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Snoop Frog, Gamabunta & Shrimp McFly Of Frogland On Building The New Pangea Metaverse NFT Playground For Frogs, Gutter Cats & Rats, Wicked Craniums, & More...
The NFT space is brimming with opportunity, both on the business and the creative side. In this episode, it’s time to meet three people trying to make a splash and leave their mark in the NFT universe with their new project, Frogland! Our hosts, Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley & Josh Kriger meet the Frogland trio of Snoop Frog, Gamabunta, and Shrimp McFly. The Frogland team discusses the creation of their metaverse, how their NFT differs from other NFT projects and how the community drives the progress of this imaginative project. Jump in and listen to how these pioneers are changing the game and having a ribbiting good time.
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Snoop Frog, Gamabunta & Shrimp McFly Of Frogland On Building The New Pangea Metaverse NFT Playground For Frogs, Gutter Cats & Rats, Wicked Craniums, & More…
This sponsored episode is brought to you by our featured collaborator, Frogland, the soon-to-be metaverse home of 10,000 generative NFT frogs. We’ll be speaking with team members Snoop Frog, Gamabunta and Shrimp McFly. Snoop Frog is the CEO of this rock star team with a track record, developing emerging technologies with industry leaders such as Nvidia, Samsung and Mattel. Gamabunta is a research specialist and leads the development and management of NFT traits, properties and tokenomics. Shrimp McFly is a Hollywood creative director with years of experience with Iconic IP that will be present throughout Frogland. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having us. It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to hopping into Frogland.
It’s exciting to have you guys talking specifics about a project that’s coming up that has generated a lot of buzz in the community. We talk a lot about the macro of what’s going on in NFTs. This is a chance for us to dive deep with guys with a lot of experience doing something cool specifically the edge of frog NFTs. Why don’t we start off by asking the question, what is Frogland? What’s this all about?
Frogland is a generative sale as we’ve touched upon 10,000 frogs that will ultimately bootstrap the development of a next-generation metaverse. The metaverse itself has been developed by a former AAA development team that was the flagship studio for one of the leading games consoles out there with some incredible experience building for lots of the generation games. We realized some time ago that the NFT space is gravitating towards metaverses because the artists want the world to be able to demonstrate their avatars that aren’t working with NFTs in a more massive capacity, as you’re not just scrolling through on a mobile phone.
This has drawn a lot of interest into the existing metaverse that we have in the space but in my opinion, those metaverses are the 2017 metaverses. That’s where the blank voids for artists to be able to demonstrate two-dimensional images, artworks and occasional advertising here and there. Since seeing the rise in, for instance, The Bored Ape Yacht Club, a generative series of 10,000 apes where they built this incredible community. That community went on to dominate the NFT space and to become one of the most sought-after NFTs in this current wave.
We sat by and saw, having worked with a bunch of other NFT projects, that this is a technology that had to stay. We saw that the metaverses again are now having the need for artists to pop in and to be able to demonstrate artwork. There are a lot more people needing to move into these spaces, not just the gamers from the last generation. The Bored Ape Yacht Club raised a lot of money, selling them NFTs. They spend that money buying land in Sandbox, which is a very gamified and Minecraft-style world. It didn’t represent the aesthetics of their community.
Given my track record, having worked in the XR space for a number of years, knowing a lot of the key players in both the hardware and the software development world and now having run a few projects with some of the fine gentlemen, we realized that there’s an opportunity here to bring the community together and build a metaverse that was more in line with this current wave of generative projects.
In doing so, the concept of Frogland was born. It’s the idea that we could work directly with the artists that created the artwork on the NFTs that had been so popular in the community and get them to help design districts suited off to their aesthetics with AAA game developers, effectively have a metaverse that was customized and designed to be a home for each and every project to help that.
With that in mind, we started reaching out to some of our most favorite projects. The Gutter Cat Gang and the Wicked Craniums were the first two partners that we decided to connect with our game developers to build district and their aesthetics. As such, the Gutterville was born, the homeland of the district for the Gutter Cat Gang within the NewPangea metaverse. Frogland being the founding district in the center, we will have the Gutter Cat Gang to the Western border.
We also have the Island of Osseous, which is the district for the Wicked Craniums and Wicked Stallions and that is to the South of Frogland. This is a community center named The BoneYard. It can be found at the very center with a view that, at a later stage, after the initial Frogland sale, we can continue to roll out future land sales. Those funds will then go back towards the development of the whole metaverse ecosystem itself. There will only ever be one Frogland sale, where the only way you can buy land in Frogland is by buying a frog. This is why we have the catch-phrase, “Buy a frog, get land.” In essence, this is where it all came from and where we’re going.
There’s a lot to unpack here on the show. I got to say, for Snoop Frog, your accent is quite different than what I’m used to. I was wondering, was it Snoop’s background that got you excited about this? Was it his accent? I’m pretty enamored by the accent, personally.
It’s a bit of both. It’s definitely a charming accent but a very impressive background. We’ve had the opportunity to work with him a bit before. We’re quite excited to jump in and get this project started however we could.
Snoop, you alluded to it before, NewPangea. What is NewPangea? How does it relate to this? I heard of the different components. What’s the interaction like?
NewPangea is the name of this metaverse, Frogland being the first founding district of NewPangea. Imagine Frogland in the center, North, South, East and West. We have initially four districts that will be surrounding Frogland and in the future, also when the community demands and this is so important, the community must want it. We’re not going to force anything down people’s throats here. This is something that is going to be a space built by the community for the community.
You only eat the flies when you want to eat the flies.
That’s how we’re trying to differentiate and be something different and cool from some of the other metaverses out there. This isn’t a product that we’re wrapping up complete and then giving over where we’re saying like, “We’re at this early stage. We want your inputs to help us make this a home where everyone is collaboratively helped.” That’s where the best projects have come from is a community collaboration in helping create their law and the vibe. That’s what we’re trying to do from a metaverse perspective, get community inputs ongoing and early.
What does a Hollywood creative director like yourself do differently? What’s your perspective on how to create amazing metaverses at a high level?
The narrative changed when I came aboard to bring it into the noir cinema gangster, good guy versus bad guy, cops versus robbers, all the things that we love about movies and narrative. One of the challenges of Hollywood, for example, is it’s very top-down. You have a writer and a director that dictate how the story is going to work and everyone falls in line like an army.
In this case, it’s an army of frogs and everyone brings their own ideas with a guiding story. The idea here is to build communities or provide the tools so that NewPangea becomes a process or maybe even a cesspool of stories within their own districts. They can draw upon all the media that inspires them to build out their own NFT project lore, NFT project aesthetic and as a place to play and grow with their fans.
We’ve heard a lot of cool stuff and a few comparisons with existing metaverses. In what ways is this one going to be different than other ones? What kind of vision do you have that’s different here?
A large emphasis on what we’ve been doing has been not only the visual style of this new generation of the metaverse but it has been the narrative and engagement within the space once you’re in that. This is where we brought on board some tremendous creative writing experts there. In fact, one of the gentlemen who is an ex-LucasArts and ex-Disney has been working on fleshing out the film noir narrative with Shrimp.
We have this whole notion where, for instance, the Gutter Cat Gang has been negotiated by the notorious people of Frogland to establish a deal to then protect the Western borders in return for Frogland providing the cat with catnip. The Wicked Craniums in return for giving frogs access to their Wicked Riders will be allowed access to various aspects of the Frogland District.
Frogland: The NFT space is gravitating towards metaverses because the artists want the world to be able to demonstrate their avatars that aren’t working with NFTs in a more massive capacity, as you’re not just scrolling through on a mobile phone.
We’re fleshing out this whole narrative where the communities that are not participating will be able to see the story get built out and contribute ideas. This will be the co-creation of a narrative that is so impressive. When you start to get a lot of people in the same space at the same time, you see some magical things happen. By buying a frog, you’re not just buying a portion of land but you’re also getting a say in the development process.
As a gamer myself, someone who always strive to be able to participate in a game development process, to now have the option to have a lot of people effectively participate in this entire game development world, having a window into the development studio in the process from concept to completion, where if someone comes up with a good idea and the community gets behind it, we can make that a real thing. This is why we’re using world-class game developers because these are not straight out of university. These guys have built one of the bestselling launch titles for one of the bestselling games consoles in the world. They know their stuff.
The level of gamification and narrative is something that you simply don’t see in existing metaverses. The last-gen metaverse is a blank void for people to jump into to walk around but they rely on individuals in there for any level of engagement. This is the space that you could jump in independently by yourself if you still wish and still have a lot of fun inside. The real difference is adding more of a gamification element to the metaverse than just the metaverse itself.
As you describe it too, I know Jeff, also known as Frog Gronkowski here and Josh too, VanillaFrog and myself, Talib Frogli, have all had some experience with comedy improv. The way you’re describing it makes me feel that way. It’s like that yes-and mentality and making a ridiculous situation, giving people things to play with from the start and saying, “Come on. Let’s play together, have fun here and let loose.” I like that.
There’s nothing more fun than a cute, untrustworthy dungeon master. That’s all the frogs are in this underworld. They might be smugglers. They may have shady backgrounds. There are archetypes of different frogs. We’re going to see bookies, fugitives, racketeers to loan sharks, going all the way to the extortionists, smugglers and bad actors.
I have a correction here. I think you mean loan frogs.
Loan frogs are sitting there in the pool, waiting to jump out.
Loan frog sharks, maybe that’s the right terminology.
Part of the enchanting aspect of this is frogs are fun and cute and everyone loves them but they’re mysterious. Their eyes are always a little shifty. You never know quite where they’re looking, what they’re thinking or what they’re doing. We’re double-downing on the empathy towards that animal, as well as pulling out as much uneasiness and absurdity at the same time. It’s the mashup that we hope to touch with our audience.
We know there’s a Burning Man community that loves NFTs. I’m going to lay down a prediction here. There’s going to be some DMT frog, hallucinogenic haven somewhere in the metaverse that these guys are going to come up with. It has got to happen.
Let’s say that making that inspiration in both skin, tone, absurdity and eyes is a large component of this. We hope that the audience responds with that.
Let’s take this a little bit further in terms of what things can be done in the frog metaverse. I know, Snoop, you had some conversations with the Gutter Cats. Are we talking about specific games that can be created where people can earn something? Are we talking about a frog-audience-focused music show where a top performer comes in dressed as a frog and there’s access to special concerts and events? Are you bringing all the different capabilities of NFTs together in this metaverse over time? Is that the goal?
I like to think of it as, “What can you do with a piece of paper?” There are endless possibilities. You can write a book, draw a picture and write a poem. There are so many things you can do and this is what we’re giving. It’s a blank canvas for people to come in and start exploring, developing and brainstorming what it is exactly they would want to do with this next-generation environment.
I know we have a roadmap and an idea of what we would like to see realized but none of this is set in stone. Everything is put to the community. If the community says no, the community wants to see something else and we will get some incredible insights. For example, we were doing the Twitter Spaces community chat in the Wicked Craniums’ evening hour. We started doing a Q&A with a lot of the Wicked Cranium holders. They started coming up with some cool ideas for how we could use the Wicked Craniums and what they would like to see happen in that space.
Similarly, with the Gutter Cats, we had one of their weekly Twitter Spaces. They invited us to co-host to have a bit of a Q&A with their community. We saw the feedback and the people flowing into our Discord, throwing ideas into the individual channels that we created for them. This is where the magic begins to happen because we have a wonderful idea, great roadmap and team that knows exactly what they’re doing but the community is where we’re going to start seeing these absolute golden nuggets coming out.
We have fourteen people working on this project between the game development, artwork, blockchain and everything but it’s probably about seventeen now. There are only so many ideas seventeen people can come up with. When you get 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 or 100,000 people all throwing ideas into the mix and getting the community to vote on them and filter the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to get some pretty cool things evolving, the unknown unknowns, none of us here can even anticipate.
This is what I love so much about the emerging technology spaces. It’s the Wild West. There are no rules, handbooks and templates to follow. You have to do it yourself. Something will work. Something won’t but through trial and error, working in this space and a number of other spaces and working with your chops, we’ve struck upon the epitome of utility and that is community. In my mind, the best utility is having the community involved one and the same. This is what Frogland has managed to do. It’s managing to pull the community together into a shared space that is more immersed, engaging and entertaining than anything else that’s out there so far.
In that space, what’s almost certainly going to be required and needed are betting down and finalizing the artistic and aesthetic aspects of these different districts of Gutterville and the Wicked Cranium community as well, getting those parted and then getting builder tools. People are still going to want to within that aesthetic of that particular district to customize things. They’re going to want to be able to display their NFTs, for instance, in the art district. In terms of how we gamify, there are a million options. There’s going to be more engagement in betting down exactly what aspects are gamified and how people can interact beyond building and customizing the space. That’s our next on the roadmap.
We’re building out a series of lore and potentially NFTs attached to those lores to compound the mystery. That includes individual rap sheets for famous, notorious frogs, crime scene investigator reports, notes by lead investigators, photo snippets, evidence and confidential files. It will play up that mystery with a little bit of puzzle, narrative, fun and a lot of cool art. All of these things take time. The process of building out that roadmap and the sale of these first NFTs allow us to hire the right people, build up the narrative team and drop out all of those little bits into the pond sphere into the Frogland. Floating papers on the road of travels and you pick it up. You have a new mystery that you can go and search for or some information that you can go find.
Your background in Hollywood is definitely coming out there. We’re talking about real character development, like what you would find in screenwriting, developing those characters fully. It sounds like there are some opportunities to develop IP shows, maybe even in the future, around some of these frogs, characters or the community.
How I got into the NFT space, my background is visual effects animation at Lucasfilm. I worked with Bob Zemeckis on a few films and then got into VR/AR. Mr. Frog Tree, who is not here, is my creative partner for many years. He and I have written several screenplays together. We’ve had a lot of challenges getting them off of the ground. Netflix, as much as they’re looking for hot content, Amazon and all these streaming services are still playing by the old rules were great. Who do you know? How much control are we going to have?
That whole rights thing, George Lucas figured that out long ago. Getting that will never happen again. The only way to do that is to reverse-engineer the system. Build an ecosystem where everybody has a piece of it. Everyone is building that narrative. All we’re offering is being the dungeon masters through our experience of what makes a great narrative, dropping those bits in and seeing where the community goes with it. It’s like crowdsourcing narrative design. That’s what’s super exciting about it and I think why there’s this filmic aspect to it. The NFTs will reflect that. They will be different in a lot of ways than the other NFTs you’ll see out there. At least, the avatar-style generative.
Frogland: There will only ever be one Frogland sale, where the only way you can buy land in Frogland is by buying a frog. This is why we have the catch-phrase, “Buy a frog, get land.”
True co-creation at its core is community building and engagement. Let’s talk about that a little bit on a higher level. When you think about partnerships and developing those to help advance what you’re trying to build here, what partnerships have you formed? What are you working on? How do you form those relationships to advance Frogland?
Let’s do it.
Shrimp McFly, what about you?
Gamabunta, how about you?
Gamabunta, how about you?
Snoop Frog, how about you?
Is this land anyone ever visited?
0N1 Force. I minted some from the contract.
I plead the frog fifth on that one.
Shrimp, how about you?
Gamabunta, how about you?
A Cool Cat, I sold it to fund the early purchase.
Is it a ring for your fingers? What kind of ring?
Snoop Frog, how about you?
Snoop Frog, how about you?
Shrimp, how about you?
Snoop, how about you?
Snoop, how about you?
Snoop, how about you?
**Gamabunta, you, sir? **
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Important links
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Discord – Frogland
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@Frogland_IO – Twitter
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@FroglandIO – Instagram
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@EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
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iTunes – Edge of NFT