Capital C (2014) - full transcript
In just a few years, crowdfunding has empowered a whole new generation of artists to create things in a way that's never been done before. CAPITAL C is the first feature length documentary dedicated to crowdfunding, focusing on the hopes and dreams as well as the fears and pitfalls of independent creators in the wake of the digital age. Over a period of three years, the film is following the endeavors of poker card designer JACKSON ROBINSON, hippie ZACH CRAIN, and video game veteran BRIAN FARGO, all of whom reach out to the crowd in order to change their lives forever: With the unforeseen crowdfunding success of his hand-drawn poker card deck, JACKSON ROBINSON is facing the opportunity to make himself visible as an artist. Soon he has to learn that the fruition of his dream is coming at a price for him and his young family. From the get-go, ZACH CRAIN and his team rely on the crowd to create knitted bottle koozies. However, the hippie attitude of their crowdfunding campaign not only draws the attention of their ever-growing community. Competitors and business sharks are seeking their share of the pie as well. After 20 years, video game veteran BRIAN FARGO finally finds a way to reboot his classic Wasteland through a multi-million dollar crowdfunding campaign. Now the eyes of more than 60,000 supporters are on him to deliver on his promises for Wasteland II. In addition, renowned crowdfunding experts such as Scott Thomas (design director Obama campaign), Seth Godin (best selling author) or Molly Crabapple (political artist) share their insights on the topic. Production note: In 2012, CAPITAL C was funded by 586 people from 24 countries through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. CAPITAL C is an independently produced debut film that will be in cinemas April 2015 in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan.
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(slow piano music)
- In crowdfunding, money isn't just money.
That's almost always the case with money.
Money is very rarely just money.
At its most evil when it is just money.
And to think about it as money
is to misunderstand what's going on,
it is a way in which
somebody, an individual
gets to participate in and
to feel part of something
that matters to her or
to him, very deeply.
- You can't just beg strangers
for money to do something
that benefits you
and then expect them to give that to you.
It's just not going to happen.
What crowd funding is
instead is it's the cap
on a long career and a long relationship
where you've spent years
creating work that resonates
with people and that
they can't live without.
And then finally, after you've done this
and after they love you
and after you're part of
their life, then you go,
"Hey guys, do you want to help me create
my greatest work yet?"
- Crowdfunding is an engine of creation.
You're building a cohort of creators
who are able to sit down and say,
this guy got something off the ground.
This guy got something off the ground.
I'm going to get something off the ground.
- Crowdfunding is perhaps
the most significant
social development of the last 20 years.
And I don't think it's going
to be fully appreciated
how substantial a cultural
development this is until 2050,
a hundred years from now.
I think it's only going
to be in retrospect
that people understand how
important a ship this was.
- It's not about the
object that you receive.
It's about you actually making it happen.
And it allows this great
opportunity where all of a sudden
the products that we see in the world
are going to be manifested by ourselves.
- One of the coolest things
by far about the crowdfunding
is that it really gave us the opportunity
to launch something that we
wouldn't have had before.
Traditionally I'd go to this
business guy and be like,
hey, business guy, you like our ideas.
We're gonna take off our clothes
and run around and act crazy.
And we have this magical
thing that stretches
and fits every bottle in the world.
Do you want to give us
some money for this thing?
And they'd be like,
no, you guys are crazy.
You get to throw it out there.
And if you get accepted, then it's like,
oh, we got a company.
Okay, what are we gonna do now?
- I don't think I'd be
as passionate about it
if the community wasn't
as involved as they were.
Freaker is a community-based company,
and we started with the community.
Our community is very vocal and we listen
because you have to.
Everyone is capable of a good idea.
So why not listen to them?
We go out and we get feedback from them
and we've run contests where people
can design their own Freaker.
So we did something with Threadless,
this community based initiative
to source the best design.
Not sure what that is.
I'm not sure, a screaming witch maybe?
Mr. Pain is the name.
Mr. Pain, pretty incredible to see,
to see that many people
submitting their designs
and their ideas.
It's always cool to see
the feedback you get.
Freaker was kind of my opportunity
or chance to do it for me.
Do what I wanted.
Not have to fight, not have
to compromise with clients.
And that's what Freaker is,
it's an uncompromised vision.
It's kind of like my thesis
that no one trusted me
in letting me do it until
we did it for ourselves.
- Crowdfunding's pretty basic
and straight forward, I think.
I mean, you essentially
say this is the project
I want to get funded,
and that can be anything
from a movie to a watch.
I mean, it can literally be anything.
It's very simple, you
say, this is the idea.
This is why it's important.
And this is why you should fund it.
- In exchange for the
financial contributions,
people get stuff or experiences,
things that they want,
things that are at different price points.
Maybe there's a $20 reward.
Maybe there's a $50
reward, there's a hundred.
People can pick.
They had these different
points of participation.
- What seems to be most
successful is when you have a goal
that if you don't reach that goal
like on Kickstarter,
where if you set a goal
of a hundred thousand and
you don't reach that goal
then no one's credit cards get charged.
You don't get the funding.
All the money goes back to the individuals
and the project has to be funded
a different way or it dies.
And something about that goal
just psychologically kicks in.
I can see that this project
I really want to get funded
is $15,000 away from their goal,
and they've only got 24 hours to go.
I'm going to send them out a Tweet,
I'm gonna put it on Facebook,
and something about that
deadline and that goal
and the chance that it might all disappear
and go away is what
drives the entire process.
- People are more connected
now than they've ever been
in human history.
And that hyper connectivity is really
the foundational support layer on which
crowd funding is built on top of.
- Right now everyone has to be on Facebook
and they have to be on
Twitter or Instagram
or all these different things.
Those will always change.
The important part is that social media
is allowing that dialogue
between the artists
and their fans.
And they need to take advantage of those
and think of creative ways to do it
to stand out from the crowd.
- You think about when you're growing up,
like what do you want
to be when you grow up?
And then when you get older,
as you get closer to college
you're like, oh, I have to
be a businessman or a lawyer,
a doctor, or whatever.
Everybody tells you,
you can't make a living
being an artist.
You can't do this, you can't do that.
But anytime that I
would try something else
I would always find myself
just getting extremely bored
and just, I knew that I
wasn't doing the right thing.
And I always found
myself coming back to art
and to drawing in some form or fashion.
It's taken me this long to
be able to get where I'm at,
but I think that I wouldn't
have done it any other way.
Because of my brothers,
he was all the way across the country,
we used the mighty interwebs to connect
through Google Hangouts,
and then we'll just kind
of shoot back and forth
ideas and concepts of everything.
Dr. Jones your papers are not in order.
When I had kind of mentioned to my brother
about wanting to design playing cards
my brother was like, you
should do a deck of cards
that looks like money.
When I hit go on the project,
I was like okay yeah, yeah.
Maybe I'll find a few people
that will be interested in my project,
and maybe I could just kind of squeak by
and get the minimum goal,
that I could pay for the minimum order
that the United States
Playing Card Company requires
when they're printing decks.
And what I was thinking might be
like a few people finding
my project and supporting it
has turned into like several hundred.
And that living thing, that's
growing in front of me,
that's something that
I've never had before.
But at the same time, when I
get away from the computer,
then reality sets in for me,
like I think about I'm
okay with the $7,000.
I did my math for that.
But now in three days, there's more money,
then I make him like couple of months.
If this is day three, what
is it going to look like
on day 30 or day 40?
It could be awesome, but at
the same time I had this fear,
like I'm gonna shoot myself in the foot
and not know what to do.
- If there's only a rare number
of people who are interested
in particular thing in the old days,
if you were around your
neighborhood, you'd had it,
you couldn't find a crowd.
But nowadays, the world is your crowd
and you can post it to everybody.
- Before, we needed companies.
We needed a large amount of assets
to start up something
with a lot of people,
now you can do it yourself.
- We're already seeing an
evolution of crowdfunding
to more and more support going to people
that already are successful
as cultural producers
in the world.
So people who successfully
have produced films
with studio backing,
musicians that have
access to record labels.
And so rather than using those mechanisms
they're turning to crowdfunding.
(birds chirping)
- My parents got me an Apple 2 computer
when I was in high school,
and that really kind of opened my eyes.
You start playing other people's games
or whatever product that you do,
at a certain point you think,
Hey, I can do this or I can do better.
And October of '83 is
when I started, Interplay.
(dramatic music)
When you first start a company,
there's what you have to do,
and then as you become successful,
you get to do what you want to do.
I had always wanted to do something
in the post-apocalyptic genre.
We created a game and
it was called Wasteland
and we released it in late
'88, early '89, I believe.
And it went on to big critical success,
got a big cult following.
We didn't place morality on you,
we actually created these
morally gray situations
for you to figure out
what the right thing was.
And you actually felt bad
about some of the things
you did in the game,
and that was rather unique at the time.
Clearly we knew we had
scratched the surface
of something very interesting.
I immediately wanted to
do a sequel to Wasteland.
I badgered Electronic Arts
over and over and over again.
I got nowhere.
Then I was with Interplay
all the way up until 2002,
I left the company that I had founded,
and then I was a man without
a post-apocalyptic license.
Finally
I was able to work a
deal to get the rights
to Wasteland back.
I was gonna be able to do a
Wasteland sequel a decade later.
I went to the publishers
and I remember I'd go in
with the pitch and say, okay,
it doesn't get better than this.
I'd travel around the world,
everywhere I go, every press tour.
I don't care whether
I'm in China, Singapore
France, Germany, they're always
asking about a Wasteland.
That would be my pitch going in.
I never even got to the point
where they'd say how much?
I got no traction for another
decade, which blew my mind.
There was fans that wanted it.
There was guys like me
that wanted to make it,
but there was people in between.
There were retailers and
there were gatekeepers
that wouldn't allow that
transaction to happen.
Lo and behold here comes crowdfunding.
The minute I really started
to focus on crowdfunding,
I immediately saw the
power of what it can be
and the ability to remove the gatekeeper
and put me in direct connection.
And the first thing I did though
was to set up forums, to
talk to the users right away.
The first thing I did,
what would Wasteland be?
Are my ideas in sync,
what people still want?
Guess what they did want that old school
role-playing experience
that I was dying to make.
And we were asking for more money
than just about anybody
had asked for before
but I had no choice because
I couldn't make a game
for less money and meet what they wanted.
I just couldn't do it.
- You can go and you can spend money,
dead money on things right?
Like possessions that sit in your house
or something like that.
Or you can put your money into
a living, breathing project,
that's going to benefit a lot of people,
that's a shared endeavor,
shared by thousands of people,
and be a part of that.
I find that much, much more satisfying.
You know, if it's something
I've loved since childhood
I kind of feel I want to
participate as much as possible.
I want to be involved as much as possible,
to be the much younger
person playing the game
and just marveling that it exists,
in the case of say Wasteland,
and then to be coming back
to the table now as an adult
and saying, Oh wow, I'm really
contributing to this game.
That's pretty, that's pretty cool.
There's no, there's
just no way around that.
That's amazing.
- I was nervous as hell.
And you know I remember the next morning
we all got up at like 6:00 AM and that,
it was like that commercial where like
the people are excited
because the meter is spinning
with all the money.
So it's going, it's going and going,
and I'm telling people
all day don't text me.
Don't call me.
I don't want to, I was too nervous.
And of course my phone's
like 100,000, 200,000.
They're sending me these messages
and I thought, okay, it's
gonna drop off the second day.
I'm like, I just don't
know what's gonna happen.
And so we start off the next
morning, still going strong.
And I had a guy call
me, he was a major fan.
He says, Hey if you come up short,
I'll fund you the rest of the money.
And that was a moment, 'cause
I thought we're gonna make it.
- I grew up in Brookville, Pennsylvania,
surrounded by the country, and Amish.
(bright banjo music)
My whole concept I think was,
growing up in a small town.
Never really had to
introduce myself to anyone
or have a first conversation.
'Cause I knew everyone from the beginning
and it was just like,
these are my friends,
'cause I've known him since kindergarten.
So my whole thought was
like go out into the world
and just see what it throws at me.
I looked at the map I
was in North Carolina,
I saw Wilmington, and I was like,
Willington that sounds familiar.
Maybe someone said it before.
I was like, it's near the beach.
I was like, that sounds awesome.
So 50 bucks drove down to
Wilmington, go into a coffee shop.
And Lauren who now works with me
was the first person
that I met in Wilmington.
So I opened the door and
this little cute barista girl
was just like hey, and just yells out
from behind the counter.
I'm like, oh my God, this
is a cool start to a town,
and ended out becoming my roommate.
And at the same time,
Justin had just shot a video for Alicia,
who's our office mom now
where she was doing
this crowdfunding thing.
And I was just like, what
are you talking about?
Crowdfunding thing?
She showed me it and I was
like, what do you mean?
You you just do this
thing, you have an idea,
you put it out there and
then if people like it,
they give them money.
And she's like, yeah, I
was like, that is awesome.
So us four, we were like,
how are we going to do this?
How are we going to bring it all together?
It was this concept of, we
have this manufactured thing
that we know how to do but we don't have
the money for the yarns,
we don't have the money to do
the first run of production.
I really want everyone to
have one of these things.
We think it's really awesome.
And now it was like, let's make this thing
and see if they think it's awesome.
Well, we're going to freak the world
starting with America, by launching a line
of 30 Freaker designs,
it's gonna be amazing.
It's gonna blow your mind.
(whistle blowing)
- Art is the work of a human being
doing something probably
for the first time.
Something that might not
work, something generous,
something that touches some
people, but not other people.
And when we go down that
list of what art is,
it turns out that's what we're paying for.
That's what we care about that.
If we're all we're buying is
a Walmart quality commodity,
just give me the cheap one the close one,
bottled water, cheap and close.
I want bottled water to
be the same every time
but I will not pay extra for it.
If I'm gonna pay extra for something,
if I'm gonna spread the word,
if I'm gonna talk about
it, it better be real,
and it better be personal.
- There's so much stuff that
I try to put in these things that I think
that a lot of people will
miss and that's okay.
That's the way it goes.
Especially with like this, this
joker has Benjamin Franklin
flying a kite with the key on it.
And that was kind of when
he was trying to figure out
how electricity worked and the
three of diamonds on the kite
it's what's called a card reveal.
It's just kind of like a cool thing
that magicians use inside of
their acts or their tricks
where they have like oh
here pick a card, any card.
And then they can then make you think
that you're picking a card
but they really know exactly
what card you're picking
and they can do their whole trick.
And at the end of the trick,
you hold up their card
and they'll go, oh, did you
have the three of diamonds?
And you're like, I did
have the three of diamonds
and then they'll pull out the joker.
And then your three of
diamonds will be printed
on the kite of the joker.
And you're like what?
And so that's kind of like
what the card reveal is.
These numbers here, this is a
plate ID and a serial number.
And these numbers were used on real money
for the government to kind of keep track
of where the bill was printed
or what number the bill was.
But I came up with an idea
to help my backers be a more
of kind of like have a tangible part
of the cards themselves.
And what I did was I
created this pledge tier
where you could pledge for this reward
and you could customize these numbers,
the plate ID and the serial number.
I didn't know how it
would go over very well
in the beginning, but when
it clicked with people
and people figured out what they were
some people started getting
these plate IDs and like,
hey I wanna represent my birthday.
I wanna represent the
day that I met my wife
and these numbers are gonna
be on every card that I print.
- People send in stuff and they're like,
make this, make this, make this.
And boy, we take the
ideas and mesh it all up.
We have little sheets.
We get people requesting all
the time of different designs,
so we'll send them the sheet
and they can kind of draw it out.
It's tiny squares.
I go in, I fill them in.
There's not much detail
but once it's knit,
it's a lot tighter and
it looks a lot cleaner
where now you can kind of see
the edges and stuff of it.
This one is this upside down
heart, which turns into a butt.
And then it's pooping
out little tiny hearts,
which I thought was really funny,
and we're gonna call
this one, love stinks.
So that's how it works.
(gentle piano music)
- I probably spend like
two to three nights a week
up here right now.
I'm just staying overnight
because things aren't totally rolling,
like super strong in the money worlds.
And you know, trying to cut back.
They're here during the day working,
and the only time that I can just,
be trying out things in different colors
and not getting in the way of everybody
is in the middle of the night.
We're basically what
you call a hosiery mill,
manufacture socks, athletic
socks, dress socks,
men's women's children's
socks, knit and sew
and that's really it,
just make socks, the whole company.
- Normally here would
do any kind of socks,
and now we're doing Freaker.
Zach is basically doing the
samples, doing matching colors.
I would say he will come
up with his own designs,
all kinds of designs really.
Just one example, this
and all kinds of things.
- We're good to go.
We're gonna give it a little run.
So make sure everything's set up good.
Sometimes you just push
it a little too soon
and it ends up getting messed up.
So it's always good to
check everything, twice
or three times or three times,
there's been quite a few nights like that,
where it's just been thinking
I'm coming up here for a day,
and then all of a sudden it's
three or four days later.
- And in here there's no windows.
So by the time you get out,
it feels like a time zone
of like two weeks when you're
here for three or four days.
So I was just like, ah.
You know, it's cool, it's
a neat looking place.
It's beautiful.
It kind of makes this weird
hum sound when you're here.
And it's really dry, 'cause all the cotton
and my pee always smells funny
the next day no matter what.
Just one of the perks of being in here
for 24 hours straight.
I feel comfy here.
The first few times I felt a
little, like, this is weird.
I walk out and I'm like Twilight zone,
but now I get back here
and I'm like, it's
like, (imitates humming)
and I'm like oh yeah, it's
like a giant swarm of bees
in your ear for 24 hours straight.
You don't think you'd miss
that but you do somehow.
It's a lovely place.
- Basically as looking at it with Zach
being a potential customer coming to me
and telling me that he
wants to raise money online,
in a sense that tells me
that he don't have the
money to get this product
off the ground so he can get it started,
made me a little bit skeptical.
Do I want to do business
with this guy who obviously
doesn't have money to pay
for a product or to get a product started?
Raw materials, product development,
everything, it takes money.
And I just thought it was a bad idea,
I didn't think it'd work.
I was really surprised.
I was watching it on the internet
where he stood with how much money,
his target, where it was going.
And every day we'd look at it and be like,
he's not gonna make it.
He's not gonna make it.
And then all of a sudden
it's just boom, boom, boom,
and he had what he needed
and he was ready to start his product.
But I was pretty relieved
that my customer would have a little bit
of money to pay for a product, I guess.
So I would've never thought
that he would have been
able to accumulate funds
like that to get a product off the ground.
But when you see somebody's
passion in a product
and they got their heart
in it to do something,
that gives you a little bit
more support that I think
this guy is going to make it,
but financially I don't know
if he would have made it
without them for sure.
We have gone from running
one machine for him
once in a while to four
machines running for him
five days a week.
So his volume has really
grown to our surprise.
When we first did the program with him,
I thought if we can keep two machines busy
running this thing it'll
be a decent product.
And he's exceeded that
now, so very surprised.
He's just a great guy,
not many people out
there like that anymore.
- I've been waiting 20
years for this moment.
I've been trying to get
this game Wasteland 2
into production since the early nineties.
And finally I'm here.
So now I'm in production.
We'll need to double up
the staff of this company
within the next 12 months
to be able to make a game of this size.
One of the first things we're
doing is doing the concept art
for the character design.
What do they look like?
What are they wearing and
how they reusing things
in a post-apocalyptic world?
That'll be new for me.
I've never managed to
process that sort of almost
like a spectator sport environment.
Everything in the past has been
sort of we'd hold ourselves up,
and then at the end, we
pop a finished product
out the door and hope everybody loved it.
This is much different.
We'll end up showing people things
every step of the way to vet our ideas
and get as much input that we can
before we ship the product.
- Well, right now we're
working on wrapping up
what we call the vision document.
So far everyone has funded the product
just on the hope and
dreams of what it might be.
Now it's time for us
to show them what it is
we're really thinking about
in great amounts of detail.
So the vision doc really kind of outlines
all of the high level points of stuff
that we feel is really important
for the blog to represent.
And this will be kind of our first test,
we're gonna put this document out
to all the backers and
they're gonna be able
to respond back to us.
And we're hoping that
they read it top to bottom
and give us the thumbs up,
yeah, that's what we want.
But only time will tell.
- Because of the very public
nature of this process,
I think that a failure of
this product would mean
that people would not want to hear
from me again on my next project.
If I screw up delivering
this game and it isn't good,
it's probably the last
thing I'll get to work on.
I don't think crowdfunding
gives you a second shot.
It's a bit of an all or nothing for me.
If I don't deliver what I said,
it's probably pretty much it for me.
- When I look at the
projects that I have backed,
it's like looking through a
gallery of hopes and dreams.
Some of them are finished
and some of them haven't,
and some of them are old and dusty,
but they're still like coming soon,
but they're not really coming soon,
and you know it and they know it
and they just fall off the Earth.
It's interesting to go through
your back or your history
and just kind of look at those projects
that didn't go anywhere.
They just disappeared
- On Kickstarter a lot of
times you see these people
they ask for all this
money to do something
and then like, they never
send you your reward.
Those people are screwing themselves.
Those people are kicking their
fans in the fucking teeth.
- The average project that fails
probably falls into a couple categories.
One was that there was making a thing
that they thought would be super easy,
we'll just go to China and
we'll just make this thing.
Then there's projects that
maybe the person gets a day job
and they just can't pursue anymore,
it takes up a little more
time than they thought.
And you can burn through
money faster than you think,
and then oftentimes there's the projects
that a lot of people wanted to do it,
and then all of a sudden
it kind of crumbled,
and there was one guy who
couldn't do everything.
- The guys that I work with at
my office and also my friends
they look at my project and they're like,
oh, you've raised $100,000.
You're rich now what
you gonna do, buy a car?
All this kind of stuff,
what you gonna do with all that cash?
And I'm like
I'm gonna have to spend all that cash
to pay for all this stuff.
I mean even these poker chips,
this is like the fifth
iteration of these poker chips.
And I still, I'm not quite satisfied.
Oh, it's like, you can't make the words
go this specific way, just
because of manufacturing process.
It's like those are the
things that drive me crazy
that I didn't know about before,
when it looks good on my computer screen.
But when it's an actual poker chip
it just may not work.
In the beginning I may
have only been asking
for like $7,000 and I was
thinking on the small scale
but as it just, as it grew
and the momentum built
$7,000 became $50,000, and
then $50,000, became $100,000.
It only means that there's
more and more people
that there's a chance of me letting down
and not delivering the quality of stuff
that I promised in the very beginning.
And that I think that
everybody got attached with
and got behind.
I've even seen other
projects that are like,
we need this much money to do this.
And then they get that,
and then they get even
more and then even more.
And then it, and then when
it's over, something happens
or something is out of their control,
and then they're like,
we'll, we're out of money.
- I guess we basically
put ourselves out there
with the crowdfunding thing.
You know, I guess we
launched a new product
that hasn't been out there before
and already getting some
pretty big publicity from it.
And with that ended up
attracting a bigger company
that just posted
something of a new product
that they have that looks
strangely like ours.
For us this just comes
far too early in the game,
for a big company to be knocking us off.
It's like with the patent
on the Freaker that we have
it's just, their attorneys are gonna know
that we don't have the money
to actually do anything.
So we can send them a letter
and say, hey, please stop making this,
but they're gonna say, you
know, do something about it,
basically.
Also another side of this business world
that isn't too exciting to go down,
I guess when you're
thinking about what you need
money-wise that just
doesn't sit on your head,
you don't think, okay,
and we're gonna need
this $100,000 to protect
ourselves from this big company,
that's basically known for
knocking off good ideas
and getting it produced cheaply in China
and then bringing it over and selling it
and undercutting everyone.
There's obviously like
a million things that
we would need to spend money on
before something like this
to throw money at this,
it doesn't get us any further.
And this definitely
just take the energy off
of moving forward and
put it into keeping us
where we're at to have
to focus on something
that is so mind weighing of
suing somebody or a company,
and lawyers talking and saying things
that we don't understand.
So it'll be like, they explained it
but I don't really know what they meant
by all those fun words.
So we're basically just in a position of
just unknowing and confusion right now
of what to do.
You gotta learn your own lessons, I guess
- There's so much more to it than just,
oh, just design some
cards and then it's done.
And that's something that I
learned during the process.
There's the maintaining and maintenance
of the community that
you're trying to build
so that your project can be successful.
And that was something that
I knew about a little bit,
but my eyes weren't
really open to how huge,
and how important that aspect of it was.
- The thing is when you
do a Kickstarter campaign
and you're like, guys give me money,
and in two years I will
create something cool,
you're creating a relationship
that's built on trust.
And if you do anything, however minor
that pokes away at that trust,
you suddenly start
looking like a scam artist
and people will despise you.
- Crowdfunding is gonna
have all these weird things
that are gonna get worked out
and it's going to be so
different in 10 years
how people do it and what's appropriate.
How many updates do I send
to 1000 people that just gave me money?
Is one a week, one a day?
What's my obligation?
After I'm done how many do I have to send?
It's kind of cool watching
everybody figure this out.
- I think in the beginning
I used the updates
as kind of a crutch.
I was so worried and stressed out
that either my supporters
weren't gonna be pleased,
I was gonna show something
and then they were like,
wait, wait, wait, what does this change?
What does this change?
I mean, they're the ones
that are spending their money
for what I'm creating,
and so I want them to be a
part of that creative process.
So I want to be able to
listen to their comments,
listen to their concerns,
listen to their ideas,
and try to incorporate those
ideas into what I'm doing.
- At the end of the day you're
always reporting to somebody,
whether it's a publisher
or now to our fans.
With the fans what we've seen so far
is we'll put out an update,
we'll tell them what we're doing,
we'll show them some screenshots,
we'll make a video and we'll
get their feedback instantly.
You know, it's not all
unicorns and rainbows right?
They don't love all the
things that we're doing
but at least when I'm having
a conversation with them
about something they don't like,
it is about the quality of the product,
and that's all we wanna focus on.
I don't need to be right all the time.
I don't mind us putting stuff
out and them not liking it.
As long as the conversation
is about what they want to see
and how they can help
us to shape the game.
- There's a lot of times where I feel like
there's nothing that I can do.
There's always gonna people be upset
or not get what they want,
and they're gonna be mad,
and they're gonna call
you a jerk and a thief,
and that you're trying
to steal money from them
or you're trying to charge them
way too much for something.
But in the end, if you
don't like my project,
you don't have to back it.
- People will complain
at the drop of a hat.
People generally are nice,
but a lot of them suck.
You're supposed to trust
in crowdfunded project.
You're supposed to trust
the dude with your money,
and the people who suck
are going to immediately
jump on that guy and
accuse him of scamming,
accuse him of faking some stuff
and that's gonna happen
over and over again,
it's something that a lot of
these guys have to deal with.
- One of the great
things about crowdfunding
is you don't need everyone to support you.
If 50% of the people love you,
and 50% of people hate you, that's fine.
You know, as far as the
revenue stream is concerned
being hated is exactly the
same as just being ignored.
It doesn't make things worse.
It's only the people who
love you that matter.
And so if it costs you
three people to hate you
for every person who
loves you, that's worth it
because you just get
another person loving you
and will support you.
So having a bad reputation
online is not dispositive.
It doesn't mean that you will fail,
just so long as the flip side of that
is that you have some people
who think you're great.
(gentle music)
- It's like this weird push and pull of,
I'm driving away from work,
I'm driving back to work,
when I should be working at home.
- Every day that goes by, it
keeps feeling more and more
foreign to me because it's
like, I'm driving away
from what I'm supposed to
be doing back in my house,
designing cards.
In a few days, the
project is gonna be over
and people are already
asking me what's next?
What cards are you gonna design next?
I don't know how long
they're gonna keep asking.
They're asking now, I mean, in six months,
are they gonna keep asking me?
Because they'll probably forget about me.
Now is the time, now is the time for me
to seize that opportunity
- This morning
we're all talking about the
company that was copying us
and knocking off a Freaker.
And we didn't know what to do about it.
I mean, it's been a weight for us,
so we didn't know whether to take it
and let it be known to our crowd.
We really didn't know what to do
but then at the end of
the talk this morning,
we were like okay, let's do it.
Let's just put it out there.
Lauren posted it, and
we we're like, all right
let's go get some lunch
and get out of here.
Just got back from that,
and Lauren goes upstairs
and she gets on her computer
and she's like, whoa, guys,
like you gotta check this out.
So there was hundreds of posts
on their Facebook and Twitter
of just support for us
and going to them being
like why are you doing this?
What's wrong with you?
There's this one guy that posted a picture
of our American flag Freaker on his arm,
and he has middle finger up.
It was pretty, it was pretty cute.
It's gone on four hours of
just them going nuts on it.
People writing us being like,
they won't let me post anything
more on their Facebook,
they've kicked me off of
their Twitter or whatever.
And we're just like, wow, that's crazy.
It's so fresh that this is happening.
So like, we're not used to having such a
large group supporting us.
I mean, months ago we
didn't have anybody with us,
it was just us.
And now the feeling of having this
group behind us that wants
to support us that much.
And it means that much
to them what we're doing,
that they would do that.
It was just it was a
feeling that I don't know
I've never had before.
And it, and it was, I was just,
it's like, it's cool.
It's beautiful to have
that kind of support
from people we don't even know,
strangers to us and just this beginning,
and now here we are.
Yeah.
(light suspenseful music)
- About a week ago, I kind
of tried to think about,
oh it's gonna be so awesome.
It's gonna be so great
when the project's over
and it's successful and
I'd be able to look back
and say, see what I accomplished.
And I should be celebrating.
I should be happy, right?
But I'm not, I don't want to watch it.
I don't want to sit there
and watch it because I
don't want it to be over.
And, you know, I think about is this,
that little 15 minutes of fame,
I don't want that to be it.
It's gonna go beyond me
just working for my boss
and creating a picture for them.
You know, as an artist,
I've always tried to find
like what my art is, what
kind of style is mine?
What do I, what am I gonna contribute
to this world as an artist?
And I found that art, I found that style.
I found that one thing,
I've found what I was supposed to create.
It's the first time in my entire life that
I feel that my art is actually
going to mean something.
(upbeat music)
Every ounce of my being is
just saying don't let go of it,
don't, don't let go of
that grasp that you have,
you've got to keep it,
you've gotta keep it.
Keep working, keep working,
plan for the next thing.
I don't want that to be all,
it's not that I don't want
the project to be over.
I don't want that change
in me that is happening,
because you know, for once I feel
that I'm working for something.
I feel hope in my life because of my art
I don't wanna just go back
to the way things were
and just kind of lead
this miserable existence.
I want it to mean something
and I don't want that meaning
in my life to be over just because
the clock is ticking
to zero on the project.
(clock ticking)
Now this project is over, I think about,
am I going to be able to repeat this?
Am I going to be able to repeat this,
this phenomenon that happened in my life?
This may be my only one chance.
(gentle music)
- We certainly have no lack of pressure.
We've been in this constant
communication with the fans,
what they want and what they want to see.
And so we finally just put
the, kind of the first video
out of actual game plan.
I'm not used to showing
something this early on.
And so, you know, it's
always kind of scary
because you don't want
people to interpret that
as the final.
So on one hand, you're
excited that they like it.
On the other hand, it's not done.
And there's a million loose
ends between now and the end.
It used to be that you'd
get it to 100% or 95,
and then you'd show it,
'cause that means you were
kind of getting close.
Now we get it to 80%, 70%,
and we solicit that feedback
and that's been a big
educational process for us.
And so we've been going back
and forth in this sort of dance
with the public.
I always say, you can never
compete with the crowd
no matter how smart my 10 or 20 guys are,
we're not as smart as 10,000
as they're looking at stuff.
It's a completely different
paradigm for making games.
- There's a paradigm shift going on.
It's the largest paradigm shift
since the industrial revolution.
And what the paradigm shift is,
is that innovation is increasingly
getting viable for users,
either as single individuals
or collaborating with others.
- We don't have any
idea what the limits are
to what crowds can do.
It's inconceivable that
a crowd could produce
a high quality encyclopedia.
It's inconceivable because our
brains don't work that way.
And one of the lessons to learn is
that we should not be
making these assumptions.
We're gonna be wrong over
and over and over again.
And this is one of the
great glories of the time,
is that we're wrong because
we were able to do things
we didn't know that we
could do as a crowd.
- You guys are so beautiful.
Dinners coming.
All right.
(hums)
All right, here you go guys.
There you go.
Got some pretty cool news.
ABC's Shark Tank contacted us today
and they want us to come on
and present Freaker USA.
- Awesome.
- Yeah.
- National TV.
- National TV.
I'll be like, yo y'all, yo y'all look.
I actually haven't watched it before.
And when they contacted me early today
I like went through and
watched the first whole season.
So Shark Tank is basically
a live investment thing.
So there's these five people
that have made a bunch of money.
You go on, here's my idea,
and they go, it is cool,
or it is dumb and I'll give you that money
or I won't give you that
money and I'll make fun of you
or I won't make fun of you
on national television.
So there's a lot of
pressure behind it of like,
how are you gonna make me look?
You gonna make me look silly?
Are you gonna make me look smart?
You're gonna make me, you know,
so I'm a little nervous for sure.
- Yeah, it sounds like a
great opportunity actually.
- Yes, it is a great opportunity.
It's a, I think they get
around 7 million viewers.
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah, so-
- I feel the intimidation right there.
- Yeah.
- You know your grandpa
will expect you to wear
a suit and tie.
- Oh, a suit and tie, yeah.
I'll probably have a suit and
tie on, I'll make him proud.
(both laughing)
I'll promise.
I promise I won't take off my pants.
How about that?
- That's good.
- Yeah.
(light suspenseful music)
- When Jackson did the first project
and was finished with that,
I think that gave him
just enough of the bug
to keep going and keep
going, which is great
because you know, it provides
our family more income
but at the same time, it's
the same cycle of work
with him going to work during the day,
and then coming home
again and working late,
late into the night and me not getting
any help with the girls.
So a project ends after 40
days or whatever the time is
that you allow for it to be happening.
But then some, another project will start
and we just continue
this over and over again.
And I don't know how long I
can do that here by myself.
I didn't sign up to be a single mom,
but that's what I'm doing right now.
- Now that I'm a few
weeks into the project
the kind of like the
excitement and the energy
of the beginning of doing
something new, it's worn off.
A lot of times I find
myself having to pause
and reevaluate myself and check myself
and kind of get back
to the original reason
why I wanted to do this
in the first place.
The love that I have for engraving,
and currency and that type of art,
because, you know after the 30th card,
and it's like two o'clock in the morning
and I'm sitting there and my eyes
are about to pop out of my head
because I'm just sitting
there looking at the screen
and I'll just sit there
with my pen in my hand
and I'll just sit there and zone.
And when there's nothing
else that I want to do less
than draw cards I just
have to think to myself,
there is a reason why I'm doing this,
there's a reason, why I am
juggling a full-time job
and doing this at home.
And the reason is because
this is going to allow me
to create a life for myself
and my family that is gonna
completely change our lives
from now on for the rest of our lives.
Maybe in a month from now, I
won't have to have two jobs.
And it's that, the love and
passion for what I'm doing,
the art coupled with the idea
that all of this hard work,
all of these sleepless
nights and me staying up late
and being away from my family,
those things, those
factors coming together
could equal me changing my life
and me creating something
new for my family.
And it's those kinds of thoughts,
that when I sit there and zone out
that I have to bring back
in the forefront of my mind.
And those are the things
that keep me going.
And those are the things that
keep me up late at night.
(cicadas chirping)
- All right.
Shark tank found out about us
through our crowdfunding
campaign that we did.
Shark Tank is basically
a live investment show.
So there's these five self-made
million, billionaires on,
and you pitch them your idea.
And you say you can be
a part of my company
for this much money and I'll give you
this much percent of it.
So you're like going on risking
giving up part of your company
but also with the possibility
of getting a bunch of money too.
I am excited about it.
The possibilities are pretty big
roughly like 7 million people watch it,
but still nervous about getting nervous
on national television
and not being able to say
words if I get out there
and then they're like,
tell us about your company.
And I'm like, ah, blah, blah, blah.
Like can't think at
all because the cameras
are pointing at me and everything I know
has suddenly disappeared
into a place in my head
where I can't find it.
So that's pretty nervous in
'cause if somebody gets that vibe,
they zone in on it and
then they're sweating
and they just try to draw it out of them
even more.
So the name of the show is
pretty fitting Shark Tank
but hopefully I just get out there
and feel my vibe and feel their vibe
and just have a good time with it.
But there's seven people
that are in the company now,
and at the same time, the
community that we've built
it feels like those eyes are on it.
And also, the hope of us succeeding.
So I know if we don't succeed,
I feel like it would probably, lose a lot
of hope for a lot of people.
- I have this list that I work from that,
it's just the list of all
the cards that I have to do.
And I Mark off which cars that I got done.
I pretty much have to do one
card a day to be on schedule,
and at this point I'm already
probably five cards behind.
And even at work, we
started doing crunch hours.
It's just another term for overtime
and I'm working 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
So that's 12 hours out of my day
that I'm not even drawing any cards.
And the only time that I
get to start working on them
is when I would usually want to go to bed.
And I can't even see the light
at the end of the tunnel with that.
(somber music)
It just seems impossible to me right now.
- So Shark Tank's that show,
I guess it's reality television,
it's like basically you have
some venture capitalists
and go pitch your business idea
but it's all theatrical,
it's all made for television.
And so you pitch your idea and
they decide to invest in you,
and this all happens in 10 minutes.
It's very theatrical, they tear you apart.
It's a Shark Tank,
they have teeth, there's blood,
probably everyone's
thinking the same thing I am
we don't want to lose control.
You know, it's like, what do you give up?
What do you sacrifice for success?
And what is success, you know?
Or are we already successful?
I would say yes but you know,
there's always more road ahead.
I feel like,
we're gonna lose control.
- On one hand it would be irresponsible
not to take the opportunity business wise,
we've been offered this
amazing opportunity
to go on national primetime TV,
where we can build our audience,
we can build our community.
On the other hand
we have everything that
we've been avoiding thus far.
Would it be trading any kinds
of ideals, I don't know.
I have no control over it at this point.
I just hope for the best.
- [Zach] Well, first off you
guys are looking beautiful.
- [Woman] Thank you.
- [My name is Zach.
I invented this thing called a Freaker
and I'm here today looking
for a $200,000 investment
in exchange for a 10% equity
in my company, Freaker USA.
(fan whirring)
(phone pinging)
- Okay.
How did they treat you?
They treat you good?
Were they mean?
You didn't cry did you?
That's something.
It sounded good.
He sounded like, he sounded
like he had a good time.
He went out there to be entertaining.
He feels good about, he feels
like he gave them a show
which is good, which is
what we were looking for.
We wanted to be memorable.
I think he feels good though.
I think we all kind of feel the same way.
We're glad we don't have to
deal with that responsibility.
We don't have a,
the company doesn't have a
parent, we're all still orphans.
And I don't want to do that again.
I don't want to go through
I don't wanna,
I just don't want to lose control of that.
Two people that we fought
against so hard not to work for.
Lauren's a nervous wreck.
She's a complete nervous wreck.
We should probably call her.
Yeah, we were staying up all night.
Yeah.
Hey so we've got a week on the website,
and you're right there.
- Are you ready?
In the end it was clear that
Zach Crane could care less
if he got a deal on Shark Tank or not.
He ended up getting
something far more valuable,
at least to him.
And he still has the freedom and control
to do it the best way
that he knows how to do.
No doubt that he will continue to promote
the Freaker USA brand in
the only way that he can.
(gentle music)
- When he's really busy,
and I'm with the babies all by myself
I think,
truly this isn't gonna be forever.
But then with kids, you turn around
and they're already grown, you know?
And so in this time
that that he's working,
it seems like it's a little time,
but in a kid's life it's a really like,
they don't have very much childhood.
And so when you say I'll
just be working on this,
you know for about a year,
we're gonna struggle through this,
and for a little baby a year is just like
that's a lot of little time to miss.
- What I'm seeing more and more every day
as I go through this
is that why can't I make my job
and my art, the same thing.
The logical thing to do would be,
well if you don't have all this time
and you can't do this stuff
well then just don't do a second project.
But to me, that would be the worst
thing that I could ever do.
Is my job that important to me?
No I can find another job if I have to,
but is this project that important to me?
Absolutely. It's that important to me.
My daughter, Claire, she knows what I do.
She's learning from that.
I can't teach her to give those things up
and I wouldn't want her
to give those things up
in the future.
(Claire laughing)
- People who take
responsibility often get it.
That is shifting our posture
to the point where human beings
or whatever they do can say, I made this.
Here, I made this.
What do you think?
And when we own that question,
we are doing a different kind of work
then when we say, I was just doing my job.
(gentle guitar music)
- Prior to the Kickstarter,
we used to do development
work for other people.
We weren't sort of in
control of our own destiny.
And I had to lay off a lot of people.
That's the worst thing I think
an employer could ever do
in their life, is to have to
lay off perfectly good people.
My job is, I gotta keep
everybody employed and working.
Here we are and things are going great.
We feel extremely fortunate
but already I have to start
thinking about what's next.
My issue here now is how do I go to people
and say, hey, we wanna
do another Kickstarter
but we haven't finished this one yet.
And there's a good business reason
but how do I get them to buy off
on why we need to do that?
So we just finished the production
of the new video for the new project.
It's completely different
than the first one.
The first video was like really slick,
and sexy and had all
these really cool shots
and these cool like interviews
but we don't have the time to
make another video like that.
And so when I was talking to my brother
and say Taylor, what are we
gonna do for this next video?
And Taylor was like,
- Well okay, so my idea is this,
my idea, you're not gonna like my idea.
- I'm not gonna like it?
- Nope. You won't like it.
I think it's to do like the interview
on a web chat, like we're doing right now
where you're sitting
there and I'm sitting here
and I ask you the questions
and you answer them
and you just kind of give all
the information that you want.
- Yeah, I don't understand,
what do you mean?
They already know that
we can make a good video,
they already know that
you draw great stuff.
All you really have to do is
get across new information.
This is the only way I can think of
to do it in the timeline
that you have put us under.
- And he's asking me all these questions
about the new project.
Like what's different about it?
What's gonna be in it?
And at the end of us chatting,
my brother looks at me and
goes, well, I've got good news.
And I get this, I get this
like feeling in my stomach
because my brother always pulls
this kind of stuff with me.
And in my head, I'm like, oh no, oh no.
- I recorded the whole thing.
I think we should use the
video from right there,
what we just did.
(groans)
It was good.
It was really good.
I believe you were very sincere,
and I think people will back you.
(birds chirping)
- Hey old school, come here.
My sources tell me you're
starting another project.
- That's right.
I'm pretty excited about the team
and the concept we put together.
- But aren't you still in
the middle of Wasteland?
- We are, but the writers
and concept artists
have finished their work on Wasteland,
and we'd like to get them
going on another project.
- Don't you just fire
them when they're done?
- Well, we like to keep
the teams together.
We like to start pre-production early.
It takes months to nail down the design
and fine tuning of a game.
- Months! For writing?
- Sure, that way when
Wasteland 2 finishes,
the scripters can start
working on material
that's well-polished.
This is the way we did it
back in the Interplay days.
- Inter-who?
- Listen, I doubt you've even
heard of the game anyway.
- Try me.
- There's really no point.
- I'm serious, give me a chance.
- I just don't think-
- Brian, I've done my homework.
I've studied Trista.
- Okay, fine. It's called Torment.
- Never heard of it.
- In my opinion, Torment is
the single greatest game ever made,
and it's a work of art.
It's a work of literature.
- There was a game that we
did back in the Interplay days
that has kind of a big cult following
behind this called Planescape: Torment.
It was a very different
kind of role playing game.
It was very literary in nature,
and you use your words as weapons.
- I'm always amazed
that that game was made
in the first place.
It astounds me.
So now you go and you try
to make that game today
and you just can't get it done
because it's not your cookie cutter combat
or sports game or whatever
the flavor of the month is,
Guitar Hero or whatever it is.
I mean, those games are fun, that's great
but not everything fits into
that little cookie cutter.
There's a huge, tremendous
desire for these games out there.
But nobody has stepped in
and say, okay, we trust you,
here's the money.
Who do you go to?
You go directly to the
people that want the game.
It turns the whole model on its head.
It turns the whole model from,
we need somebody above us,
we need to convince them
to give us some money.
We need to get down on our knees
to we just go to our fan base
and say, do you want this?
And if they want it,
they'll give you the money.
And if they don't, they won't.
- We're kind of part
committed at this point
to going with the crowdfunding
because it's really
the only way, it's the only way
Wasteland could have ever been made.
I mean, we did pitch it to
every publisher on the planet
for 20 years with no
chance of getting it made,
and we pitched it to the crowd
once and they went for it.
We've sort of become the poster child
for the indie development,
anti publisher movement.
And that was, I mean,
it's just an accident.
That's not like that was some secret plan
or anything, but if they can believe
that we can make something
else starting right now
without negatively impacting Wasteland
then I think we can get their support.
But without the crowd
there's really not much
of a future for us,
and what we're trying to do.
(upbeat electronic music)
- This is my lucky shirt.
I know it looks ridiculous,
but I don't really care.
It's a pretty special shirt to me.
I mean, I've worn this at the birth
of one of my my daughters.
I wore this for the first
day of the first project,
Federal 52 part one.
And I'm wearing it today
because today is the
win or lose day for me.
This is the day we start
the Federal 52 part two.
I can barely think straight
because I stayed up all night last night,
working, getting everything ready.
I've got the video which
it's not as you know,
it's not as slick as the first one,
but I think it's pretty funny.
- I recorded the whole thing,
I think we should use the
video from right there,
what we just did.
(groans)
- Oh, I got my pledge
tiers set up, my pictures.
I've got hopefully all the typos correct?
Because last project, I had so many typos
because I'm an idiot.
And all I have to do now it's 11:52
and all I have to do is push go,
just have to wait until 12
because in my last project,
I kind of teased that I
gave all my backers a time
that it was gonna start.
And I said, it's going to
start at 12 noon on Saturday.
So be there, be ready,
because I have some limited edition stuff.
And hopefully I have all these backers
around the world that are sitting there
clicking, refresh, refresh,
refresh, waiting for it to go.
So I just want it to go.
I want it to start because I want to see
if this next chapter in my life
is either going to work out
or it's not going to work out.
I mean it hasn't even
been like two minutes
and I already have more backers
than I did in the first 24
hours of the first project.
Like 420, 422, my phone won't even stop.
Won't even stop, like
dinging, and people going,
I can't even, I can't even think straight.
They just keep coming.
They keep coming.
Like at this rate, I don't even know,
we could get funded in
the first hour or so
compared to the first 24 hours.
This is ridiculous, ridiculous.
Oh, hold on one second, it's my brother.
Yeah. Yes, yes, no, I know.
Are you, are you watching this?
No. Look at, look at it.
Even with that video.
I know it's just keeps going up.
Shut up. All right.
All right. See you.
(laughs excitedly)
I'm excited.
But I feel like I want
to vomit the same time.
It's only been, it's only been 18 minutes
and the project is, I mean,
the project is fully funded.
I mean, yeah that's awesome.
You know, but at the same
time, I didn't even know,
I didn't even know what
I was going to feel.
I'm the most excited
but I'm also the most afraid
that I've ever been before.
My dreams are now coming barreling at me,
at 100 miles an hour
and it's, my life is about to change.
I mean, it's not about to change,
it's changing now.
It just changed in 18 minutes.
And it's, I mean, it's hard to realize
what all of that work
and then you have all these
people that are supporting you,
and there for you even though you may not
even know who they are.
I just hope that, you know,
everything that I've done
and everything that I
do during the project
is enough to merit that sacrifice.
- So I woke up Sunday
to a text from Michael,
who does all of our warehouse tagging
and does a lot of the shipping
and it just said 911 on it.
So it was like, ah, shortly
thereafter, I got a text
from Alicia come to the office now.
And I'm like, Oh, and I'm like, okay.
I'm like, Oh, so we got there and you know
the lock was all broken
and obviously crowbarred
so we got robbed and just
went in, there was a cop there
and the computers were all gone.
We just got a new camera for Justin,
and that was stolen.
A lot of the lenses.
So we got robbed on Sunday.
Sunday morning, my wife
told that she had just read
online that they had been robbed and lost,
I want to say $10,000 worth
of computers and cameras.
And for somebody so small,
that's enough to kind of
put you out of business.
So she said, what can we do?
Like we have to do something
- The following morning after the robbery,
we're all sitting in the office,
and we're like, okay, we got to figure out
a way to get some money back.
As we're talking about it, Lauren calls us
over to her computer and she's
like, guys, check this out.
And I'm like what?
And she's like Gravity
Records just down the street
from us, put up a Facebook event page,
throwing a benefit concert to help Freaker
get their shit back.
- My wife told me that I'm
going to put together an event.
I need you to contact whoever you know,
these bands that, you know,
might be able to do it
and just call in some favors.
And so I started calling and texting.
She started organizing
it all and here we are.
- There was this huge massive event
in like an hour from us
figuring out about the robbery.
You know here we are of just
like, oh, we took this big hit.
Now this whole community
just came together
through this big party, turned
it into this positive event.
And it was awesome.
(uplifting music)
Buy some Freakers.
It was one of the most moving
heights of my life by far.
- [Crowd] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
(crowd cheers)
- [Man] 74,385 backers.
- It's been a long haul
to get back to this place
of making games the way I want to do it.
And having everybody
support what we've done
and to get behind us in such a major way
it's just, it's thrilling.
And then, I just can't say
I'm fortunate enough times.
For me this journey has come full circle.
And I think back to when I was,
when I was young and now here
I am back to where I started
back doing what I want to do.
I can't imagine anything
satisfying than this,
considering the kind of the route
that I've had to take to get here.
- I hope that people
look at what I've done
and see that they can do it.
- All of my work, all of the work
that I've done up to this
point has led to this.
And it's unreal for me
to think about people
all across the world
they may have just been,
sitting in their living room or whatever,
and turn the computer on.
And then, oh that's a nice deck of cards,
and then clicked.
And I may not know those people,
and I may never know those people.
I may never meet those people,
but every individual person that did that
played an enormous role
in changing my life.
And a little thing that
people don't even know
and they will know when
they get the decks,
on the inside of the decks,
there on the inside of the decks,
is it says for Claire and for Scarlet,
and those are my daughters.
Those people absolutely
changed the course of my life
and the course of my
daughter's lives and my family.
(girls laughing)
That's awesome, what is that?
Me laying my ideas and
my heart out on the table
that people can come to that.
And you know, I can do
it, anybody can do it.
(girl squealing)
(seagull cawing)
- Three years ago when I moved out here
I didn't think that,
I had no idea what was in store for me
coming out to Las Angeles.
Had a blast out here.
I met lots of awesome people,
people that mean a lot to me now,
and they'll mean a lot to
me in 20 years from now.
Obviously it's sad to think about
leaving something like this.
Everyone in my office is
like, you're moving to Texas.
What are you talking about?
You moving to Texas.
You're gonna melt in Texas.
Yes. I know it's hot in Texas.
I don't care.
That's why they invented air conditioners.
I mean, it's just another
chapter in my life
and a chapter in my life
with my family and my wife,
and I'm so excited about it.
And I've learned so many things
and I've picked so many things up
that have helped me become who I am
and become the father
that I am and the husband.
I couldn't ask for anything
more, but I get to go home.
(upbeat music)
- You don't have to sit around
and wait for some company
to decide that you want it
You can do it for yourself.
We have built this enormous platform,
it's open to everyone.
We have built this moment in time
with people who care to stand up and care.
Let's not blow it.
- The revolution is here right now.
Look past the old ways of making stuff.
We're building things again.
We're building things in Brooklyn,
We're building things in Japan,
we're building things
everywhere around the world.
We live in a new era.
- We live in a brand new world
where all of a sudden the
technology that is around us
enables us to do the
things that we believe in.
(gentle piano music)
- You guys look beautiful.
I wanna hold ya.
If I can hug you all right now, I would.
But there's a thing, there's a screen,
you're in the future,
but I love you anyway.
And if you ever see me, I'd love a hug.
(upbeat electronic music)
♪ Everybody tells you ♪
♪ You can't stay there ♪
♪ 'Cause you know in a couple more years ♪
♪ They're gonna say, "fair" ♪
♪ Yeah, you know ♪
♪ In a another year you
worry 'bout the images ♪
♪ But I don't look around
and it's wonderful ♪
♪ Running 'round at ah ♪
♪ Now you think, "what didn't I buy?" ♪
♪ Because everything's exactly like ♪
♪ Like we fantasize ♪
♪ Everything you do is like
the outfit that you look for ♪
♪ You're never gonna find it ♪
♪ We're exclusive ♪
♪ Everybody says ♪
♪ Don't you wanna take ♪
♪ Some time away ♪
♪ Well, everybody ♪
♪ Could say it's 'cause of me ♪
♪ Assume too easily ♪
♪ Yeah, we're exclusive ♪
♪ Everybody says ♪
♪ Don't you wanna take ♪
♪ Some time away ♪
♪ Well, everybody ♪
♪ Could say it's 'cause of me ♪
♪ Assume too easily ♪
♪ Assume too easily ♪
♪ You can't stay there ♪
♪ 'Cause you know in a couple more years ♪
♪ They're gonna say, "fair" ♪
♪ Yeah, you know ♪
♪ Even this year, people run by ♪
♪ All for good ♪
♪'Cause I just see 'em go walk away ♪
♪ But I've been sitting here ♪
♪ And I've been singing ♪
♪ We're exclusive ♪
♪ Everybody says ♪
♪ Don't you wanna take ♪
♪ Some time away ♪
♪ Well, everybody ♪
♪ Could say it's 'cause of me ♪
♪ Assume too easily ♪
♪ Yeah, we're exclusive ♪
♪ Everybody says ♪
♪ Don't you wanna take ♪
♪ Some time away ♪
♪ Well, everybody ♪
♪ Could say it's 'cause of me ♪
♪ Assume too easily ♪
♪ When you arrive in the middle of it ♪
♪ You don't know what's going on ♪
♪ And everybody tells you ♪
♪ You've got to keep
singing the same old song ♪
♪ When you arrive in the middle of it ♪
♪ You don't know what's going on ♪
♪ Take it like ♪
♪ You don't mind ♪