One of UEFN's biggest strengths is that it is a melting pot of intellectual property. Jeremy Pedron, Lead Game Designer at JOGO Studios, calls it “a vast childhood playroom”, a place where you can combine playing with Batman while also playing with Legos. As creative costs go down to zero, the modern gaming market is undergoing a transformation in how IP is created. In summary, IP has never been more adaptable.

Host, Alexandra Takei, Director at Ruckus Games, sits down with Kevin Mariano, CEO of Future Trash, and Jeremy to discuss how building IP for gaming today differs from the past. They explore two distinct strategies, one focused on establishing unique art style and character design, and the other centered around character development and lore — and how both studios utilize UEFN to their advantage. The conversation also addresses the implications of transferring IP off the platform and what limitations a UGC-native brand and IP might face. For further insights into JOGO and the Fortnite Creative Economics system, be sure to listen to our other episode here.

We’d also like to thank Overwolf for making this episode possible! Whether you're a gamer, creator, or game studio, Overwolf is the ultimate destination for integrating UGC in games! You can check out all Overwolf has to offer at https://www.overwolf.com/.

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Alexandra: Hello. What's up, everyone? And welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Alex, and this is the interview and insight segment. So, when we think of intellectual property in games and movies, we might recall some of the biggest tent poles — Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Warcraft, Harry Potter, Call of Duty, Mario, Pokémon, and many others. Many of these IPs are created in house and with intention. They start with a core team, a world, or a story, or characters. There is canon and there is not canon. Canon being what the original creator says is true about this world, and off canon being the things that are not officially approved by the original creative team.

These companies and artists go to great lengths to protect their IP, not only because of the business rationale, but also because of what these IPs stand for, and how they meld with the rest of the world. But today, in the modern gaming industry, an interesting phenomena is happening. As creation costs go down to zero, concomitant with that is a restructuring of how IP gets created and where IP comes from.

IP is coming from unexpectedly weird origins. Think Skibbity Toilet or Bored Apes, which originally began as an NFT collection and has sprawled into the YugaLabs empire, which is almost impossible to describe to anyone who's already not in the culture of it. And so today we're going to talk about modern 2024 components of building IP and whether they're different from the way that we would attack building an iconic IP in the past.

Hope that after today, everyone has a better idea of how IP is birthed in the modern era of video games. And so I've got two guests on air who are tackling this in different ways, but both within UEFN. My first guest is Jeremy Pedron, a lead game designer at Jogo Studios. Jogo builds games inside UEFN and Fortnite Creative.

They're an incredibly popular super studio on UEFN, and their team includes Typical Gamer and Mustard Plays. And they put out some very popular maps, such as, Super Red vs. Blue. It's my pleasure to welcome Jeremy to the pod.

Jeremy: Hi, how we all doing? Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and I'm really excited to talk about this topic in particular.

Alexandra: Awesome. Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on an audience. Also, if you're interested in learning more about Jogo and Fort, Fortnight Creative Economics, specifically shout out to my homie, David Haler, who has had Mustard Plays on the show before, and that will be linked in the show notes. My second guest is Kevin Marciano, founder and CEO of Future Trash, a new studio that just raised 5 million seed funding led by TIRTA and General Catalyst.

They're pursuing a slightly different approach than JOGO, but I won't spoil the fun. I'm gonna have Kevin tell us all about it on the episode. Welcome to the pod, Kevin.

Kevin: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to dive into a topic that we're deeply passionate about. Awesome.

Alexandra: Yeah, it's also really good to reconnect and see your project again.

Always love the art style and we're gonna talk about that later as it pertains to IP, but really cool. All right guys, so it's good to have you both on air today, and I'd love for you to tell the audience a little bit about yourselves, specifically, from Kevin. I'd love to hear why you founded Future Trash and tell me about the journey that you've been on so far. From Jeremy, I'd love to hear about what brought you to JOGO and I'd also love to know what the best thing is about being a game designer inside UFN is, and the worst thing about being a game designer inside UFN is. Kevin, how about you kick us off?

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I founded Future Trash alongside my co-founders, Nate, Scott, and Seb, all anchored around our this flagship IP called Foad. It started with a character design from Scott, coupled with some really cool tech built in UE five from Nate it, and then circled around, you know, what can we do with this IP and thinking about what distribution platforms exist out there.

And so, we formed Future Trash with the intention of identifying opportunities to cultivate and incubate original IP in unconventional places, and that quickly brought us to user generated content platforms and specifically UEFN was the best fit for us and what we were trying to accomplish. So we're really excited to be building in the space. Have been, you know, extremely inspired by the results and the impact that we've been able to make in such a short period of time, and I really see this as the beginning of a very long marathon of continuing to cultivate original IP on the platform.

Alexandra: Awesome. Jeremy?

Jeremy: Yeah, for me, you know, I've just been, I've been a content creator inside of the ecosystem for quite a while, just consuming Fortnite content, creating YouTube videos and streaming all that good stuff and, just a highly creative through and through. And so. Uh, when Fortnite was playing around with the concept of, like, being able to create, you know, worlds inside of their space, I jumped into it.

Originally, it started off really, really poorly, though, because, you know, creative was, like, a space where you couldn't undo, there was no undo button, you could, like, destroy a piece of a build and your entire project would fall to its, you know, and so I was like, you know, I'm not going to jump into it just then.

And then, you know, UEFN came out where they were, they're trying to bridge this, you know, unreal, the unreal engine, and UEFN, they're trying to find this middle ground. And I was intrigued. So I started building, started making maps and using my experience of understanding where players are in the ecosystem and trying to, you know, give them something a few steps in a direction.

I would want to take them and found a lot of success. And so, kind of rode that train for a little bit, but realized I also had limitations as a as somebody who is doing everything and I was starting to look for a team that. Kind of saw the vision of UEFN and its capacity and where it could go.

You know, it's in its infancy, but like where it will be in its stride a few years from now is going to be insane. And so I wanted to find a team that also saw that vision and wanted to work together to making even bigger and better things that I wouldn't be able to do by myself in a timely manner. And so, yeah, striking that balance of being able to you.

Do things quickly is where working with Yuga has been so fantastic, right? Because, we can, we can divide and conquer, and so being a game designer is really fun in that respect because I get to, you know, I have a firm knowledge of where the player base is and then I can try to inch. Them to a new place that we want UEFN to be in for, you know, the betterment of gaming as a whole not just as a battle royale and so that's probably my favorite thing is that I get to kind of make that happen push the UEFN space in a direction that I would like to see it go. And then one of the worst things is just the reality that like, how much time we have to do said things like you could come up with a really great concept and deliver on it too late, you know, in U G C things move so quickly.

And so taking old mentality of game development and trying to shove it into UGC isn't as helpful. You can be as longterm, but they're actually, we have to think in shorter windows and be a little bit quicker to capitalize on opportunities. So that's one of the shortcomings of game design is trying to find that balance of how much is too much and how much is too less. Right?

Alexandra: Yeah, that definitely makes a lot of sense. Definitely really different because in, you know, in a normal environment, you'd have a lot more time to think about whether or not you should implement something. And so I just want to actually just before we move on to talking a little bit about Kevin, I want to kind of I want you to give an overview of what the, what foes are in general, but Jeremy, could you just give an overview of what JOGO studios is?

It sounds like you were already a content creator and you were like, Hey, I want to join a bigger team. Cause before I was doing it all by myself and you guys call yourself a super studio, but just give an overview of like what Jogo studios specifically does in case our audience is not familiar. Take care.

Jeremy: Yeah, so Jogo is just, kind of firmly rooted inside of the UGC platform that Fortnite's created. And it's a bunch of content creators that came together to make really cool games that we wanted to make from playing the game. You play the game and you're like, I just wish it was this way. Now we have the ability to do that.

And so we've kind of put a team together. I know people use the term Super Studio. I like the term Triple B. All right, you know, you had triple A where it's like they spend five years on something. We're like triple B, where it's like we're not spending five years, but we're, you know, spending a few months to create something that is sets ourselves apart inside of the ecosystem where you know the difference just based off of playing it.

So yeah, that's kind of how we got to where we are, and now we're just like managing a bunch of different IPs of our own. And then we're also working with incredible creators. Some we can talk about today and some we can't, but we'll be able to talk about it a little later.

Alexandra: Okay. Got it. All right.

So triple B not to be confused with triple I or double a or triple a, or a, or. I love it. It's like, I love the video game industry. Cause it's funny. Cause people are like, think that it's like a like a bond. It's like a triple A secured bond, but it's just like games. It's like on here. We don't know.

But you guys basically build your own games. And then you also work with other creators to help build their IPs in their in your own studio. And you guys are kind of pushing forward a lot of content really rapidly. Think of it kind of as like mini experiences inside UEFA

Jeremy: Definitely in hopes that as it grows, that they can be more full experiences, not just mini, right?

Like I think that that assumption is part of the hardship of UEFN and it's growing stage is that like people assume that they are going to go to these games and it's going to be a mini game. It's not going to be a real game. And I think that's where we're trying to push against that as much as possible.

Like, no, you can actually spend more time in our game. If you really wanted to then any of the, you know, any other game that you play and so that shift will eventually happen. I know Kevin probably is pushing that as well. It's like we want this to be the home of where you can spend all of your time, and you could come just for it but there's a lot of limitations with that in its current state.

Alexandra: Okay, so we understand a little bit about JOGO. Kevin, explain to me the Foads, what do I do with the Foads? What are they?

Kevin: So Foads are these adorable anthropomorphic, explosive characters. I have one behind me here and as a photo, as a grenade, uh, what do you do? You explode. So a lot of, fun play patterns anchored around the destruction mechanic.

And what's interesting for us is like, you know, we actually started as a UE5 team, set out to build a competitive party game. We actually shipped a vertical slice that's available on Steam. If you request early access, it'll still let you right through, and we're still really proud of that, but we quickly learned the challenges of a self published indie title.

And, you know, we were trying to find, you know, what our direction was going to be. And, it was very serendipitously right, like the same month that March 2023, that that vertical size came out on scene. We got a thousand installs, you know, UEFN had come out, GDC 2023 had happened, and we took it, we actually at first saw it as an opportunity to, for and essentially free marketing.

We're like, Oh, let, you know, let's audit the tools. See if we can take all this, all these robust assets and characters and environments and see if they, we can bring them into UEFN. And we could, and the first game we launched was, kind of a MOBA type experience, kind of a defend your base kind of thing.

And we hit publish and we were on PC console switch, and it got played by like a few hundred thousand people. We're like, whoa, like we didn't, you know, spend a dollar in marketing and you know, we had, we, we, the, the platform did its job and got funneled players in granted, like, you know, that wasn't the game that was the right fit for the audience to like continue to find, uh, success in the discovery algorithms at scale.

But we saw this like, you know, the signal effect where 200, 000 people had now just interacted with and engaged with votes with our original characters, and then so that got the gears turning on, you know, how do we start to architect games, around what the fortnight player is expecting that also still reinforces our world, our storytelling, our mythology, our lore, our characters, and it's been really inspiring to see organic user generated content on YouTube of, you know, kids playing our games and reviewing them and making that subliminal connection between The FOADS you use calling out the name FOAD, a made up word that stands for Fully Operational Annihilation Devices, this kind of wacky acronym.

And so, from there we were just started iterating and, you know, kind of building fast and breaking things and we have a super efficient pipeline to, to continue creating these games and we're getting, I feel like we're getting closer and closer to finding our bullseye when it comes to a game that can find a core community at scale consistently awesome.

Alexandra: Yeah. And I think that the even just the fact that the foes are a bit iconographical, is really important and it will obviously inform some of our discussion later today around IP and so with those with those grounding introductions about future trash and foes and what JOGO is, I want to dive into our first topic, which is, you know, what is IP to the both of you?

What IP is traditionally and what it kind of is today. You just see is obviously kind of changing the traditional definition of I P. And I want to kind of compare and contrast it to what it has been defined as the past, you obviously can't really necessarily build something without knowing some of the pieces to construct it to some extent.

So to both of you and maybe Jeremy, you can kick us off. What is your definition of I P? And how does JOGO think about building strong I P?

Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think you can answer it in a lot of ways, honestly. but I think like IP to me is, is a symbol that represents something to someone like, and like for me, you know, Lego has always been, like, An IP that has really meant something to me, both like as a young age, you know, being very creative and, and being able to build things and, and, you know, like the, the symbol of the brick, the symbol of the Lego man has always been something that like sticks with me.

I've got Lego stuff in my office. I'm a grown ass man, you know? But like the, the reality for me is, In creating IPS is like to create something that is valuable to our audience wherever they are. And so that would be different depending on where we're sticking our claim. You know, like it would look different if we did that in Roblox or if we did that in Fortnight.

And so to me, I'm always thinking about how, how does Transcribed How do these characters, how do these symbols represent something to the people that are playing it so that it becomes a more valuable experience to them? You can strike more emotion, you can strike more, you know, experience, for people to jump in and want to be a part of these places.

And so if you're just kind of like striking randomly, I think it's harder in that respect. And I think like Fortnight players are unique breed. And as the U. G. C. Platform grows, hopefully we see less combat centric experiences that can thrive in the space. Um, but they kind of know what they want.

And, so we had to really ask the question of, like, where are four night players? Where are they? And then what do we want to create? Because we took stabs at things and it didn't work. And now we're trying to be more strategic of like where they are and where we want to take them and just take them two steps.

Don't take them five or 20 or whatever, but just take two and then slowly we'll be able to bridge, Our desires of what we want for IPs, uh, with where the player base actually is, and so striking that balance is, it's hard. It's, and it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of like understanding your player base, and I think we're all going to be learning that, like no matter where you're at in the process, we're all going to be learning that together over, over this time as, as it grows.

Kevin: Yeah, like kind of the, the tenants of IP to me are really timeless storytelling, uh, visual language, and values. And those things coming together, kind of like transcend any singular piece of content, whether it's a movie or a TV show or a game and it really becomes more, it becomes more of a lifestyle brand, more of a, an attitude and energy, and that's like the, the fundamental building blocks.

So for us, for Foad, you know, there's an element of, we always call it rebellious teen hangout from the nineties. Like that's kind of like the vibe that we're going for. And so it's like barely living room safe but or like, R rated minions kind of something we joke about sometimes.

And, and so yeah, so what we try to do is like, you know, how do we convey that through our gaming experiences and how do we create like a network effect? And we, we tie those experiences together, you know, sometimes more loosely, sometimes more acutely to create like kind of like this network effect of immersive, immersive games all where when you play one, a phone game, you instinctively know you're like, I'm in the phone universe and the sensibilities that we've kind of designed, we feel organically kind of overlap with fortnight's, sensibilities. So it's that's what made it really the right fit. But, but yeah, our goals are to really be an omni channel IP existing, you know, we see UEFN as the launchpad, but really want to create animated content, we want consumer products, whole licensing and merchandising strategy, but all that stems from the only, the only way that's successful is if people care about the characters and that's like what our kind of short, medium, long term goals look like.

Alexandra: Yeah, I heard like three pillars in there. I think you said it's an attitude, it's storytelling. And then what was the third one? Storytelling, visual language and values. And values. Okay. Yeah. Values being kind of maybe like the, the attitude. And yeah, I think that that's interesting because I think that, you know, in the more traditional format, you would typically break down IP as an art style.

So the visual language, like you said, environments, a world. So the world lore and the world building, and characters. And those things kind of stack up into potentially what we would classify IP as, and so it's interesting to hear about your two different approaches, you know, Jeremy, yours is more geared towards, like, what do people, what does people, what are people going to find fairly meaningful to them?

And then Kevin, you guys have this kind of like three pillar strategy about that. You've kind of built up that's particular for the food, the food universe. And so we've discussed at length, you know, or through snippets about why you guys chose to do this first and UEFN, and why not roadblocks and a bunch of other things.

But I'm curious about what about UEFN has been additive. Particularly about you, if and to building your IP versus another platform. Maybe Jeremy, I'll give it back to you to start off with that.

Jeremy: Yeah. I think the thing that's most exciting about U. E. F. N. Is just it. Well, Fortnight, I would say as a whole is, it's standing the test of time.

A lot of games, you know, will have a window, and fortnight has continually standard over time and it's continually innovating itself into, to higher levels of complexity. And by taking on a UGC space safe space, I feel like. They're the sky's the limit and I think like what's really exciting to me as a gamer is the work that they've done as a company to rally all these other Ips to one centralized space and allow us to play with them.

That is. Unheard of in the gaming industry, right? Like we have master chief Batman, you know, and Jinx from arcane all like hanging out together and then we get to build worlds that they get to cohabitate and I think like that value is. Absolutely additive like right and and like I always use this example as a kid.

I I'm just playing with my action figures and it doesn't matter. You know, like the IPS don't matter. Like I like my Batman can fight, you know, whoever I want like GI Joe and that in that world. It makes sense to me. And so four nights really done the same thing in trying to create a sandbox where everybody gets to play together.

And I think like that value is huge because you got Nike wanting to be a part of it, fashion, right? You've got like cars, like Porsche trying to get involved. Everybody's trying to get involved in this space. And so if you're able to kind of jump in early enough. You know, as you know, everything rises, you rise with it.

And so that's kind of been our overall strategy is like seeing Fortnite just never relentlessly, never give up on these endeavors, and, and them proving themselves time and time again. It's a safer bet for our company to be like founded in a space like this, rather than taking a shot elsewhere, especially with our experience and understanding of it over almost a decade of, of Fortnite's existence, like, you know, To us that, that's just a no brainer.

Kevin: Yeah. And from my perspective, you know, I want to echo Jeremy's view. It's, you know, being in a melting pot of IP is, is so cool. Real true manifestation of like a metaverse concept, right? Just today we actually launched a Foad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover Map. And like, you know, pretty unprecedented that that would have been possible. So the fact that this is, you know, kind of like a true sandbox to be able to build these experience and cohabitate with other IP is, is really, really exciting. And the other points to touch on just like the fidelity of the Unreal Engine or UEFN, then what you're able to accomplish in like the look of these game experiences with all of the back end infrastructure, architecture, all that stuff is figured out for you. So you can really focus on what matters most, which is the content that was really exciting.

And then the last thing, you know, it's still in its infancy, right? So we felt like there was a strong opportunity to have first mover advantage and be early and still early. You know, we're, you know, a little over a year and a half into it, you know, Roblox has been around for, what is it? 12, 13 years, maybe a little more.

And that market, you know, is really saturated. I think there's still awesome opportunities over there, but for us, just, factoring all those things together. Yeah. We felt like UEFN was the right fit.

Alexandra: Yeah. So it's, it's basically, I think that the UEFN has been additive because, you know, like Jeremy, you mentioned, there's basically just like this deep catalog of stuff that makes it like, kind of like a kid's like dream playroom where you've got like all these different IPs, this melting pot, Kevin, as you, as you also astutely pointed out. And there's also like this sense of the fact that Fortnite is a long lived, like committed community. Um, and I think that that's also something that's very different is that, you know, Games are today are being built alongside their community versus being, you know, in Lucasfilms lab somewhere, and then being distributed to the, to the world.

And after which the community basically fan fictions, it has all the fun they want with it, but then there's still that protective gateway of like, let's not let this happen to the core Star Wars universe. And so, you know, you guys have talked a little bit about again, like. You know how you even has been particularly additive to both of your studios, and I kind of maybe now want to double down into like the various approaches that you're taking because we've got like art style.

We've got environments. We've got world. We've got characters. We've got community, we got this deep roster of IP that's sitting inside the fortnight universe. And so, Kevin, I know that we'll come to you next, because I know that you're building a universe of foes that are very more unique, that are easily identifiable, but at Jogo, Jeremy, you guys are more oriented around building maps, what you are, what someone may misname as, minigames, but, you know, you hope that they're no longer mini in the future, and it looks a lot like Fortnite, like 100 percent like Fortnite, and so, Jeremy, how am I, as a user, supposed to identify that I'm playing a game, a JOGO game. Like, how am I supposed to know that?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think like, Fortnight players are like really people that play know what a fortnight element is and what isn't. So, like, I think one thing and having both me and Kevin on this, this podcast is like, we've tried to create experiences that.

Aren't necessarily identical to fortnight, you know, but they have fortnight isms in it, and I think like For us personally, I think we kind of want to be a miniature version of epic games in some respects where like we are applying similar formulas as them on a scale that's a little bit quicker, you know, and we can, we can kind of make something faster, and hopefully in a way that catches players that are playing the main experience can fall directly into our lap.

Because there is a unique similarity amongst, like, what they're creating, what we're creating. And so if we can create our own little universe of things that Epic isn't creating, but we see those needs and we, in the player base, If we create those things, players will come and so that overlap is actually kind of important to like some of our DNA, but also to, like I said, it's small steps.

It's not like massive steps of difference. And so, we're constantly experimenting with like. Does the Fortnite audience want something drastically different, or do they want, like, something that's familiar enough that is like, ooh, wait, I can't get this from Epic themselves. Wait, I'm gonna have to go to JOGO to play it as this character or as this legend.

We just created this series called Legends, and we're informing a lot of our other IPs around some of it because of the success of, like, People identifying with a character that we're making specifically in the world that they might, you know, have the background of or whatnot. And we're trying to diversify it enough to where we hopefully catch a lot of people, uh, like looking up to and being excited to be these legends.

And then from there we go, okay, so they like these characters. Now what's the lower right? Like, and then we take them another step of like, Oh, We start slowly feeding them in the direction that we want to take them. Because if we really, truly didn't have Fortnite in the equation, we would just go all in on like this idea and just completely create it.

But then where's the audience, right? Like to Kevin's point is like, where, where, where is the audience? If you just throw that on steam, you, you're hopeful, you know, but you can't be expectant of that. And so in some respects, you're tied to the mothership a little bit. And we want to be close enough to the mothership to where players are like, Ooh, like this is an experience that I can't have somewhere else.

But we're different enough to where you can identify, Ooh, I can't, I don't, I can't get that over there. So I have to come here to get it. And so that's kind of like how we've been moving forward at least in the last year and a half.

Kevin: And if I may, I just want to give credit to Jogo, for being really thoughtful and intelligent, with each game, do you release like, It does have that twist adds like, like you mentioned, like you, you don't want to alienate anyone.

You know what the Fortnite player wants, but then you also add, you know, that innovation, that extra inch by inch, we're going to get there where, you know, Fortnite is this robust ecosystem with tons of diverse, different, diverse gameplay. And I give you a lot of credit for being a part of like, you know, or being a leader in, in, in that change.

So, um, big fan, big fan of the content you guys put out. As well as, , that. The animated little spot that you put out on Twitter and probably other platforms, but that was super cool in terms of like that world building and start and seeding that storytelling, like, you know, really, really impressive.

Jeremy: Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate that.

Alexandra: Got it. And so I guess for, for you guys, it's a little bit more oriented towards narrative and characters. Those characters may look like they could just pop into Fortnite, cause you're probably building off the Lyra engine and they look like they're from Fortnite, but the stories and the things that you're doing with them and the experiences that people are having, being able to play are distinctly different in the sense that you feel that you are converting people for, or converting maybe.

Or, adding that they become not only Fortnite fans, but they're also JOGO Studio fans because of those experiences.

Jeremy: Absolutely, but not only that, like, we, we don't want to just grow a studio for the sake of growing a studio. We want to compete against Epic themselves one day, right? Like we're, we're not looking at like, Ooh, let's just try to like get as much market share amongst other, you know, UGC people.

We, we actually want to make a better game than Epic does. Like that's all, that's what we want. Like we want to go head to head with them and they want that, you know, they want UGC to, to, to come alive. And so our goals are much bigger. Beyond, you know, like these limitations that we currently have and we're open to, making those adjustments and making sure that we go past even fortnight themselves, right?

Like we're building things outside of the world of fortnight. So, so our players that like really connect with our IP can get, whatever a plushy, like I got a phone hoodie, and I was going to wear it today, but I decided to, but like the gear and the stuff, like, when fans are fans, they're fans.

Right. And so we want to, we want to make sure that we are also building things that they can have in their world at home and online. Right. Like both, both ends.

Alexandra: Yeah, that makes sense.

Kevin: I was just going to make one more comment too. And with like, you know, Fortnite is, you know, rapidly evolving, and more and more tools are becoming available to like, you know, build your community on the platform, right?

Whether follow a creator, and it's just really cool to think and inspiring to think that like, this is a new class of content creator where you can, you can really build a fandom, an audience, a community, people who are able to talk to each other, share ideas, and yeah, just find, you know, commonality anchored around different game experiences, whether they're, you know, really IP driven or not.

Just kind of making an observation on the platform, about the platform as a whole,

Jeremy: Yeah, it's like YouTube, right? Like, like Epic is trying to be Gaming YouTube, right? Like where like you, if you want to play any type of experience, you go to one place, uh, that's what they're. They're hoping for, I think that's their push here and we'll see, you know, if that, if they accomplish that and we have, you know, been with them on the ground floor, you can just only imagine the amount of success that you can have in this environment.

Alexandra: Got it. And yeah, maybe to the question around platform, Kevin, your strategy is a little bit different. There is an identifiable art style. That's, you know, hopefully to some extent instantly recognizable. I mean, I feel like I, at least I'm. Able to instantly recognize a foad. And we actually have a saying at my studio at ruckus that you need to be able to identify whether or not this is a ruckus games game within five seconds of looking at the art.

And I'm curious as to like, whether or not, what, what challenges UEFN presents when With visual and thematic limitations to basically being able to do that. Right. I think like one of the big, powerful things about IP is the visual aspect of that IP. It looks like Star Wars. It looks like Disney. It looks like Pokemon. Kevin, you kind of carved out this niche here where like the foes themselves are instantly identifiable, but how is your team thinking about that visual challenge? And how are you guys kind of like building your world and your characters to best kind of make use of what you have.

Kevin: It's a great question. I think that the biggest challenge is discoverability, right? So, like, right now, success in UEFN can only be defined at a very, very large volume of scale. If we found an audience of, you know, a few thousand people or something, like, you can't build a business around a small and that's just, you know, kind of how discovery algorithms work right now for our last game that we launched boom city, kind of this open world boss battler concept. There's a lot of people who really love that game. And, you know, our discord is really engaged with like hundreds of people who are waiting for new content, but it's simply like, you know, the, the signal is not enough in the discovery to get it out.

Continue serving it to more and more players to allow more funnel and to reach more people, but you know, it has great average play time, and all these metrics. So that's like been the biggest challenge. And I think that's just because, or it's a credit to like, you know, players expectations right now, a lot of players are there for Fortnite and Battle Royale derivative experiences.

Some people will come in and fall in love with the game. Some people will leave. And so just like finding ways to build community off platform and bring players in. That's something we're thinking a lot about. It's a really tough nut to crack. But that's been like, you know, more or less our biggest challenge is just like our games have these huge pops and then they just slowly drift out of discovery.

And so we're just trying to like hone in on exactly like where we need to improve from a metrics perspective to allow consistent, stable discovery, visibility to allow. More funnel of players.

Jeremy: Another difficult piece of this is, you know, there's legacy players in fortnight. You know, there's there's players that have been that are used to, like, for an example, like a pit map, right?

And it's like, It's just all they've known. It's just been at the top. It's always been at the top. They've liked it enough and it kind of like has a snowball effect already happening for it. And it's really hard for anybody that's new to crack into any of that because of just the, the, the years of support that these, you know, experiences have had.

And so I think what you guys are doing at Foad is like, is such a difficult task in general for everybody. But like, then, not only then, but to believe in your IP enough to keep pushing is huge and will serve you guys tons of value because Eventually, you know, I, I'm, I'm expecting that epic will, will notice that and eventually be like, give me a phone back blank.

Right. And then, like, you get immortalized and brought into the fold. And I, each of these people that have had these maps have been, had had a little bit of epic sprinkling in there. And I think, like, as we are trying to push The UGC two different, in different ways, Epic will value those things and hopefull, like honor the work, the hard work of, of doing this.

But there aren't very many people that do what you guys are doing. And it's a huge, huge, I'm so glad that you guys are in the space because you, I think you guys set a great example of what it's like to build an IP inside of the game. And I hope that more people. That aren't these legacy people, but that are like building these studios and building these games actually take that to heart because we need more of that and less of the legacy stuff.

Kevin: I appreciate that. It's really encouraging.

Alexandra: I want to kind of double down there in the art style being differentiated and being, you know, foes kind of like unique. Unique edge, right? I think one of the interesting things about IP and the core parts of it is also just consistency, right? Like I show up to a Disney movie and I know what to expect at Blizzard, for example, there was some pretty strict rules about what certain characters could do, could say, or what they, what they, what, what, what they even wear, um, clothing wise with the intent of like protecting the world. And you know, I kind of see the unreal, like, I mean, sorry, not unreal, the UEFN universe is kind of like this, like, Cacophony of like noise and color. And so, you know, Kevin, a question for you is also like, how do you keep The food brand intact. Let's just say that another creator wants to riff off of food, but like you set, you know, in the creative process at Pixar, for example, they, the world builder set the rules of the world.

Like foes talk or foes don't talk. Foes have two legs, not four legs, and what if you see a four legged phone? Does that like upset everybody? And so how are you guys thinking about like kind of the consistency of the phone universe as it pertains inside you, if, and where there is such flexibility and kind of like the rules of the world.

Kevin: It's a great question. We think about it a lot, we're of the philosophy of just letting of seeing the true power of you Like UGC within UGC like we want to make our photo assets available to anyone so they can make their own games However, they want we actually have started to roll out an affiliate developer program be other creators on the platform that we really respect and admire that we give access to all of our code all of our assets and say like Run with it.

Like, you know, let's we can brainstorm an idea. We figure out economics that work for the for the both of us. We can add our like kind of our signature touch, which is, you know, really comes with like you I VFX animation, all these like custom bells and whistles that give our experiences a lot of flavor.

Yeah, I think we're entering in that into that era where no longer are the gatekeepers of or even managing legacy evergreen IP, or they're starting to rethink, you know, how controlled they want to keep that I mean, well, as I mentioned earlier with Ninja Turtles, creating paramount creating a robust asset pack for creators to run wild with is super cool.

guardrails up. But ultimately, you get more value out of, you know, creators, developing, crafting their own experiences. So the IP can like live in the cultural zeitgeist, right? Like that's exciting. Your example at the top of the call with Skibbety Toilet, a remarkable case study of UGC IP, right? Like though the numbers that that content pulls in, dwarfs, every tentpole box office movie release that comes out every weekend.

 And not to mention a lot of that is driven by or a whole other element of that is the UGC of Skibity Twitter. I think that there's like 20 plus YouTube channels that also have 5 to 10 million or plus YouTube subscribers, pulling in crazy views. So, we're talking in the billions and billions of minutes of watch time on a monthly basis.

So I think, you want to be, you want to set some guardrails up. I mean, obviously nothing like explicitly crossing the line, you know, offensive, things like that, but we're of the mind of like, you know, everyone should be able to, to play in the same sandbox together and, you know, kind of craft their own experiences, leveraging that IP.

Alexandra: Interesting. Yeah. And I think also a lot of that folds into like, okay, so you guys created this thing, create some votes, right? You started out that way and then you kind of passing it off to, this, this community, right? And I think like community is probably a bigger part today of IP than it has ever been in the past.

And so. I guess maybe Jeremy, I would love to hear from you as well, How are you balancing community input, but yet maintaining a unique branded identity such that someone can say, yup, this is a Jogo game or like, yup, this is a phone. Like this is a future trash game kind of like where is the balance there between the guardrails of how your community relates to the brand?

That you're building, because in order for someone to know your brand, you obviously want it to be associated with the original creator to some extent.

Jeremy: Yeah, and honestly, I think like this piece is the reason why Jogo made the most sense to me is the community element, Typical Gamer, Mustard Plays, myself, all have been in Fortnite for a long time, and we've been cultivating these communities with these players for a very long time.

We love them. And we love Fortnite. We love them, you know? And so, naturally it made the most sense to be on a team that was content creator minded that could, you know, we could create an experience and then have the content to back it up and not have to rely on discover as much as we would need to, and that kind of ultimately has helped out in a lot of our success is, is because of that.

I think it's being able to brand your experiences to your community. Um, and so. By already having a pre existing community, it was just about onboarding, right? Like I'm doing this now I was, you know, streaming now I'm building these experiences. Come check them out, you know, like we built that trust already.

And so I think like when it comes to fostering that community, it's so valuable to your product. And when it comes to IPs, all we want to do is share it with them. And so we created this legends brand and we have story arcs for each of our characters, but they're kind of like side quests. Like if you play the game, you would never know, but if you really care, you could find it.

And so in our discord, we're like, Hey guys, like here's, here's some, some of our, you know, ideas what are yours, you know? And so our community has just been like, well, what if you created this legend? And what if you created that? And then like, we're riffing off of each other and it starts to be even more collaborative where we're like, that's a great idea.

And then when you put that stuff in the game, they're just just stoked. They're so happy. They're like, that's my idea, you know? And so, yeah, I think like we have tried to be as collaborative with our community as possible. We care a lot about them being just as involved with it as we are. We don't always take all of their advice, like, yeah.

But we do try to shout them out, and get them engaged and show them the places that we do take their feedback to heart. And, and they come alive with, with that type of stuff. So super valuable to us.

Alexandra: Keeping this as anonymous as possible, can you tell me example of a bad idea? One that you're like, nope, our universe doesn't do that.

Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, like, yeah. In fortnight, darkness is, is typically like less played experiences, like if, if things are like dark, and so we try it like a lot of times people like, yeah, but what if it was like, you're in this pitch black room, it's a whore, like, and all these different things were like.

Great idea. Not for the brand and that's okay. So like we try to orient ourself a little bit more to thumbnail friendly, like what is something that's clickable? What is something that is like something that causes you to want it? Engage with it. We try to stay there. And sometimes are, you know, some of the feedback we get is just like, you know, way out there.

And we're like, it's just like not a part of our how we operate our brand. And so, yeah, I think that's, that's probably a really quick example I could give you.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah. But that's also Oh, Go ahead, Kevin.

Kevin: Oh no, I was just going to make a comment that there's a whole podcast to be dedicated to the alchemy of the thumbnail, right?

Like that's a, I think that's a whole conversation.

Alexandra: Absolutely. Yeah, but it's interesting that that decision is actually driven by metric and game performance rather than like the artist's truth. Right? Like it's very different than being like, you know, um, from, you know, a double a game or triple a game.

That's like, no, no, no, no. Like this is our tone. We use this approved red and this approved green and like all of this kind of stuff, right? Like we want the tone to feel this way. And actually like the brightness or the darkness actually like as part of like the artistic truth of like the kind of thing that we're trying to communicate.

Yeah. But, and it sounds like there, that was an example of, well, we also, we just know that this mode won't be performant, and it won't be clicked on and won't be played, which is, which is kind of it, they're like slightly related, but not exactly the same, which is pretty interesting.

Jeremy: Alex, what's funny about this is like, we are making the bet that if Fortnite survived seven years.

They know what they're doing, right? And so we can use them as a case study for everything that we build as, as, you know, there's a little bit of trust in that of like, okay, you guys, whenever you do a thumbnail, it looks like this, this, this, this, this and this. Why would we make something that looks so different if people are coming to the game for that, we want us to look similar enough to where they want to come for us as well.

So, yeah, I think like we, we trust in epic a lot is like, we don't have a team that does like all of the amount of research that they do on why things are clicked and why things aren't, but we can trust that they do right and use some of that to our advantage.

Alexandra: Yeah, I know a lot of PMs at Epic and they have the information, I bet I would agree to probably follow the thumbnail, the thumbnail protocol, but that actually brings me to another interesting question.

And we're going to move on to like, you know, where, how do you take the IP out of Epic, right? Like outside UFN, and so it sounds like, you know, because if you're inside UFN, you're trying to build something that is performant to the platform. And I guess my question is like, you know, what if that, what if UFN stops serving your IP's needs?

Let's just say, Kevin, that you actually want the foes, they're very dark and they're very sad. And it's a very destructive, dark universe and you want it to like feel more like gritty. Right? And maybe your, your content won't be performing on UEFN, or there are strict limitations imposed. What's your guys like first strategy towards taking your IP off the platform?

Kevin: We have ambitions to create animated content, right? YouTube shorts and, and TikTok, um, you know, that's something that's important to us, , from like the kind of storytelling perspective. And, and yeah, like the, the, the goal of UEFN has always been a strategy of incubating brand awareness to eventually get off platform and launch our own game, that where we can control and, you know, own our own audience a bit better, you know, there are a lot of limitations in UEFN or even down to just not really knowing where our players are there, you know, any kind of demo information, all that stuff is held in a black box, and so that makes it really challenging as a developer to make informed decisions.

So our whole, what we're the, the puzzle we're trying to solve now is like, you know, how do you create that flywheel of UEFN experiences into owned and operated communities, whether it's on Twitter or Discord, etc. Cultivate that community and eventually start thinking about what the platform, what the off platform strategy looks like, whether that's in another UGC ecosystem or revisiting the steam standalone game. That's a bit of a question mark right now to see how things net out, but, but yeah, it's a, it's a big consideration and was a topic in a lot of my conversations with VCs on, quote unquote, platform risk,, at what point to, or if Epic changes the rules of the game at any point, like you're kind of vulnerable to that.

And I push back on that and say that a lot of people said the same thing about YouTube and, you know, if there's an audience there, if there's, you know, engaged, meaningful players, that's, that's always going to kind of be the priority.

Jeremy: Yeah. I think like, if a tool's a tool for what you're trying to do, you can use it as a tool.

I think, you know, UFN right now is, is a tool and it's working. There's times where I feel like this tool is less of a tool. It's like, I'm trying to build like a, a barnyard in your backyard, but only being able to use fruits as your like equipment, like it's like, it's going to be very difficult to do.

So I like, there are moments like that where it's like, Oh, wait a minute. Like. Like, for example, HUDs are just kind of like really limited in UEFN and every game in the history of all time, Oregon Trail included, has used crazy, you know, unique HUDs that give you the ability to help inform your player and all that stuff.

And I, I feel like we're just using silly, silly, you know, metrics for that inside of the, so you, so you're limited there and now you have to rethink, okay, well, how do I. Communicate how can this be a real game if you know, we're limited with those things. And so we can only take so much of that before it's like, oh, maybe there's another way, right?

Maybe there's another opportunity out there. And so we are very interested in finding our success period in the stories that we want to tell in the games we want to create. , we do think That like where fortnight is, is where we want to be, but we aren't opposed to, to trying out new things and learning like new platforms and taking that knowledge and either informing what we're doing or, you know, take it off and see how it succeeds elsewhere.

But like, as of right now, I think like we're, we're betting on epic because of the experience we have with them. But if, if they do, you know, stop serving us. We're not just going to roll over where we're going to find new avenues in which we can succeed.

Alexandra: Yeah. And then, we talked a little bit about there being kind of like these like loose, you know, handed it, handed over to the community, let them run with it.

Let's see what happens. Right? And that we discussed, actually in our, in our pre call that Epic doesn't touch the IP that's created inside UEFN, like you guys own it, but what steps are you taking to protect the IP from others? So like a lot of IP is basically building that moat and ownership and control, right?

So like the Disney crackdown of like Mickey Mouse, no, you can't use Mickey Mouse. What if someone decides to build a phone experience that is a standalone game that's just in Canada somewhere? How are you guys, I guess, thinking about the, you know, treasuring that IP, maybe specifically for you, Kevin, as well, since it's very much more, it's identifiable, right?

How are you protecting your IP and extending it?

Kevin: We take necessary precautions with trademark and copyright. You know, we file, um, you know, protections around our character designs, the, the name photo, the logos, things like that. All the kind of like basic protections you would, you know, go about, with, with any intellectual property. And then like it's, we, we have that protection and then it's up to us to have the discussions internally on whether or not we want to enforce it on a case by case basis. That's like the, the, the philosophy that we have.

Alexandra: Got it. And Jeremy, are you guys doing the same thing then?

Jeremy: Yeah, I feel like for high level stuff, absolutely. I think like UEFN is in a really interesting space with that right now, it's not. The best, I guess is what I'll say, like, it's very common for, you know, you, you don't own an idea inside of, you know, UEFN, right? Like, so if there's a success somewhere, there's a lot of replicates.

I was really excited to see the update. And it just blew up and then literally every creator in this space created their own only version and they all found success, but the original had like tons of success. And so I, I think like the reality of this like spaces that. We all, we always ask the question, well, can we make it better?

Like, can we, can we improve on things that maybe they didn't think about? Or maybe they don't, they're too lazy to do. Can we, can we do that? And Epic has created an ecosystem where that you can, and that's really cool for creatives, but it can also be really frustrating to somebody who comes up with an original concept and then like, is getting ripped off because somebody is doing it better.

And that ultimately is the decision I made, why I made the decision to not be a solo dev, but to be on a team is because if you're doing that as a solo, you're just going to get. It's unfortunate, but you're going to get steamrolled. Right. And then it's a matter of time for me and Kevin until Paramount creates a formal UEFN experience with tons of devs, tons of people that are just full investing in it because everyone's kind of looking at UEFN like, Is this something we should get involved with?

Alexandra: Yeah.

Jeremy: But it's a matter of time when they all go, Oh no, no, no. We're late to the game. We should be. And so our team is trying to build ourselves up enough to be able to take on some people that come in, might do take our idea and make it more polished in their own brand. We got to have something to compete with.

 And so that's ultimately what led me to be on a team and why I think it's valuable, but yeah, it's a very interesting space right now.

Alexandra: Yeah, I think that's like it's it's there's a parable here like the music industry that I'm hearing a lot of. It's like, oh, well, If this is a Deadmau5 track, and if Deadmau5 like strays too far from what is normally considered a Deadmau5 track, well, then you gotta like basically like relabel yourself, you know, like Eric Prydz is Eric Prydz, and there's CyRezD, it's the tech house label.

This way, like, you don't like get your audiences mixed up, but like, then there's the fluidity of the creator who wants to be able to make something new, and I feel like to some extent, UEFN is kind of, you're in that box, where like you can't make something that's outside, maybe necessarily with a core Fortnite player base.

What you guys are betting on is that that changes. And then you are able to do that, but then there's kind of like that, there's that taste sampling of like, this needs to be somewhat similar enough to something that I recognize so that I know it's Taylor Swift or I know it's, you know, whomever, which is pretty interesting.

But guys, we're coming up on time and I want to guys to, I want to ask you guys one final question. Given that you guys are in this like UGC, hyper fast moving, you know, very fluid IP dynamic, what advice would you give to studios that are trying to build IP and a more traditional format? So someone who's at a double A studio or at a triple A studio and they're building a brand new IP, given what you've experienced at UEFN and given that you know that they are never going to necessarily build it in the same way that you guys are, what is like the most tactical, tactical piece of advice you would give?

Kevin: I'll let Jeremy go first.

Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's tough. I, I think, I mean, we've done a lot of hiring of people that are in the AAA space that come in and jump into UEFN and Fortnite. And are just so limited to what their previous experience was and I think like adaptability is that is a core component to six to finding success in this platform is you have to be willing to not be frustrated and just adapt to the reality that it it's in infancy it's such.

It's so early on, you know, we're like, we're in alpha pre alpha vibes. And so some people come in thinking that the tools that are very normal to them and triple a, they, they've, they feel their hands are kind of shackled a little bit. And I think that that is a reality that I watch firsthand on, on our team.

And there's some people that just can't hang with that. They're just like, well, I'm out kind of like when I was, when creative first came out, I couldn't, I undo my like something I did. Like I was like, I'm done. And I think there is a lot of that right now. But I think if people are willing to adapt to.

It's limited potential right now. I think it'll pay dividends over time. So it is, it is a value, a risk value for sure. But that's probably the biggest thing that comes to mind that I've actually physically seen on my team, uh, where people are just like, Oh, well, let's just do this and really, I can't do that.

Like, what about this way? I'm not yet. It's in beta or like, you know, like it's just a lot of those types of conversations and then it's what you do in that box. Right. Um, you might be placed in it, but that doesn't mean it can't be creative or you can't find a really fun solution to your problem because there is like 100 different ways of figuring something out in some studios. I don't think are prepared for that.

Alexandra: Got it. Yeah. And so from your perspective, there are some people that are struck from the triple a side when people come to you if and they struggle because of the difference in the difference of and the of the approach. Of building something. Yeah, they're expecting Unreal, right?

Jeremy: Like, they're expecting Unreal 5. And we're like, we don't have that yet.

Alexandra: Yeah, but maybe said,  reverse said differently, like for those, like, how can, what, what can, what should AA and like AAA studios that are building their own games on unity or unreal engine five or anything like that take from the UEFN ecosystem?

Like what can they borrow? What can they learn, to build their IP in the modern gaming industry better than they have in the past?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think Kevin will have some great thoughts on this, uh, given that he's done this, but I would also just say, why not like it's there. It's a tool you would have access to hundreds of thousands of players, right?

At the snap of your fingers. It makes little sense to why you wouldn't want to explore that as an option because you might be thinking in one way, but I think if you just give you EFN a shot, I think you might act. It might expand your perspective on it drastically just by experiencing, you know, a full like development cycle on the platform.

But yeah, I think Kevin would probably better.

Kevin: No, all well put. And, and yeah, that instant feedback is incredible. We've learned to like, you know, not be hyper precious about, things being perfect before you ship them. It's, I think like you can get to MVP a lot quicker and test feedback and decide whether it's worth reinvesting your, your time and resources into, I mean, game traditional game development, super expensive, super time consuming.

And like, UGC has taken that has kind of solved for that where you really are able to move fast, break things, iterate and yeah, I would say like, for anyone just like thinking about creating original IP in general across any medium or vertical of entertainment, it does require like a bit of crazy, relentless commitment where there's so many people are going to tell you like, Oh, that's impossible.

That's impossible. And this kind of goes back to experiences I had producing CG, an original CG animated series called Miraculous Ladybug. I have a poster behind me. But that was, uh, you know, original superhero concept that so many, you know, TV executives, you know, said that it's never going to work, never going to work.

And it's a huge, original kids and family entertainment franchise now. And so like, if you feel really strongly about your world, your lore, your characters, the, the, the tenants we talked about earlier, like you, it's not going to be, it's not going to go zero to one overnight. And so it, it, it does require like a lot of just commitment and, and perseverance to just, uh, to keep going, you know, um, and so we haven't even crossed that finish line yet.

We have a long way to go, but we're very stubborn about it.

Alexandra: Awesome. Well, guys, we're unfortunately over time. I really enjoyed hearing about how you guys are approaching building each of your individual IPS at JOGO and at future trash inside UFN. There's clearly a lot of lessons here. I think that the brick and mortar is not the right word, but you know what I mean by brick and mortar. The brick and mortar gaming world can learn from, and it's awesome. It's been amazing to have you guys on, and I'm really excited to look out for what you guys continue to build on UEFN. Thank you for joining us today.

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