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Josh Hackbarth Of Warner Bros Discovery & Shanon Kelley Of Nifty’s On Game of Thrones — Build Your Realm
Web3 and NFTs are still evolving, and it is up to developers to push boundaries and take some risks to garner tremendous growth. This is the core foundation of Build Your Realm, a digital collectible featuring assets from the acclaimed TV series Game of Thrones. Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger go behind the scenes of this project with collaborators Josh Hackbarth of Warner Bros Discovery and Shanon Kelley of Nifty’s. The two discuss how they continuously innovate in the Web3 space by intently listening to fan feedback, constantly trying non-traditional strategies, and prioritizing diversity and inclusivity. For this episode’s Sponsored Hot Topic, Loren Roosendaal of Galactic Entertainment explains how they are creating the world’s first cinematic multiverse through Planet Quest, a digital planet sale.
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JoshHackbarth Of Warner Bros Discovery & Shanon Kelley Of Nifty’s On Game ofThrones — Build Your Realm
**This episode features two special guests, Josh Hackbarth, Head of NFT Commercial Development at Warner Brothers Discovery, and Shanon Kelley, Chief Commercial Officer at Nifty’s. Let’s hear a little bit about each of them. Josh is responsible for overseeing the development and operation of all aspects of Warner Brothers’ NFT business, from pitches and potential partnerships to campaign activations to driving new initiatives in partnership with Warner Brothers Consumer Products, DC, Home Entertainment, Warner Brothers Animation, Warner Brothers Television, and Warner Brothers Pictures. **
**In addition to heading up the studio NFT efforts, Josh led the company’s first NFT efforts with Space Jam: A New Legacy, DC FanDome, and The Matrix Resurrections with initial drops of each being met with overwhelming demand, highlighting the success that NFTs bring. Josh has built his experience across entertainment retail and technology with leadership positions at DreamWorks Animation, Amazon, GE, and 3M. **
**Let’s hear a little bit about Shanon. Shanon, Nifty’s first hire leads business development and the distinctive white glove service that guides creators through the optimization of their efforts. Nifty’s is a platform that makes it easy for brands and creators to launch and manage NFT powered communities, keeping their fans engaged while driving their business interests across their ecosystems. **
**As a trailblazer with many years of experience, Shanon has created a career heavily focused on diversity and inclusion, creating opportunities for women in technology to thrive and be seen. As Advertising Director of Vice, the world’s leading youth media brand, she led partnerships and also created and launched Vice’s Women’s Interest channel, broadly one of the first platforms dedicated to covering diverse stories of gender and race. Shanon, Josh, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here. **
It’s nice to be here. Thanks for having us.
Right on the eve of a big Game of Thrones conference in the same place where we all got together NFT LA.
That’s where we all first met.
**For those of you that aren’t named Josh, Josh and I see each other almost daily in Josh DAO. A lot of GMs going back and forth. We both found out there’s three other Josh DAOs. There may be a merger forthcoming. Hopefully, all the Josh’s come together at the next NFT LA. Let’s talk about Warner Brothers. You guys are continuing to be long-standing titans in the entertainment space. I learned it was founded over 100 years ago. That’s incredible. It’s such a bold and exciting journey that you guys have segued into the world of Web3 and NFTs. We would love to understand over the course of the journey so far, what does this innovation process look like for you guys from the inside? **
We’re celebrating our 100th year anniversary all throughout 2023, which is super exciting. We’ll be digging into Game of Thrones in this episode, which is of course part of HBO, which celebrated its 50th year. We’ve been around for a bit. The thing that keeps me going is that innovation engine keeps firing and it’s been great. When we started to look at the Web3 space, it wasn’t even being called Web3. It was more watching what was happening in the market with NFTs and where fans were flocking. We started to look at it at another way to delight our fans and tell new stories. We didn’t know how we were going to approach it.
Every month, the tech offers more and more that we can play with, but we approached it both traditionally and untraditional. Meaning that it’s an avenue where we were seeing fans go down and we wanted to delight them there. Untraditional, it offers up things that we hadn’t had to deal with before, like decentralized ownership and the ability to bring the fan into a storytelling process in a completely new way. It’s allowed us to flip things upside down internally as well.
**That totally makes sense. It’s been impressive to say the least how you guys have extended your brand to this new realm and created so much interesting content and weave together these different stories in a different way. **
It’s also important to recognize the trailblazing aspect. I’m sure Warner Brothers as an organization, but also you Josh, of being willing to try new things and get into a new territory. There’s a lot to be said for that trailblazing and willingness to take a bit of risk and try something new. You guys launched digital collectibles though successfully, like DC characters, Looney Tunes, Matrix, Avatar, DC Comic books, Game of Thrones. What do you think is the source of that inspiration to keep pushing onwards and bringing these franchises into the new territory of Web3?
We’ve been focusing on our biggest and most iconic franchises that have the big fan bases because we know there’s appetite there to try new things. For something like Looney Tunes or Space Jam, I remember Shanon and I riffing on that. We’ve tried a lot of different approaches. We were approaching it as an extension of a theatrical marketing campaign and then it evolved into more of digital collectibles, collect them all. As we’ll get into with Game of Thrones, I don’t even know how you would define what we’re going to be doing. It’s different. We keep pushing it. We’re following the fan feedback obsessively. We’re in the Discords and Twitter. We’re seeing what’s resonating, not just with our programs, but around the industry and see how we can come push the envelope in the space.
Build Your Realm: Build Your Realm follows fan feedback from their social media obsessively. This gives them an idea of what things are resonating with their audience and how they can push the envelope in the Web3 space.
**We were at Art Basel speaking with folks, doing auctions at Christie’s with Pace Gallery as well. The thing I want to highlight here from what you said is you don’t even know what you’re doing, or you don’t even know how to explain it. That’s great. That’s why me, Jeff, and Josh are excited about the space. The folks that I was talking to from Pace, the projects that they had been working with, they had been doing these things back before NFTs became a part of the mainstream. They were doing things that were groundbreaking, like NFTs that can change over time or based on what’s going on in the wallet of the holder of the NFTs. **
**This is something that is going over a lot of people’s head when they think about the hyped aspect of, “Am I supposed to get this NFT? It’s going to go up in value.” What’s exciting to the folks that are keeping in the space is there’s so much potential to explore here. I love that that’s what you’re bringing to the table. It’s great if we don’t know exactly what we’re doing. That’s what’s meant to be. **
I would be embarrassed to say if I did know what we were doing, because the tech is going so fast. With that said, we have a general idea. We’re all circling around. The exciting part about this space is we are all in it together. We’re all building on each other. It’s different than our traditional businesses where it’s much more almost of a competitive nature. This is more of a community nature. Even amongst our competitors, like trying to elevate the technology and seeing where it’s going to go. That’s where we partner with Nifty’s as an example. Fortunately, they do know what they’re doing in this space. It’s been a good collab.
**Let’s talk about that. This is the thing we’re here to discuss. You got this killer collaboration between Warner Brothers Discovery and Nifty’s through the Game of Thrones: Build Your Realm. How did this epic project come together? **
That’s me annoying Josh for months probably. Every day I’ll be like, “Game of Thrones. What do you think?” We’ve had an amazing partnership so far. You guys mentioned off the bat, Space Jam and The Matrix. Those were our first two projects that we did where our launch project was Space Jam: A New Legacy with Warner Brothers. We expanded that to The Matrix, Looney Tunes, and now Game of Thrones. It seemed like the next logical step if we’re thinking about what the big iconic franchises are and who have mass global audience, it doesn’t get much bigger than Game of Thrones. 8 in 10 people globally recognize the Game of Thrones franchise or something ridiculous like that.
It’s world renowned. Fans are crazy for it. It made a lot of sense to move into this. I can’t remember how what we’ve created came together because it’s been a process. Going back to that point about taking more traditional media and doing it in Web3, that’s part of it. Traditional consumer products, you have two-year lead times, Josh, where you have what you have baked ready to go and then it’s a year and a half before you get it, but you have to be done.
Whereas with NFTs and big programs on the blockchain, we can be a little bit more fluid and flexible and decide, “Based on all that feedback that we get directly from the audience, this might not work this time. We should add on this. We should change this.” The technology is moving so quickly as well that we’re able to create new activities and ways for people to engage. It was an evolving process for sure. That was my long-winded way of saying that.
On the Warner Brothers side, Game of Thrones was on our list from the beginning on how, because we knew we have this active fan base. We had amazing new series coming out, House of the Dragon, but we didn’t want to do yet another PFP project or yet another NFT program. We were selective in how we wanted to bring this to market. To Shanon ‘s point, she was persistent on that. You’ll see as we start to talk about it a little bit is it’s a special approach that we wanted to take with this one. It was like a giant six-month game of yes and. Nifty’s would bring up an idea and we’d be like, “Great, and let’s do that, and let’s do that.” Every time one of us yes and, the other person had a stressful moment because they knew it was the right thing to do, but it’s a lot of work.
**That reminds me of one of my first improv classes. That was an exercise I had to do for a whole week, say yes to everyone no matter what they ask me. The only thing you could say is and. It’s like, “Yes, I’ll do that in five years.” Nuanced process there. At the end of the day, you guys have pushed the boundaries here creatively from an imagination perspective. I would love to dive into some of the details and learn a little bit more about this drop and what you guys are doing. By the way, one quick aside is, with the latest series, my only critique is where it ended. I wanted to be able to listen to the nest episode or check it out desperately. I don’t know how long I have to wait but it’s going to be too long. **
Binge viewing is both the best and worst thing that has happened to our generations. You want that instant fix, for sure. Maybe I’ll comment a little bit on the Warner Brothers side or HBO side. We wanted to stay true to the theories on this. What you’re not going to see in this is new stories that weren’t told on screen. What you are going to see is some different ways to experience those stories. Watching this over the summer, rewatching the original series, there are 73 episodes or something like that. Many of them stick out in your head. Many of them people haven’t watched in 6, 7 years. You go back and watch them, they’re like, “I remember this was a great show.” Bringing that back to life is going to be fun.
Binge viewing is both the best and worst thing that has happened to our generation. Click To Tweet
**There’s a collab with the Josh DAO, Game of Josh’s thing that’s going on as well. **
There can be only one Josh DAO.
It gets Game of Josh DAOs. It’s like one Josh DAO against the other Josh DAO. Massively successful series here with Game of Thrones and many diehard fans of every intricate detail of Westeros. What can the Game of Thrones enthusiasts look forward to in this experience? Can you walk us through a little bit more of the details here?
We’ve stuck close to the cannon. Everybody’s going to be excited. To take a bird’s eye view of it, this will be a multi-year program. The first step that we’re taking away from traditional NFT programs, that’s one and done. You build the community from there. That’s not the approach we’re taking. We’re going to be having releases every other month, starting with what we’re calling a Hero Box that includes multiple NFTs on different blockchains. That’s another nerdy thing that we’re doing, which I don’t know if anyone has done before. The box will include not just an avatar, but trading cards as well and different kinds of cards. Some of those are resource cards that you can use to upgrade your avatar.
Build Your Realm: Build Your Realm will have releases every other month through Hero Boxes. It will include multiple NFTs on different blockchains.
Some of those will be story cards, which are directly from the show. Those cards in and of themselves will have their own moments later in the year where even if you’re just a casual fan and you’re like, “I’d rather collect cards from the show and pictures from the show or photos from the show,” you can do that. You don’t have to get into the avatar itself. That’s the bird’s eye view. Over those two years, there’ll be themed. The first one that we’ve announced that we’ll be launching is the North. You can obviously imagine, right off the bat, it starks. That’s the first one that we’re getting into. You can also think about who else is in the North. There’s the wall. What’s over the wall?
There’s a lot of things that you can get excited for there. Everything that we’ve done for the avatars themselves is insanely detailed, even down to the clothing and hairstyles and chains and what color people wear and things that you wouldn’t see on one group that is only going to be on another one. We stuck close to the storyline. Fans will be excited because they’ll get to nerd out with everything on that. The other amazing thing that we’re doing is we’re allowing you to also upgrade and change your avatar, which I’m not sure how many.
A few projects do that with other things, but in this sense, we’re allowing people to customize their avatar by earning rewards and by collecting these cards. We’ll be able to upgrade weapons and outfits and backgrounds and companions. Imagine dire wolf as an example. Fun things that will get people completely immersed in the show if they’re not already.
**There are many different elements. Folks can go in and build and do some exciting things there. First question, with Nifty’s, what blockchain is it built on? What’s the framework here that enables so much goodness and customization and fun? **
We originally built with Palm. That was our launch partner. They’re wonderful. We’ve done several projects with them, Josh as well. DC is on Palm. Now, once the merge happened, we integrated Ethereum. We’re able to do multi chain projects. We’re going to be adding on as well. All your more typical Layer 2s will be in there. It allows us to have these much bigger multi chain projects in the sense of we have a premium NFT that can be an avatar, that can be something else. Those are traditionally on Ethereum. We have engagement NFTs or activity NFTs on a Layer 2 in this case pump. That allows us to gamify the experience for the fans and do activities every day even without needing to pay a $10 gas fee every day. We do those engagement NFTs on the Layer 2. It’s pretty fun.
It opens your hand to many cool things when you don’t have to worry about the gas element that we had to deal with for so long.
**Shanon, you and I have had some conversations in the past about the importance of diversity and inclusivity in the space. I know it’s something that you’re passionate about. I was curious how you have folded these principles into this project which has such a cultural component and what that’s looked like in terms of some of the decisions you’ve made along the way. **
It’s hard. Game of Thrones is its own world. We want to stay true to that, but we also want to make sure that there’s something for everybody. That can mean multiple things. It makes sure that there’s female avatars in there or other representations of people that you can say, “That one reminds me of myself.” That’s obviously one that we can do easily, and we have. The other thing, in working with brands that already have such a huge fan base, it’s making sure that that’s accessible to them so that it’s not this complicated thing that they need to figure out or that it’s too expensive or things like that. That’s why we’ve added multiple ways that people can engage in this program. If you’re a fan, you don’t necessarily want to get into the avatar aspect of it.
You can buy a pack of your favorite moments from the show. That’ll be affordable and accessible for everybody. On basic things like allowing for credit card purchases and things like that, which have become so common nowadays, but there’s a reason for that. We want more mass adoption and accessibility. A lot of people don’t have a MetaMask or don’t know how to connect to their MetaMask or don’t know how to transfer any crypto they have to another type of crypto. Doing things that make it more accessible for the average fan and making it fun is the main priority here.
You make a great point about how inclusion can be accessed through accessibility, making sure that people are aware of something, can get involved. By the nature of them getting involved, their community or their avatar to use avatar in another term. That user avatar can start to make a home in that space. That’s cool. What does your roadmap look like going forward with this stuff? We talked about a little bit and we talked about how there’s multiple years involved. Are there any partnerships, artist collaborations, or other features we might be interested to find out about or is that still under wraps?
It’s still under wraps, but 100%. That is what I’m excited about for this program, too. Many programs are one and done. You release your 10,000 or whatever the main focus is and then that’s it. For us, because we have multi-year, we have all these opportunities to expand, to experiment, to change things, or to bring in partners or other collaborators. Other than the roadmap that we’ve already revealed, which is the multi-year hitting all of the regions of Game of Thrones and the basics of it, we’re still working all the rest of that out. We’re excited about it.
Our goal for this, and Shanon touched on this a little bit with inclusivity, is with all of our projects is how do we bring more people into the space? We’ve learned a lot about the projects we’ve launched. We want to super serve the people that are already in the NFT community. All the expected points will be there, but then, how do we make it as easy as possible to bring other people in so that they can also be part of this longer roadmap? The other thing I’ll say is what I’m most excited about, honestly, in this program and for both NFT natives and for new people coming in is we’ve all bought avatars or PFPs and you’re like, “If only I got one with laser eyes,” or whatever it is. This is an avatar program where if you don’t get the one you want, you can get trading cards to upgrade to the one that you want it to be. I’ve not seen that before, but it’s going to be exciting.
**Shanon, how about you? **
**Are you still a loyal Mariah Carey fan? **
One hundred percent, yes.
**Check Opposites Attract. **
Flipped it for a new game.
**Shanon, what about you? **
Christmas present I bought online.
**Can you say what website you bought it from? **
Sounds like a little bit too much of a clue.
We sold some toys on Facebook Marketplace.
That’s like the new Craigslist.
I want Josh to go first so I can one up him.
**Where are we going? **
Antarctica or something crazy.
**Shanon, what about you? **
The ability to be a person.
Arya, hands down. She’s my favorite.
**She’s a badass. **
Why her?
What an example to put there.
Important Links
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Immutable X – Past Episode
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@JoinPlanetQuest on Twitter
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@BuildYourRealm on Twitter
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@Nifty’s on Twitter
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Spotify – Edge of NFT Podcast
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iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
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@EdgeOfNFT on Twitter