and it's important for building such an iconic IP versus mechanic-centric first and then slapping storyline onto this, like many mobile games are doing. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic businesses, but if you want iconic IP, iconic storyline it needs to be, the center of your attention.
And Dorian is perfect platform for this because you can also learn how to build iconic characters, iconic storylines so much quicker and understand your fans deeper than anywhere else. So, I think that this is still gonna be a center of the player attention for the foreseeable future, but of course, DApps and mechanics adds to this.
And as in any great game design, you need to start more casual and go more core as your players make progress in the game.
Kalie: And I have one final question for you. When you imagine Dorian in 10 years, what does the platform look like, and what do you hope it's meant to the creators and the fans who've built it with you?
Julia: We would like to be known as the biggest, female first fandoms platform out there, especially for interactive experiences. I think that this market is so big and so misunderstood that there is a huge opportunity to grow. I would like everyone who identifies as a storyteller to be on Dorian and to tap into our no-coding ecosystem.
I would like us to make sure that creators have everything that they need to build fantastic experiences and to also, make it sustainable, become great at this, and be able to focus on creating and us trying to solve the entire ecosystem around this. Like, for example, we just announced a partnership with Creator Access Network, led by Avi Gandhi, who's been a creator economy voice for many, many years.
He started at WME. He was head of creators at Patreon, and now he created this membership network where for a tiny fee, annual fee, you can access a lot of- deals and offerings from Creator for accounting services, legal services, even health insurance, which is a huge problem for creators in the US. So basically, thousands and thousands of dollars in potential savings and deals.
Doriane just joined this with our own offer. So, if you want to start on Doriane today, join Cannes for... It's $100 per year. That's it, and you will get access to our special offer to earn 100% of your first $10,000 in the first, one- 120 days since joining. So, it's a potentially a significant upside for new creators.
That's just one example of us trying to solve problems for the creative ecosystem. But my goal is to make sure that creators can create successfully, and Doriane is the platform for this female first vertical, whatever they want to do, and our commitment is to always add more creative tools and opportunities for sale.
Kalie: Well, Julia, thank you so much for sharing your vision and your learnings with us at the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I look forward to continuing to watch your journey. Thank you.
Julia: Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.
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