Elan: [00:00:00] I finally decided that I am part of the problem, and the problem is there are too many screens in front of too many kids and everything I build is putting another screen in front of another kid, and I just don't want to be part of that anymore. 

Alex: That was Elon Lee, the founder, creator of Exploding Kittens and other things, talking about his journey beyond the screens.

How do you feel about that, Aaron? I'm so mixed. In fact, I. Listeners, come on over to our Discord. We wanna hear from you how you feel about all the screens in your life. If it's too much. 

Aaron: Yeah, I added everybody. It's like hundreds of people just got, you're 

Alex: supposed to add the whole channel. 

Aaron: Yeah. It's a very active channel.

So it's like, if you don't at, can you come back? It's, there's so much, there's a lot of people talking in that general channel. But yeah, I think 

Alex: if you guys wanna join our Discord channel, just head to [00:01:00] our website, the, the link's right at the top. But you know what I did? What's that I did last week? Is I, I bought a book.

Okay. Which one? Well, you remember we had Alex Irvine on and I had Oh yeah, he wrote, yeah, his book. Well, I didn't order his book. I should order his book now. I feel bad, Alex. Which book? Which, oh, the word we were talking about. Yeah. I had just read Philip k Dick book and then we're talking to Alex and he's, he's saying how he got a, like a master's degree.

Basically writing about Philip k Dick. And so he recommended Martian time slip. Yeah. And I, I just, is it good? I got the physical book so far. It's good. I'm like 20 pages in, so I'm not very far yet, but, uh, like I have to have the lights turned on to, to read the book. Mm-hmm. You know, because it's on paper.

Aaron: But I like it. I like books, but I, in fact, I like the Kindle and books better than digital and audio. Everyone I know listens to audio books. Everybody. It's like a thing that no one talks about. [00:02:00] I know you do. A friend of mine, I recently talked to you, it's like a whole thing. They have like readers that are really good when the author reads it themselves.

You were saying, I like that John Rome Merrill right here. I like that 

Alex: when the author reads it themselves. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think it's kind of like, you know why people listen to podcasts too. It's sort of like you can multitask, you know, you're getting, I can't do it. I tried, I tried Harry Potter. But you do like, you crash your car or you just, you don't actually get everything out of the book 'cause you get distracted.

Aaron: No, this was a while back. This was at a claim and I was animating, and this was before audiobooks became a real big deal, but they were like starting to become, so the internet hadn't really, and we had like a shared drive where you could, I don't know if you remember the old audio apps you could connect to someone else's library.

Like they were trying to figure out a way to beat Napster. Do you remember that? And one of the features they had was that I could connect to your library. That's right. Yeah. And there was a person that collected audio [00:03:00] books and they had Harry Potter and I was like, oh, I'm gonna listen to Harry Potter.

And it was really well read. It was the second book that's straight up the second book. That's just straight up piracy. Right. That's piracy kind of, I guess. But that was what they were doing at the time. They bought the books, I think So they had 'em and Yeah. Anyways, I tried to work. Yeah. And it was like, what did I just, I can't do that either.

Alex: I can't, I can't listen to something while I'm working. It's too much cognitive load, but super great going to the gym, you know? Okay. You do a set of reps and then, you know, it takes you 10, 15 seconds and then you're listening and you as reading. You counted as reading. It is reading. I don't think it's, it's not okay.

It's not reading, but, well, you do, you say it. I read 14 books this 

Aaron: year. It's like, no, you listened to 

Alex: 14. In Fairness. In fairness, I, I am actually reading like half of those books and half of them I'm listening to. Okay. I'm listening to the biography of, uh, John d Rockefeller right now. Okay. Really didn't know much about, um, Hitman.

I thought maybe there's some lessons or [00:04:00] parallels, lessons to be learned. I. You know, compared to what's going on right now with Emperor Musk? 

Aaron: Yeah. Is he the guy that whenever France and, uh, who was it went to war and then like he told, they had someone tell, came back and told everybody that the war like was lost or something and then he bought all this stock on for like pennies.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Uh, is that him? I, I said I thought it was a rock. I don't think that's where like their fortune came from, from buying like all the stock. And 

Alex: so the Rockefeller started Standard Oil, which was, uh, you know, monopoly, but the, the first big giant American monopoly. Like maybe not the first maybe.

Oh, didn't, well you, you still drive a planet burning gas guzzling car, right? 

Aaron: This guy? This guy, yeah. So hold on, hold. If you go to Amaco 

Alex: Exxon, if you drive 

Aaron: an, any of those, if electric car, you're gas guzzling too. Where do you think that [00:05:00] power comes from? The sun and the 

Alex: wind. 

Aaron: I don't know what you're talking about.

It comes 

Alex: from burning dinosaurs. Nope. A hundred percent guilt free over here. Any case. What I've learned so far, and I'm probably, this is a really long biography. Yeah. He was exceptionally thrifty. What does that mean? Like cheap thrifty? No, it doesn't mean cheap frugal, it means just very efficient with money.

Like there's this part in there where basically they make, they make, uh, containers to hold oil and they would solder it with a certain amount of solder and he had them go drop by, drop down until they got to the bare minimum. And that saved like a hundred thousand dollars. 

Elan: Really? 

Alex: And it's the same thing Tim Cook does at Apple.

And if you read the Musk biography, same thing that guy did with the model three. Uh, interesting. So this sort of sounds like that's probably an important when you get to scale. You know. Yeah. Cutting. Cutting a penny. A penny saved turns [00:06:00] into like a few hundred million pennies earned, I guess. All right.

Anyways, we're getting a little far field. Well, we had great conversation with Lon Lee. We got a chance to overlap over at Microsoft when we were launching the Xbox. Uh, he's been in or around a video games and most notably and successfully with exploding kittens, doing all sorts of incredible stuff. So we had a great time chatting and catching up with Alana.

Hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Aaron: Yeah, I was inspired by 'em. Yeah, very inspired. Here you go. 

Alex: Welcome friends to this week's Fourth Curtain podcast, and a great week. It is because we have with us a very special guest today, Alan Lee, the CEO of exploding kittens, one of the most fun and original board games of all time.

I have, I don't know how many copies of your game I have in the closet. I have. I've got a few. 

Elan: Yeah. My kids love it. They love it a lot. Flattery will get you everywhere. 

Alex: Yep. One of the most successful Kickstarters. Yeah. Of all time too. I think when it came out, it was the most successful and. You know, Aaron and I, we've done a [00:07:00] Kickstarter, so we know what that's like.

We got close to his success with that one. We got, yeah, we weren't as ambitious or, I don't know. I don't, I don't know that you were overly ambitious, so just, just like everybody really wanted. So 

Elan: I have so much to say about Kickstarter, but mostly if you've done a Kickstarter, all that we have in common is, uh, similar looking war wounds, I'm sure.

Alex: Yes. All right. Well, we were both at Microsoft at the same time, so our paths have crossed here and there, but I didn't know, I didn't know that. I didn't know you started at ILM, is that right? That is right. Ooh, I lm Yeah. 

Elan: Outta college. It was, um, I, okay. Well, I was very lucky to start at ILM because I am the world's worst student.

Um, I failed out of six different colleges before finally graduating from one what? Yeah, I know, I know. It's just given the choice, sitting in class for eight hours a day or [00:08:00] going outside surfing, like the answer is so obvious. I don't even understand why that's a choice. So, uh, it turns out you can do that for about six months at a time before you get kicked out out of, uh, school, after school.

Um, but ILMI knew they had this internship program and um, I was so excited to go there. And, uh, I wrote this, I wrote this sort of like, why you should pick me and my roommate read it was like due the next morning 'cause I procrastinate for all things and it was due the next morning. And my roommate, I was like, can you just read this over?

I'm gonna throw it in an envelope and, um, and send it off. And he read it over and said, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. You can't send this. And so he, he stayed up with me all night. This guy's name is Brian Howell. He's one of the best people in the world. 'cause he stayed up with me all night rewriting my application.

We sent it off and two days later they called me and said, please come in for an industrial light and magic internship. Wow. Oh, that's awesome. Hey. Yeah. Well, that's a good buddy. Yeah, because of Brian. Seriously, I, there's no chance I would've gotten that without him. So, uh, yeah, I [00:09:00] owe that one to him. And then, um, at ILM things kind of took a weird turn 'cause I was the intern, right?

And I'm, I show up and I think, oh, I'm gonna get to do all the fun stuff. Let me add it. Like I wanna, I want to animate all the things and I wanna design all the characters and this is gonna be so great. And my, my. I'll tell you my first job and my second job there, my first job was they were working on Titanic.

And um, you know, in Titanic at the end they're in the water. It's freezing cold uhhuh, it's the big emotional scene. And you can see their breath 'cause there's icebergs floating in the background. It's freezing cold, right? So they film that in a sound stage. The water was like 85 degrees. You can't see anybody's breath.

So guess whose job it is to hand animate Every breath they take frame by frame that goes to the earth. You did that. That's the last, I didn't even do that whole thing. That won a bunch of Oscars. Yeah. No, their breath didn't win. A bunch of Oscar, the movie won a bunch of Oscar, Oscar. Well, that story, 

Aaron: people have heard that story before.

The, it's 85. You know that the water wasn't cold and that [00:10:00] was animated. Like I remember. Yeah, that was 

Elan: me. Good. That was me. Good acting. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good volumetric particles just based on triggers, tracking their mouths around, oh god. In 3D space, it was the worst. Um, and then my second job, because that first one did so well.

What else do you throw? The internet. They've got this movie going through the studio called Star Wars, and, um, they've got this character. Can't believe I'm about to admit this, uh, in a, in a place for you recording. Wait a second. You said j. Yeah, it's a charger. Yeah. Yeah. It's charger. I put that in my notes to ask.

So what, ah, so here's, here's the thing. Here's, here's the US the deal. Current job on Jar Jar Dinks. Okay? Um, so we've got, chargers is two different things, right? It's an actor with essentially a green bag over his head recording the body, right? It's, it's an actual person's body walking around. And then the head is done entirely in computer graphics.

Now the problem is now you can put the head on the body, right? You can just do match moving, but the neck is the issue. [00:11:00] How do you attach all the musculature? How do you make sure that it doesn't tear and twist in weird ways? Uh, that tedious, horrible job is the intern and, okay, that is what I contributed to Star Wars and Jar Jar Banks.

Alex: Well, I'll, I'll tell, I'll tell you what. I have seen that film. And many. Mm-hmm. Many, many people have. I've never once I didn't notice, never once heard anybody say anything about Jar Jar related to the next seam. So I think you crushed it. I think 

Elan: outstanding work. You know, it's true. I've read a lot of reviews of that film and no one has ever said, did you see the tearing of the musculature in Jar Jar's neck?

That ruined the movie for me. It's 

Alex: funny, but lemme rewind a little bit. Where, where did you grow up? You were surfing during college. 

Elan: Did you grow up in, on the west coast or, uh, yeah, west coast. I grew up, I was born in Los Angeles. Um, went to a series of schools. Uh, the, the school that taught me, uh, this school for me was, uh, uc, San [00:12:00] Diego.

I was there for about eight months and I had this, this, uh, this great little dorm room, uh, with all my, with all my roommates. And it was right on the beach. And we had a balcony and I had a mat. We were second floor, had a mattress on the ground floor. So every morning I could wake up, grab my surfboard, throw it over the balcony, jump over the balcony, land on the mattress, grab my board, go to the beach.

That was my college education, uh, for eight months in uc, San Diego. Yeah. 

Alex: That beats my college where I was in a dorm in Chicago where every morning I'd go outside and nobody had to paint my breath. You could just see my breath 'cause it was so freaking cold. One of us did 

Aaron: this better than the other. And there was mattresses on the street too, 

Elan: right?

It's just mattresses 

Alex: littering the sidewalk. Just Did you grow up in Pasadena? Did I read that? 

Elan: No, not Pasadena. I grew up in Studio City and uh, studio City. Okay. Studio City, north Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, spent right on, spent a lot of time there. 

Alex: And what, what you, what were you studying besides surfing?

What 

Elan: were you studying in college? [00:13:00] You know, I, um, I was also a terrible high school student. Um, and, uh, I had like straight C's and D's except, uh, through a very long story that we can, uh, probably skip for now. I was published in a story, my physics teacher published me, um, co-published. So he was the, he was the lead on this project.

He put my name as a co-author and, uh, it was this amazing thing. We, we were able to photograph sound waves, but, uh, because of that. Straight Cs, DS and my name in Nature Magazine, and I got to kind of take my pick of schools, uh, up until, uh, they finally said, all right, this track record isn't looking so hot.

And then I, then I actually had to like, buckle down and, and do something. 

Alex: Okay. Okay. All right. So, so that sounds like you didn't quite get to picking a major when you were in college maybe. 

Elan: Um, I kept, I kept switching. I eventually graduated with a major in computer [00:14:00] science, computer engineering, computer graphics, and.

Psychology. Huh? That's a good mix. Yeah, it was a, because I, I spent eight years going to different colleges and so I just kept adding majors on, 'cause why the hell not makes sense. 

Alex: You have this amazing career trajectory with outs outside success in, in a lot of things, and you're exceptionally creative and you found outlets for bringing that creativity at scale to, to people.

Yet when you talk about your, your, your formative years, you know, not, not necessarily. Getting traditional achievement, like grades and, and that kind of thing. 

Elan: Yeah. 

Alex: I'm assuming you have thought about like, what is it about you, what's it about you, you know, that, um, that got you where you are despite this traditional system rewarding you for it in the 

Elan: beginning?

So what I figured out, I used to think I was just a terrible student. Um, but now I think education is just terrible. And I'm, I'm such [00:15:00] a fan of storytelling. I love learning. I, I spend so much time every day learning new things. It's one of my favorite things to do, but. The way that high school and college presented information to me was completely wrong for me, making me sit still for an hour.

Listening is not engaging. It's not interactive. It's terrible storytelling. And so I tended to just go teach myself. And when I say that I failed outta these colleges or that I went surfing, it's not like I'm sitting in the water on a surfboard, eight days mute. What I'm doing is sitting in the water for eight hours, talking to people, learning from people, bettering my skills, um, having such an incredible time and looking forward to it every single day because that's a really, really incredible classroom for me.

And the people that I surround myself with are the best teachers that I've ever met. And so, yes, I kept failing out, but the reality is I think I got probably a better education than most. And there were lessons that I hold with me [00:16:00] today. 

Alex: Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. If you're kind of doing it again, would you go back to college to have that context in which to kind of self-serve your own education, or would you, you know, opt for a different context for those years?

Elan: I, I kind of have two answers to that. Like, one is I used to think it's really important at least just to have a diploma for somewhere, but right outta college, I got the internship to ILM. They never asked to see anything and then I started working at Microsoft and they certainly never asked to see even a transcript.

So I don't actually think that piece of paper was very important. But my second answer is what I did learn, like eventually I graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York, Rochester, New York. And that place was a very. Difficult environment for me, it's a seven to one guided girl ratio.

It's freezing cold. If you factor in the windchill factor, like you can't, there's a mile of underground tunnel, so you never have to go inside, uh, outside. And what that [00:17:00] taught me was like, I can do this. I can graduate, I can sit in class, I can study as long as I, I am in an environment where all the distract, everything that could possibly distract me is removed.

And I don't enjoy that. And I don't think I gained very much of it. But it was nice to at least learn through this process that I'm capable of it and I know how to construct the environment when I need to. Yeah. And so that's what I gained from college. I don't know that I'd wanna necessarily do it again, but it was at least good to learn.

Like, I can do this if I want to. I've never done it before, but suddenly I've got proof. Yeah. I can endure this and I can get through it. 

Alex: Right on. 

Elan: Yeah. When did you get into the game stuff? I. I've been into the game stuff, honestly, my whole life. Like I'm the oldest of four kids and so my job was always entertain the siblings, right?

Like we didn't have a lot growing up, so my job was seriously like, take everybody outside, pick up some sticks and a basketball and figure out a game. 'cause that's, that's what I do. So I've always loved that. That's always been like [00:18:00] my favorite part about interacting with my siblings and interacting with everybody.

And then after ILM, Microsoft called me. Literally said like, come over to this games group. We, we read about you. I've, I like, got published in some little magazine about like dream internships. And so Microsoft called me up and said, we're, we're building this secret project and we're not even allowed to tell you what it's called, but we're looking for creative people.

Come on over and help us out. And when I got there and they told me it's, it's games, it's the Xbox. I, I remember just thinking like, this actually merges everything together. This is all the storytelling stuff I love. This is a form of education. Like I love learning new things and teaching people new things and it's, it's like all wrapped up in this beautiful bundle of entertainment.

And I just thought, this is it. Like games are actually the, the culmination of all these different paths I've been exploring the whole time. Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. Who was there when you, when you got there? Was this like in, what was this like? Uh, [00:19:00] it was 99, 98. Yeah, 

Elan: 99. Yeah, right, right around there. 99. 

Alex: Was Jordan Weisman there?

Elan: Oh yeah. He was my first boss at Microsoft and he was the first one to sit me down. Like I was actually hired as a program manager, essentially a producer. And that lasted like three months. And he sat me down and he said two things. He said, one, you might be the worst producer I've ever worked with. And, and two, I think maybe you'd be good at design, so we're gonna switch you over to that instead.

And that. That started me. I mean that, that like started my whole career of um, one being in this incredible environment where it was like, hey, very, very, very small team. Here's $200 million. Build a console to, uh, fight with Sony. And two, I get to work for a person who is still today, the absolute smartest person I've ever met in my life.

And, um, Jordan's been my [00:20:00] mentor and friend and family member since then. Right on. Cool Li listeners, if you wanna learn more 

Alex: about Jordan, we have an episode with Jordan on it. You can go find it in Eric. Go ahead Aaron. 

Aaron: I was gonna say, okay. Sorry, I'm trying to connect here. It sounds like an adventure because there's no, like, I like to draw when I was five and then I, I, you know, and then I went to art school and then I went at ILM and the path is like, I was surfing.

Now I'm, I'm in Nature Magazine and, and now I'm like, right, am I right 

Elan: here? Like, is it like a lot of it's, it is, it's a lot of right, right place, right time. The, the through line. The, I I've, I've thought about this a lot. Like what's the through line be between all this stuff and I really think I. All I've got is I've always been good at storytelling.

Like every job I've ever had has had storytelling. Mm-hmm. At its core. Mm-hmm. Be it computer special effects, be it like hanging out with people in the water, uh, be it video games, be it [00:21:00] like with Jordan, we eventually started a clothing company and even that was all about storytelling. And, and that's where, uh, I think that's my sweet spot.

I think that's what I, I either am really good at, or at least I can say, have the ability, uh, to learn like a sponge from really smart people around me. 

Alex: That is, I think that is such an underrated. The kind of, not so much talked about skill in the business world. Like I, I tell, I tell folks who are coming up all the time that you really need to learn how to sell.

Um, and, and sales sell. That's like, that's not as very sexy, good term storytelling. It's a way better, but way better, I think. I think, I mean the, the same kind of thing, it's like you, you're gonna have ideas and. You're right. It's, there's, your ideas are always gonna be in the mix with other ideas. And the better you are at communicating your idea and its potential or, or you know, painting a picture in somebody else's head, the more [00:22:00] successful you're, you're just gonna be.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it, it's like, you know, when you make a character in d and d, if you roll a 20 on charisma, 

Elan: you will rule the world. You know, it's funny you should mention that. Um, I was playing DD with one of Jordan's sons and he, he, he basically just wanted to try a cheat and he just maxed out on charisma everything, everything on charisma.

And he would do things like, you know, there's this, whatever conflict comes up. And he is like, convince him to be my friend. And, you know, what, do I have to roll for that? And like, it was so funny to watch him go, right? It was so funny to watch him go through this. Um, but, but where, where the rubber really meets the road here is like, one of the most important things in my job right now is to sell games to Target and Walmart.

And the way that infrastructure works is twice a year you go to these line reviews and every games manufacturer in the world shows up to these line reviews. You basically line up, they do it over the course of about two weeks. You have an hour in the room, you pitch all the games you have, [00:23:00] and then, you know, between two and four weeks later, they tell you which games they're gonna buy.

And usually you wanna pitch like 10 because they're only gonna pick one. And the first year we went, we pitched two and they picked one, and the second year we pitched four and they picked two. And you're, you know, we were hitting 50%. Which is great, but still very, very small numbers. I'm very happy to say that every single round we've been at, I've sold more and more and more games.

So much so that the last round, we pitched 13 games and I sold 13 games. Whoa. Wow. And that is not sales. That is storytelling. 

Alex: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. Good on you. Good for you. Good for you. Exactly. Paint us a picture of, of 1999 Microsoft. 'cause this is, you know, I got there a little after you, I think.

Elan: Yeah, yeah. And 

Alex: you know, like, you know, we've had Ed Freeze on and he is kind of told the story about the, the XBOX'S green light, which is fascinating. And at that period of time it was, it was what, like a year and a half, two years maybe before the box was [00:24:00] actually coming out. So 

Aaron: yeah. I've gotta 

Alex: imagine a position that you were in there was probably.

A lot of the ability to come up with ideas, but the ability to actually build might've been constrained. 'cause maybe you didn't quite have hardware yet, or like, what was it? What Yeah, what was it 

Elan: like? We, yeah, we, well this was very much my experience of, it was very much Jordan's Clubhouse, right? Like I was by far the most junior member on the team.

And, um, we kind of followed Jordan around and he would sort of audition developers, figure out like, you know, the bungees of the world. Try to figure out like, who is gonna work on each project? How many projects do we need? What's the pole portfolio gonna look like? And my job was to be a Swiss Army knife.

It was just anything he throws me at, I have to nail. And it has to be absolute best in class. And who the hell knows what that means? Because there's only one company in the world that's any good at this at the time. And that was Sony. And it was just like, learn, learn, learn as fast as you can and anything Jordan says.

Don't question it, just go do it. [00:25:00] And it was incredible. Like, so much. So I installed a cot in my office because eventually I was like, there's no point in going home. I just, I, I have no interest in not doing exactly this. So I just slept there and I would take showers there and I just lived in my office.

You were 

Alex: a bachelor at, at the time, I'm assuming? Oh, 

Elan: yes. That's 

Alex: an 

Elan: important part of this, isn't it? Have y'all had showers at the studio? There were there a shower was a 

Alex: thanks. 

Elan: Well, there was a, there was a gym, there was a gym sort of next door and they, they had really good facilities so we, 

Alex: Microsoft can just had soccer fields and all sorts of like, 

Elan: fun, cool infrastructure stuff.

Yeah. Um, so it was great. And I, uh, you know, learned so, so, so much. Didn't understand that having these, like hundreds of millions of dollars in budget was I. Anomaly. Like, I didn't understand that at all. I just thought like, oh yeah, you get hired outta college, this is how it works. And they throw an unlimited budget at you and you build something, right?

Like, here's my $200 [00:26:00] million car. Please don't scratch it. Go like, like it was just nuts. It was nuts. But again, uh, I don't want to fanboy on Jordan too much here because he'll get an ego. Um, but he was, he was never, he was never frantic. He was never panicked. It was always like, let's try all the things.

One of them will work. We'll grab that and then we'll move forward and try all the next things. And it was just sitting there. Trying every single thing we could. Um, and the team grew and grew and grew. I think when I started, the team was only like six people. Um, and, and again, we didn't even have a name, right?

Like, I think we were calling it Project Kiwi for a while, if I was remembering correctly, because it was green and, and just nobody, right. And nobody had any idea, right. No idea. We didn't have a logo. I remember sitting in on logo meetings where these marketing teams would show us all these different logos.

And the one we eventually picked, I think we called like the, the gash or the slash or like it was, you know, the original. Yeah. Anyway, it was, it was so wild trying to figure out what to [00:27:00] call this thing, how to, how to market it. People far smarter than me who, whose jobs? Those were the, the ED freezes, uh, of the world and I just.

I was just like, this is the best place in the world to be like, this is, we're building the stuff I wanna build, we're doing so many different projects I get to work on, I think the launch portfolio was six games and I got to, you know, have my little fingerprints on all six of them. It just, and do 

Alex: you remember, do you remember any of those games?

Elan: Like from, uh, well, let's see. Halo, obviously, um, project Gotham Racing. Abe's Odyssey, Abe's Odd World. Yeah. Uh, 

Alex: mu Munch's Odyssey. Right? 

Elan: That was it. That was Munch's Odyssey. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. 

Alex: Fusion frenzy. Fusion Frenzy. I just saw a copy of that in my basement over Christmas break. Do you ever play that, Aaron?

Elan: No. That was such a good game. I love Fusion Frenzy. It was the 

Alex: Xbox Party game. 

Elan: Yeah. Yeah. There was a snowboarding game in there. What? And a Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember the snow. Yeah. That was, um, 

Alex: oh, I've never played done by the team in, in [00:28:00] Utah. Uh, yes. I'm blanking on the name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll, we'll get emails on that one.

Yeah. Yeah. And then an NFL game, uh, football game. Yeah. Those were the six. Right on. Right on. Yeah. So how long did that stint last? Mm-hmm. Because I know you went off into the wilderness to be entrepreneur and, and maybe came back to Xbox. Yeah, that's right. And was that what Jordan was Jordan like the, Hey, come on, let's go business for a little while.

Elan: I mean, every story I have to tell at this early phase was me riding the coattails of the person with the largest coattails on the planet. So I did that for six years the first time, and we launched the console and I. Right before it launched, I remember Jordan called me into a meeting. He's like, I need you, I need you to talk to me with the, we've got a a, an important person coming in and I want you to have a chat.

And that important person was Steven Spielberg. I walk into this office and it's Jordan and Steven Spielberg. And I'm like, what is, what is happening here? [00:29:00] And uh, Steven Spielberg basically says, your company has just agreed to spend, I don't remember the amount, however many millions of dollars on my movie AI to build Xbox games for the movie ai, which was not yet released.

And Jordan tells me, I need to meet you and we're all gonna work on games together. Nice to meet you. And like that was like. Day one after, uh, uh, after the Xbox launched, and I remember, uh, working with Jordan very, very closely. God, this, this could be a very long story if you wanted to, but, uh, the, the short version is Jordan designed four or five games all around ai.

And then we worked on this extra little tiny project that we called the Glue. And the glue was, it took the racing game from AI and the side squirreling adventure game from AI and the Gladiatorial combat game from AI and all the games for AI that we were building, and it glued them together. It had one character that moved from game to game to game to game.

And as long as we [00:30:00] understood his arc, his narrative arc, we could understand how all of these different games focusing on a different part of the movie all tied together. Then the movie came out. I remember I went with Jordan. We flew to la the big premiere, the red carpet. All these celebrities are there.

We go to the theater, we watch this movie. I don't know if you've seen this movie, but Yep. Yeah, it's about an Android boy who all he wants is his mother's love. He just, he wants to be real. He wants to be human. It's essentially the Pinocchio story, uh, redone by Kubrick and Spielberg, and it's this emotional, heartfelt story.

And in the end, you know what happens? He doesn't get it. He doesn't, he watches spoiler, his mom die. He watches all of humanity die. He wa he's stuck at the bottom of the ocean. It's this horrible, tragic, like tear jerking ending. And I don't know about you, but I didn't walk out of there thinking, well, I can't wait to play the Xbox game.

And, and so we, so we had this [00:31:00] meeting that lasted about five minutes, and at the end of that five minute meeting, we had canceled every single Xbox game that we built, but. We still had the glue. This really cool story, and I remember I was sitting at lunch with Jordan. We were having sushi. I I, this is like one of those like formative memories in my head.

We were sitting at this, at this sushi restaurant and wondering what we do with this glue. 'cause we had fallen in love with it. And Jordan's phone rang and he looked at me instead of answering the phone. He said, what if the game was calling me right now? I remember my brain just exploded. I was like, I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna spend the next year figuring out what that means.

'cause that feels like the most important statement I've ever heard. And we built an alternate reality game, the world's first alternate reality game where we released the glue and we cut it up and all these little parts, and it was told over websites and phone lines and fax machines and actors who would meet you on street [00:32:00] corners and live events.

And like, everything we could think of we throw at this project one so that we could still support Warner Brothers and Spielberg, uh, in their movie launch. But two, because we had this incredible story and we knew we wanted to tell that story, and Jordan had the insight to say, what if we told it in a way that nobody's ever told a story before.

Alex: Yeah. 

Elan: Yeah. 

Alex: Super cool. I, I think I've heard of that. Refer to as the Beast. Is that the same thing? Beast? Same 

Elan: exact thing. Yeah. Um, yeah, we called it the Beast because we had all these photo shoots and video shoots and art assets and we put them all in a database and you know, you did a little sum at the bottom of the spreadsheet and the total was 6, 6, 6.

And that's how the project got in. 

Alex: Oh my goodness. Oh, I've never heard that before. That's a good, uh, backstory in the code name and, and that was forerunner, excuse the punt of I Love Bees, right? 

Elan: Yeah, yeah. I love Bees was the second one we did well. So when we launched that alternate reality game, we loved it.

That was the most intense [00:33:00] storytelling I've ever participated in. I loved everything about that project. And when it was done, Microsoft basically said, that was great. You basically built a commercial for a movie. That was great. Good job. Thumbs up. Don't do that again. Instead, let's go work on a new console.

Don't do that again. Yeah. And I, and I just, I remember thinking like, but I, I wanna do that again. Like, that was so much fun. That was even more fun than building video games because I get to craft new storytelling techniques. And so when they told me I had to work on the next console, I had a meeting with Jordan, and Jordan said.

Yeah, let, let's quit. Like let's just leave. Let's go do something else. And we did. And we started a new company to build more of whatever those things were called. We didn't even have a name for them at the time. And we formed the company the next day. And on the third day, Microsoft called us and said, will you build us one of those things, uh, for Halo two?

And uh, we were unemployed for a total of 24 [00:34:00] hours and that was it. And then we got right back to work. 

Alex: There you go. Yeah. So you quit and you got your first client a day later. 

Elan: A 

Alex: day later. 

Elan: Um, yeah. It was the same team. Right. They just noticed suddenly that they went to our offices and they were empty.

And so they called us up and said, where are you? And we said, well, we started this thing. And they said, cool, let's get back to work.

Alex: Two other things that I think I kind of knew but forgot until I was like reading your Wikipedia and other, you know, stalking kind of things online. And Aaron, this, this is really, this is for you. You did one of these for Nine Inch Nails. Yes. 

Elan: Yeah. Or 

Alex: something kind of like that. Yeah, 

Elan: yeah. Oh, it was one of the best ones.

Um, yeah. So. Again, this is what it's like to know Jordan. Uh, we're just gonna keep going back to Jordan until you tell me to stop. So, uh, no, no. Come on, Jordan. 

Alex: Bring it back to you. Bring it back to you. Alright. That's okay. 

Elan: So Jordan calls me up one day and he [00:35:00] says, uh, who's your favorite band? And I said, I listed like three or four.

And one of them was Nine Inch Nails. And he said, cool. Can you, uh, meet me in Los Angeles in Pasadena, uh, tomorrow? 'cause I wanna introduce you to someone. And I go there and there's Jordan and there's Trent Resner from Nine Inch Nails and Trent, because this is what it's like to know Jordan like meetings like this just happened.

And Trent Resner says, I'm releasing a new album. It's called Year Zero. The model for this album is Pink Floyd's The Wall, where it's yes, a beautiful album and every, every song tells a story. But I've written the story and it's the story of this dystopian future. And the government has way too much control and, and the churches have too much control and they're poisoning our water supply.

And there's some mind control stuff going on, and there's a resistance movement. And if you look at each song, it tells a beat of that story. And like altogether, it tells this cohesive narrative from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. The [00:36:00] problem is. All I have are the songs I need, all the other stuff, all the world building stuff and will you please build that for me?

And I basically like jumped outta my seat and said, yeah, hell yes. And Jordan's like, well contract and we gotta talk. And the lawyer, 

Alex: yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go. That's why Jordan's where he is, right? It's like 

Elan: Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah. So I basically blew all our leverage in the first five seconds of the meeting and I was literally yelling things like, I'll do this for free.

Let's just, yeah. So really, really, you don't, you don't want a 25-year-old on your team, turns out. And so what we did for the album was we wrote out the whole story. Trent, Trent Renner's whole story. Cut it up into pieces. Some pieces were in the songs, the lyrics, he already covered those. Some pieces were gonna be delivered, uh, through, through the music videos.

Some were gonna be live events, but we're like, we are actually gonna tell the entire story. Each chapter told using a different [00:37:00] medium. And we use. Everything. Like one of the, one of the coolest things about that project was it was on a CD at the time, still CDs. And the CD for Year Zero was this beautiful black cd, all black.

It said nine-ish nails at the top year, zero at the bottom, nothing else. And you take that CD and you put it in your CD play, and you play the album and you listen to the incredible music. And when you're done, you hit eject and you take the CD out and a different CD comes out of your CD player. The CD that comes outta your CD player is all white with text everywhere, URLs and secret codes and hieroglyphics and like all kinds of crazy stuff.

That's impossible. But there it is. Every single time you play the cd, a different CD comes outta your CD player. And the way we did it was we used a thermal ink. We coated the whole CD with thermal ink so that the heat from your CD player would eat away at the ink and reveal the layer beneath it. And then if you leave it alone for enough time, it cools off and the ink regrows, and you can do the trick over and over and over again.

But. Everything about this album had a secret [00:38:00] code somewhere in it. If you would just poke at it, it would always poke back. And it was such an incredible way of storytelling. I'm gonna tell you another story. We were, we were trying to figure out how to end this thing. Endings are the hardest, right?

Because you've been telling this story to millions of people for months and they're hanging on your every word, and they want the next update and what's gonna happen next? And now it's time to end our story. And what do you do? And so we were sitting at a meeting in Trent Wrestler's living room and he was saying, you know, you, you've done it.

Success. This is the coolest thing ever. I'm so happy with this album. How are you gonna end it? And um, I was like, what we should do is a secret concert. We'll, we'll figure out a way to invite 50 people to a concert and it'll be you on stage, this intimate environment. You'll tell your story, you'll sing the songs that matter the most to you, um, and it'll be great.

And he's like, cool. No problem. How do we end the concert? And I was like, well. What if we set the building on fire and, um, at that point, my, my producer, you were fired by [00:39:00] the, the 

Alex: bottom of the ocean despair from ai. That's 

Elan: right. At that point, my producer starts kicking me under the table, like in the shins hear, and I'm, I'm like trying to ignore the kicking, but I was like, it could be cool and we're gonna force everyone out in this burning building and they'll all be taking pictures and it'll be incredible.

And Trent, to his credit, says, um, yeah, I got, I got a bunch of guys on my crew with criminal records and so they don't mind going to jail again. We could do that. That would be fine.

That's crazy. Anyway, we didn't end up doing that, but it was a really fun project. 

Alex: All right. Well that's, this is my takeaway is that, uh, we need more folks with criminal records on our team. Yeah. Seriously. That's, that's amazing. Um, all right, well, so that whole part of your career doing these ARGs and.

Basically this new kind of storytelling, you're, you're not just writing stories, but you're inventing mechanics for how to deliver the [00:40:00] stories is, is super cool. I read about, and you mentioned it just a little bit earlier, the clothing line, which also was a storytelling medium. Like, was that just like one of those crazy, I like, you know, guys having dinner and it's like, man, what if my shirt was telling me a story right now?

Aaron: Did that come up? Did that come up in the Jordan interview? No. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know if it came up. I don't think so. Okay, so what is 

Elan: that? Here's how the clothing line worked. We designed this beautiful series of shirts and, and the premise was Let's design shirts that we wanna wear. They were edgy and the graphics were amazing and we used colors we liked and designs we liked, and we had this incredible design team and we designed this whole range of shirts and our motto was Our clothes tell secrets because hidden in every shirt somewhere.

Was a secret code or hidden message, and you had to figure out how to extract the message from your shirt, and we used infrared inks and glow in the dark inks, or you had to fold your shirt a certain way, or you had to get it hot or get it cold or get it near another shirt, or [00:41:00] every shirt had a secret to it.

My clothes tells secrets, and if you could figure out what the code is in your shirt, you would go to our website, you'd enter in the code that you found and a little. Movie would start playing a little two minute clip. And we made a ton of movies. Uh, two, we, we made one for literally every shirt in the line and they all fit together like a TV series.

And you'd watch, you'd start to learn about these characters and, uh, you learn it was this band. And this band, uh, they had this incredible new album except one of the members of the band was just murdered. And they were trying to, and it was tearing them apart and they were trying to figure out who did it and how they were gonna go on.

And every episode would end on a cliffhanger, which was great. 'cause if you wanna know what happens next, amazing. Go buy another shirt. Right? Like get another shirt. Great. Great business model. Yeah. And all of that worked really well. And people bought the shirts and we sold a ton of these things and it was really fun.

And we loved the clothing, but the storytelling aspect had a secret purpose. And what it was, was. Every shirt [00:42:00] told the story of the band. And the band. If you looked at the members of the band, they'd come together. They had this incredible message. The lead singer's name was Jeff and the bassist was Adam.

And they had this manager named George and their manager, um, named Maddie, was actually murdered. And if you pay attention to all those names and this plot, which you realize is you are learning the story of the founding of the United States of America. Jeff is Thomas Jefferson. Adam is John Adams. Mm-hmm.

Uh, their manager George is George Washington. And they were oppressed by their evil record label, which was the King and Britain at the time. And we were teaching people the story of the founding of the United States. And we never told them that. We never told our audience that ever. We just kept telling this really compelling story about this band.

And they started to figure out the story all by themselves and they could sort of predict what was gonna happen next because this was a historic reenactment. And we ended that story season one on this message of Your [00:43:00] voice matters. Sitting still is nothing. You have a voice. Use your voice. Get out. Use your voice.

That's what this band did. That's where they were able to achieve the ending of the story and without us ever telling anybody. Our fans started to canvas their neighborhoods and they started to sign people up who weren't registered to vote and they started Rock the Vote parties at the time, and we got something like a million new registered users to vote because of the silly clothing line.

And huh. It was this incredible movement, like it was our goal the whole time. The whole goal was we have to be able to make a difference. Like we have to use storytelling for good and what if. We told this very particular story in this very particular way and never told anyone why. Let's see if they can figure it out.

And they did. And it was this such an incredible experience. It makes, it's one of my, it's one of the best products I've ever built, and I'm so, so proud of it. 

Alex: Huh. That's super [00:44:00] cool. That's cool. It could go lots of different ways with the tagline, your clothes have secrets. 

Elan: Yeah. Yeah. It could, it could, it could.

It was And, and to, and to double down on that, uh, some shirt said, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Which was also, yeah, 

Alex: my goodness. Tell me how you do that. Like the ARGs and the clothing product have a thing in common, which is they rely on your audience putting together some stuff on their own.

Like they, the audience has to contribute to the story. They have to, yeah. They're motivated, 

Aaron: right? 

Alex: Yeah. They have to like solve a problem. Yeah. Even they have to even know there's a thing there to mm-hmm. You're not overt with anything. So how do you write or design. For that, you know? Yeah. It's like, I, I would, I would be sitting around going, what, what if nobody, what if nobody like figures out this is a code and you make it to be, nothing will ever happen.

Like, do you ever had to kind of like jumpstart one of those things by, by giving hints or anything? Was that built into the process or, um, like how do you, or is there plants or design for that? The crowd? 

Elan: Yeah. You [00:45:00] know, yeah. Oh, all right. All right. I have so much to say about this. So our premise from the very beginning was that the hive, the hive mind that's playing these games, the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

Like, together, they can do anything and no single person is going to be able to solve this. And no single person is smart enough to solve this, but together they can. And if they talk. They can get through anything. And so really our goal was not to like to, to figure out, um, how to design puzzles that were so hard that only, you know, uh, the, the elitist of the elite can solve it.

It was just put out things that are intriguing and engaging, and then let the audience talk and just let them go because they're so much smarter than we are as long as they work together. And that concept proved itself out time and time again, and it was so beautiful to watch however. We did always have backup plans.

Okay. In that concert for nine-ish nails, for example, it did [00:46:00] end in a concert. That is how we ended the story. We didn't set the building on fire. Instead, we had this idea that a SWAT team was gonna come in, they were gonna blow up a wall, everyone was gonna come in, they were gonna fire automatic weapons, and, uh, everyone was gonna freak out and, and walk toward or run towards this one en exit.

It was the only exit in the whole room. They were all gonna go towards this one door. They're gonna exit through the door. There's the bus waiting for them. They're gonna get on the bus and they go home. And that's how we end our story. So. We get to that point in the story, we get to that point in the concert, the wall explodes, the SWAT team comes in, they're firing their fake guns.

Uh, they're throwing their fake concussion grenades. Like everything is theatric and beautiful and incredible, and everyone does what they're supposed to do. They freak out and they run towards the exit and they get into the bus. Except for these three guys, these three big, burly guys just sat there watching this thing happen, and they're leaning against the ball and their arms are folded and they're not moving.

And they're just like, yeah, this is fake. What, what are you gonna do? Whatcha gonna do? You gonna shoot [00:47:00] me with your stupid fake gun? What are you gonna do? And so one of the SWAT team members walks up to one of them, punches him in the face, oh, blood splatters on the wall, and the other two guys turn white and they run for the door like they were supposed to do all along.

It was a stunt man. We planted him there from the very beginning. He had a little squi in his mouth. Like the whole thing was orchestrated for exactly that. That was our plan B. I'm so glad it worked. 'cause I didn't have a plan C. Like that's all we had ready. And um, yeah, so backup plans are important, but usually everything goes according to plan.

That's cool. 

Alex: That's, that's amazing. All right. So you, you totally sat around a scenario planned. Well, what if, what if people don't leave? Well, we'll, we'll plant somebody who Exactly right. Will give people a reason to go. Yeah. I remember 

Aaron: y'all did, like at the concerts, you would leave USBs in the restroom or something.

Elan: Oh, I can't believe you knew that. That's so awesome. Yeah. We [00:48:00] put secret tracks on little USB sticks and we, we put them on top of urinals in every, uh, nine inch nails concert venue. And Rolling Stone picked up the story and they had a picture of the urinal and the little USB stick on top of it, and the caption they put in for this new song, this new nine inch nail song that no one had ever heard before, found on top of urinal.

They wrote, uh, now that's what I call a leak. Ah, that's good. Also very impressive, the fact that 

Aaron: anybody would pick it up and put it on their computer. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, I know, I know. I 

Alex: wouldn't think twice. 

Elan: I mean, what? What's gonna happen? Yeah, I know. But somebody did all we needed to need one person to, and then That's right.

And then we just watch the community go. It's like, is this, is this Trent Resner singing? Is this nine? What did you find? Is this real? And on and on it goes. And there's of course clues hidden in the song and the lyrics matter and on. Yeah, it's just so much fun. Super, 

Alex: super, super cool. Okay, so now your current gig you've been doing Exploiting Kittens, has been around for eight, nine years now.

We had our 10 [00:49:00] year anniversary three days ago. 10 year, yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. Very impressive. 

Elan: My kids 

Alex: love it, by the 

Elan: way. Aw, thanks. Everybody loves it. Can you believe that everything we've been talking about so far is more than 10 years old, like we haven't even gotten to 10 years ago yet?

Whatcha trying to say, 

Alex: man? Trying say we're all.

So how does exploding kittens come to be? Um, how does exploding 

Elan: kittens come to be? What's the origin story here? Like what, so, so after the alternate reality game company and after the clothing company and after a, a series of other companies also always started with Jordan. Jordan, um, I finally decided that I am part of the problem.

And the problem is there are too many screens in front of too many kids, and everything I build is putting another screen in front of another kid. And I just, you know, I stare at screens all day. So I, I'm, I'm [00:50:00] certainly not saying it's bad, but I'm saying I don't wanna be part of that anymore. And so, uh, at the time I was back at Microsoft, uh, I was helping them build the Xbox One at the time.

And, um, I was the chief design officer over there and we were building this thing. We finally got it out the door and I was just like, I remember the day we shipped. I was just like, I think. I think I need to resign again, like I think. My second tour is gonna be my last tour, and I, I, I just need to do something physical because when I think of games, when I think of my childhood, I remember playing those games with, with my siblings.

I remember being outside and with that, that stick in the half deflated basketball. And I remember sitting around at the kitchen table and, and playing board games. I don't even remember what the board games are, but I remember the interactions and, and, and cheating and forming the alliances and like kicking people under the table and flipping the board, you know, all that stuff.

Everything I've learned, everything I've gotten good at over the last few decades, like what if I [00:51:00] devoted it to that as my next thing? And so within a week I resigned and thought I've got this idea for a little card game. All I'm gonna do is put it up on Kickstarter. I'm gonna try to raise $10,000. I will have some friends come over, I'll order some pizza and beers.

We'll fulfill it outta my garage. You know, it'll be like 200 orders. And um, and that'll be it. It'll be just a little, I will dip my toe into this water. We'll see if this is anything interesting. And we raised those $10,000 in seven minutes, and by the first day we add a million. By the second day we had 2 million, and by the end of the campaign we had almost $9 million for the silly little card game.

It was awesome. Uh, I remember that it's like everyone was sharing it, like, 

Aaron: look at how much this card game is making. It's 

crazy. 

Elan: It was absolutely ridiculous. What goes through your head there? Like, we make it, 

Alex: we, we launched our Kickstarter. I think we had 10, $10,000 goal. We didn't get that virality. Like what?

Yeah, what goes through your head? 

Elan: So my partner in this was, uh, [00:52:00] Matthew Inman, who's the creator of the Oatmeal. And, um, he is a huge reason why that number, uh, got so large because he brought his audience in. There's, there's two things we did. One was the oatmeal audience showed up, and the other is, um, we, we kind of gamified our Kickstarter page, which we can talk about in a moment if you'd like.

But I remember, um. Matt's reaction to these numbers. Like he would put that number everywhere. He would just watch that dollar amount and the backer number tick up and he would put he, he had a, a Tesla at the time and he would load the browser in his car. So as he was driving, he could watch the number tick up.

And I, the guy responsible for the production was, had the exact opposite result. Like I would put sticky notes on my computer screen to hide that number because it was so anxiety inducing because like I have to fulfill, oh my God, we gotta make How many, you can't do this in my basement. I know, I know. I thought we were gonna fulfill 200 orders and by the end of the campaign we had to [00:53:00] print and deliver 700,000 copies of that game.

Wow. It was the most ridiculous endeavor of my life. 

Alex: And and did you do that like independently? Like you, you, you got the production or did you partner with like a company that had done this before? Was this your first foray into building physics? I mean, you made clothing, but this is different, right?

Elan: Yeah, yeah. The answer to all of that is yes. Like my first time, and yes, I partnered with somebody, so I knew the guys at, uh, cards Against Humanity and I called them up and I said, holy crap, I'm in way over my head. Uh, what do I do? And they, they who are used to dealing with volumes of that size said, we got you.

Don't worry about it. Uh, you can use our production facilities. You, we will introduce you to our manufacturers. We'll, we'll just hold your hand through this whole process. And I was like. That's incredible. What do you want in return? And they said nothing. Like, just go do it. This is amazing. And so, uh, we worked with them and we actually eventually signed [00:54:00] them as our distributor.

'cause they wanted to start a distribution company. Wow. And they took care of everything. Now, the downside to that is our very first project had everything external. We have three employees and everything else was external, which basically means we had no control over anything. We're very lucky.

Everything went well. We shipped every single order on time, and it was very, very high quality. And we built a customer support line and all that stuff. But. We had no control. And over the last 10 years, it has been my mission to bring every single part of that in-house, right? Let's do our own manufacturing, let's do our own distribution, let's do our own sales, let's do our own marketing, let's do our own absolutely everything so that we can learn, me personally, at least, can learn everything I can about this business and how it works and in this endless pursuit of knowledge.

And also so that we can control it. And when we wanna try something new that the industry has never seen before, we can just go and do that. So we have a hundred full-time employees now, and it is, [00:55:00] um, it's so much fun because we control the entire pipeline. And when we wanna make a change, we get to make that change.

Alex: Right, right on. Right on, right on. And so you're no longer on Kickstarter that, you know, your focus is on distribution through retail partners like Walmart and Target, et cetera, and online. 

Elan: Yeah. We've run, is that right? Yeah. We've run into this problem where we have now such a good relationship with retailers, uh, target and Walmart and Amazon in particular, that it used to be we would launch something on Kickstarter and they would say, well, that was great.

You've shown us that there's interest in the game, and now we'll take your product because you've already shown us that there's interest. But now we've gotten so big that, um, when we launch something on Kickstarter, they say, no, now you're just taking away audience members. So like, we don't want you to launch there.

We want you to launch here so we can have a hundred percent of that business. And so we unfortunately have, um, outgrown that, uh, crowdfunding launch ability. 

Alex: Yeah. [00:56:00] Yeah. I, so I remember back in the, I guess the nineties when we were making PC games. We would produce physical GA on CD in boxes, and we would sell to the Walmarts of the world.

And that part of the business was, I found that part of the business very challenging. You know, we were kind of a one product at a time business, so we didn't have much leverage inventory management and that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of people that have come into the game business, the video game business, at least, you know, if they've come in, in the last 10 or 20 years, it's been primarily a digital business.

But back in the day when it was a physical retail business, half of your mental energy would kind of go to the physicality of the product. And I imagine for your business it's probably even more so because much more. Yeah. It's not just the delivery of this finished product, the creation of the physical product is all.

Manifested in reality. Yeah. I mean, you've been in both places. Like [00:57:00] what, what kinds of things do you like now, you know, for, for us now, making games, you can do a day one hot fix, you know? Yeah. You can do a hot fix. Oh, 

Elan: that is, oh, so smart. Like that is the, the thing that plagues me the most about, um, physical game production is like, yeah, like day one, hot fixes.

Like when you, when you ship a, a, a gold master of a game, everyone knows in the back of their head, that's not the actual final, right. You know, you're gonna go through another few rounds of testing and you know there's gonna be a day one hot fix and you know you're gonna tweak and tweak and tweak. When we ship a gold master of a physical game, we are never touching that game again.

All the typos, they're final, all the unbalanced cards, those are living unbalanced forever. No, erota, never an ra. It's terrifying. Never an online ada. Like, Hey, like these cards. Yeah. You know, we, we have done a few of those, but our print orders are 250,000 copies [00:58:00] at a time, which basically means we can make a change.

Sure. But 250,000 people are gonna be playing the erroneous version of that game. 

Alex: How stressful is that? I gotta imagine like when you press that button to green light the presses to start running. I, I mean, if that was me, I'd be like, oh 

Elan: fuck God, that's gotta be one iPhone. Please, please come out. Okay. I know, I know.

I have a little shrine. It make sacrifices. Yeah, it's, it's terrifying. It's really, it's the thing that keeps me up at night. All I will say is our, luckily, thankfully mercifully, our audience is very, very accommodating. And when we make mistakes and when there's a card that goes out the door unbalanced or when there's a, an edge case that we just didn't think of, they, they talk to us about it.

They show up on our Discord channel or they show up on Reddit or they show up somewhere where there's a representative of the company present and we have a conversation and as much as possible we try to fix it, but they're like, Hey, we're having a good time. Don't, don't worry about it so [00:59:00] much. And what an incredible luxury.

Like who has an audience like that? It's just so, so awesome. Do you 

Alex: think your audience is more accommodating that way than say like a, you know, magic the gathering audience where, you know, it's kind of competitive and, 

Elan: yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I make, I make 10 minute card games about cats, so make explode.

We're in a, we're in a different arena, I think. Yeah. 

Alex: Okay. So, so that assumption I guess, is right. You said that you have your own customer support. Mm-hmm. I imagine you gotta get some pretty interesting calls from time to time. I. Or, or, or maybe people have shared some pretty interesting use cases for, for the game.

Like what are the, some interesting stories 

Elan: there? Yeah, I, I have so many stories about customer support, but we have this game called Throw throw Burrito. It's a dodgeball card game. Right. So it's, you're, 

Alex: I have, I have it Amazing. I have it. 

Elan: Amazing. So yeah, it's a very physical game, right? It's very fast.[01:00:00] 

And you're literally throwing soft, squishy burritos at your opponents. And if you get hit, you lose a point. So you don't want to be hit, but you're still focused on the cards and you're trying to like split your attention. We got a photograph from one of our fans in the hospital with a broken arm. Oh no.

And his caption was, I was playing throw, throw burrito. I didn't want to get hit. I ran through a plate glass window. Wow. And he was smiling and giving us a thumbs up like this. It wasn't a, I'm gonna sue you. It was, you made it. Incredible Game not gone the other way. Yeah. So, so we get, we get those and it's, yes.

Oh my God, this poor guy, we send him a bunch of games, we send him a care package, we send him flowers, you know, we do everything we can. But that wasn't what he was fishing for. What he was doing was saying, I love you so much. This is how far I took this. And he was proud of it. And that's just again, who has an audience like this.

We're so lucky. 

Alex: [01:01:00] That's awesome. And you have expanded out to other, you know, there's a show on Netflix. Yeah. And I imagine there's probably other things in the works. Is that fair to say? There's 

Elan: many other things in the works. Very fair to 

Alex: say. Any any projects you wanna break the news on here? This, yeah.

Elan: I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you a little, a little, um, exclusive. Okay. So here's your exclusive. We just had our 10 year anniversary, and for the longest time we thought, what if we did? Okay. Another version of Ex Wedding Kittens, the 10 year anniversary edition. It'll be a gold box. It'll, it'll have sound effects.

And we're like, yeah, but that's not new actually. That's just a new dressing around the thing that everybody already knows. What if we did something actually new and we thought, okay, well, we'll do a booster pack, an expansion pack, a new way to play. And we're like, yeah, but we've done that like four times now.

And so instead for our 10 year anniversary coming later this year is an exploding kittens board game. It is unlike any board [01:02:00] game that has ever been created and has a three dimensional mechanic in it that I'm so proud of and took us a full two years to design. I'm just so happy with it. It's, it's incredible.

Uh, yeah. We'll have pictures soon. Um, but you heard it here first. Oh, right on floating kittens board game. Coming, coming soon. Can't wait. Can't wait. Yeah. That'll be sometime later this year. Yeah. We're working on the, the final details, uh, has not gone to print yet. Uh, we are. Endlessly tweaking this thing because I'm a perfectionist and this thing must be perfect.

Alex: That's, that's awesome. Awesome. Does your company operate in person? I gotta imagine that would be a big, uh, advantage 

Elan: for Yeah. Designing 

Alex: these kinds of games. 

Elan: Yeah. Yeah. We have a studio in Los Angeles, and I live in Toronto, but I just go back and forth all the time. Everybody else is in Los Angeles. Right on.

Okay. Yeah. 

Alex: Hey, I'm in Los Angeles. Let me know the next time you're down here. Oh, we can hang out. Yeah, if you 

Elan: wanna, if you wanna ever wanna see a prototype game, you should come by the studio. [01:03:00] Yes, please. Yeah, we can absolutely set that up. It's so much fun. Oh, that sounds 

Alex: fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. We'll show you all the stuff.

All right. Well, Alan, thank you so much for wasting a solid hour of your day with us. Um, thoroughly so fun. Enjoyed catching up, and congratulations on all the success. And 10 years is, uh, thank you. I mean, 10 years for any company, let alone a company that's in entertainment, let alone an entertainment company that's actually building physical things for people to, you know, throw at each other and stuff like that is, uh, remarkable.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish you all the, all, all the best success. 

Elan: Thank 

Alex: you. Thank you. 

Elan: It's been such a fun ride. Thank you. 

Alex: Right on. All right. We shall see you around. How cool is that? How many versions of Exploding Kittens do you own? Just one. 

Aaron: Just one. And I have like, uh, but we got a few, but I have other games from there like that they make, 

Alex: yeah.

Do you have the, the one where you throw the, um, the burrito? 

Aaron: Yeah. No, I have the, I got that one. The, the [01:04:00] fuzzy box one. It's like a bear. I've seen this one. We have a few, and I think it's kind of cool that he's doing, like, I don't say kind of cool. I think it's super ultra cool. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. That he's doing like, I don't know.

There's something about making stuff. We don't, we don't really do that now. You know, where you make something and then you, like, you remember this whenever you would make a game and then you would go to the store. Then you would see the game on the shelf. 

Alex: Yeah. Well, the, the thing that just struck memories for me is like when you do a physical game, paper game, that that's it, you pray.

Oh yeah, 

Aaron: there's, 

Alex: I kinda like 

Aaron: that too. There's 

Alex: no one thing. He's like, yeah. You know, if there's typos in there or it's not balanced, well that's the game. So yeah, we all live with it. That's a weird, a weird world. Yeah. I, I will say that the exciting promise of all this technology stuff that, that we have coming is, if you think about what makes us as a society [01:05:00] special, there's a lot of things.

But like the fact that we have this shared memory, like we're able to go to school and learn about Euclidean geometry because some dude invented a process. Oh, I see. For, you know, figuring out how to, you know, calculate distance, you know, hundreds of years ago. Yeah. And that's part of our shared. History and then we can build on that.

And if you imagine what it would be like if instead of that being kind of like spread around all of us, kind of here and there at just at a society level, if every single person had that and it was a perfect history, then our iterative steps would get so much faster, better, 

Aaron: more. But is that good? That's what I'm trying to say.

Like, is that good? Like we're gonna get to a point where there's literally gonna be this like matter, like it's gonna be [01:06:00] like a powder that is just like nutrient protein, whatever, rich. And then you're gonna have a brain chip and you're gonna eat it. Yes. I know. You know what, what I'm saying? And 

Alex: like, it's like, I don't know.

That's, I don't know. We, we very likely, we'll, we'll, we'll design ourselves out of a job, you know? Yeah. You know, that's very. 

Aaron: And I'm gonna tell you, and you could see it now, I ha I, I have, I have, I still have ads on YouTube. I'm one of those persons don't judge me and the ads, and I'm not lying to you in one 20 minute Seq like segment when I'm watching, like I have YouTube on or whatever, there'll be an ad for like this, like protein mix that like, oh, it's the vitamins, everything you need and it's so good for you.

And it's like this powder, right? And then like they're trying to sell humans as powder. And then like two commercials later you'll see this like, this like sad dog commercial. And they're talking about how they wanna get dogs off a kibble with like this, like real food. Uhhuh, Uhhuh. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. It's like I get those two's, you know what I'm talking [01:07:00] like look at like just really think about that powder. Good for you. Powder bad for dog. Yeah. Like, and I think that's like. I know we're way off the screen thing, but I think it's related to it, you know, 'cause screens are like, okay, okay. You know what I mean?

I'll tell 

Alex: one last thing. Here's here is my pitch for why screens are good. What I discovered last week, maybe, maybe the week before, is the live stream feed. I hope we didn't talk about this already. Extreme feed of Jackie and Shadow the bald eagles that, uh, just hatched three eggs up in, oh no, you posted that at 

Aaron: work.

I think. Yeah. I think you posted that at the studio. This is the 

Alex: best entertainment that I have seen in memory. Recent memory. Yeah. That's 

Aaron: cool. That's neat. It's just a live 

Alex: feed and, and you get on there, you could get on there for like a few seconds and you can watch the Eagle sitting on the nest, you know, and sometimes it's like, it's just this beautiful view of big bear, but then you get on at like, you know.[01:08:00] 

11 o'clock at night. It's dark and it's snowy and it's windy, and there's this eagle just like it's covered in snow and it's just like providing life for its little eagles. Eagles. It's amazing. It's good stuff. Should check it out. All right, well thank you everybody for joining us again this week for our conversation with Alon Lee.

I hope you enjoyed it. We certainly did, and we shall see you next time. See you next time 

Aaron: everybody. Thank you for listening to the Fourth Curtain Podcast. Visit us@thefourthcurtain.com to find our monthly newsletter and support the show via Patreon. The Fourth Curtain Podcast is a production of Fourth Curtain Media, lovingly edited by Brian Hensley of Noise Floor Sound Solutions production support by May Lee, with Community Management by Doug Artman and Art Production by Paul Russell.

Thanks again for listening.