Netflix (NFLX) has struggled in recent months, causing investors and company watchers to wonder what the streaming giant’s future holds.
This future, as it turns out, can be associated with “Exploded Kittens,” a card game about “cats and destruction.” Netflix and the card maker are collaborating on a TV show that will be directed by “King of the Mountain” creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels – and it will involve a multi-platform approach that could be the key to Netflix’s content in the future. .
“Imagine, now, you can play the game, and then go watch the show on Netflix,” said Exploding Kittens CEO and founder Elan Lee. “You fall in love with a character in the game called Tacocat, which is cool because it’s a palindrome. So, I went to buy a Tacocat toy and the sign said, ‘Tear off this sign again, next time you play ‘Explosive Kittens’, you will start everything.
Netflix, as a company and as a brand, is in the middle of a big change. The giant reported a quarterly loss of 200,000 users in April, and on Tuesday, reported a loss of 970,000 subscribers in the second quarter. Netflix has been particularly troubled by the pressures of inflation, increasing competition, and increasing subscribers. On Monday, Morgan Stanley (MS) even warned that a possible “recession” is imminent.
So, where does this leave “Exploding Kittens”? At another level, in the eye of the storm. The streaming television series “Exploding Kittens” is in many ways a huge success for Netflix – not only is it visually interesting and successful, with built-in characters, but “Exploding Kittens” already has its roots fan. “Explosive kittens” even got a shout-out from Netflix COO and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters in the company’s latest earnings call.
“There’s an early glimpse of where we’re trying to take this with our recent announcement with the launch of both the game and the animated series around the ‘Exploding Kittens’ IP,” Peters told analysts. in April. “This is the first step on a long road map that we have in terms of thinking about how we make the film and the sequence of episodes and the experience of exciting games, the kind of interaction between these, adds value and our members get from both. So, it’s. like one-and-one–three and then hopefully four, and then five. That’s kind of the vision we’ve had for years.”
Netflix has other interactive TV shows, including “Minecraft: Story Mode” and “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” but “Exploding Kittens” will mark a new phase in the company’s development of such content. abdomen.
Lee, whose accomplishments include being the first Xbox game designer, enjoys the interaction between the TV show and the game itself.
“The show will come out next year,” he said. “When the show comes out, the show will go through a big change to accommodate all the new characters… You’ll see the characters you already love come to life. You’ll hear their voices for the first time ever.”
The group plays Explosive Kittens, produced by the company.
Try not to explode
Lee and his partners, Matthew Inman and Shane Small, began raising money for “Exploded Kittens” through Kickstarter in 2015. The three hoped to raise $10,000 to launch the game – instead, they ended up over the top. and 8.7 million dollars. , and to this day are responsible for one of the most funded Kickstarters ever.
The game works pretty simply: you and your friends draw cards, while trying not to draw an exploding cat – whoever draws an exploding cat loses. Although it is possible to get cards to kill cats, odds are, you will get some competition. See the article : Nerdvana: Nostalgia fills National Video Game Day. The game is also filled with feline characters like Beard Cat, Tacocat, and Rainbow-Ralphing Cat. There is one goal, as the comparison says – “try not to explode.”
Since its launch, “Exploding Kittens” has grown in more ways than one. For one, the company is making more games. One new thing is Burrito Throw, a dodgeball card game where you know, throw burritos at each other.
“We have this great formula where we make games that entertain people and we know the audience will come out for that, so that’s what we continue to do,” Lee told Yahoo Finance.
Toronto, Canada – 21 June 2022; Elan Lee, CEO, Exploding Kittens on a Natural Level during one day of the 2022 conference at the Enercare Center in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Lukas Schulze/Sportsfile for collision via Getty Images)
In 2019, the company even received an investment of 30 million dollars from Peter Chernin’s TCG Capital, starting, among other things, the campaign for the television series “Exploded Kittens”. It was the company’s vision of a multi-platform entertainment system that attracted the “Exploding Kittens” team to Netflix, Lee said.
“We’re in this crazy situation where everyone is approaching us,” he told Yahoo Finance. “For us, what pushed Netflix over the edge was this incredible argument where they said we don’t just want to build a TV show. We want to build a brand, help finance your video game production… We’re going to show as long as you agree to make content, and the characters can move around in the property.”
Akiko Fujita contributed to this report.
Allie Garfinkle is a senior technical reporter at Yahoo Finance. Find her on twitter @agarfinks.
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