 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, we're talking about eSports and Hollywood. With me are siblings, Optin Studios founders and producers, Jay Moses and Kim Moses. Jay is joining us from New York and has made his name as a producer of Grand Theft Auto and has sent many years in the tech space. Kim is joining us from LA and is known for her work on Ghost Whisper Reckless and producing premium content. Welcome, Jay and Kim. Welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. All right. So, I guess the big question, does Hollywood look at eSports as an opportunity, Jay? Yeah, I think Hollywood is trying to figure it out. I think what we have found is that Hollywood is beginning to understand that this is a big market and that this is a real sport and a really engaged audience, but I would say their understanding of the game business and their understanding of technology is somewhat limited, so it's going to be a bit of a curve to get there. All right. What do you think about that, Kim? Yeah, I agree with Jay and, you know, I just want to tell the audience that we're siblings and we have Opt in Studios is our production company and we discovered, you know, this really the response to Hollywood when Jay and I took a project out to the community and met with agents and managers and, you know, strategic partners and talked about this project, which was about the world of eSports, a scripted show because there were no scripted shows and Jay can tell you how the project came about, but when we took it out to, you know, find an alliance, we got a lot of pushback initially because people don't understand eSports as deeply as the video game community, which is very different from Hollywood, even though it's much more successful and much more prosperous. So Jay, do you want to talk a little bit about coming to me with your idea of us starting this business? Yeah, sure. So I've been in the game business for, since 1992, so a very long time, and I've been very involved in eSports and about a year ago I approached Kim and I said, look, there's this really robust space that really has not been sort of addressed by Hollywood from a scripted standpoint. There's a bunch of documentaries and reality things out there with nothing scripted. Let's go out and try to sell this. Kim knows everyone in Los Angeles and in Hollywood, so we were able to get meetings right away pretty quickly and we put together a presentation and we went out, started selling it to different people and discussing it and as Kim said, we got pushback because people did not fully comprehend how big it was and we put together this presentation with numbers and like how much money Ninja was making and how many colleges were offering full-ride scholarships and how many hours were consumed on Twitch and just sort of things like that and we really got a sort of a lot of very wide eyes in the room of like, you got to be kidding me. Ninja is making X 50 million dollars, 60 million dollars a year, 90 colleges are doing esports, et cetera, et cetera, hundreds of billions of hours of being consumed on Twitch and YouTube and they literally did not know those statistics and so we ultimately I'll let Kim tell the story about how we ultimately sold the show to the CW network. Yes, thanks, Jay. So how we sold the show to the CW network is that I had worked with Mark Petowitz who's the president of the CW when I did Ghost Whisper. He was the president of ABC Studios and he was a wonderful boss and just has always been a visionary in the industry and so I went in for a general meeting with him at the CW to catch up and Jay was in New York so he couldn't be with me. So I asked Jay if he would stand by so that I could tap him by phone if Mark showed any interest and I took the deck with me on my iPad and it went in and Mark and I were talking about a couple of different things and then I mentioned esports and because he's met Jay, Jay's been on the set of Ghost Whisper of course. So we talked a little bit about Jay's background. We talked about what I'm doing, the merging of the two, which is what we're discussing today is this intersection between Hollywood's Hollywood and esports and video games and he started to go through the deck on my iPad and I brought Jay into the conversation by phone and the three of us discussed it and because Mark has put the esports on the seed, which is the CW's digital platform. He knew a lot about esports. He understand the branding and he really what he was most interested in was who are the women in this world and so Jay and he and I discussed what the show could be. Mark had some great ideas. He was able to help us figure out how the show could hook into the CW audience, which has Riverside, which is a huge hit for them and a lot of the Greg Berlanti shows, which has a more of a female young demographic than male, but pretty balanced and so Jay and I walked away with this commitment from Mark saying if you can develop this for us and you can bring on a great writer, then we'll do this show because it's perfect for our demographic and the thing that's interesting about it is that the CW's digital platform, the seed is as robust as their actual television platform and that is somewhat unusual. It's either Netflix which has a very strong digital platform or you've got like the traditional networks like ABC that have a bigger viewing audience than a digital platform, but the CW sits in a sweet spot where both their digital platform and their TV platform have a very balanced robust audience that goes back and forth. So that's perfect for us. So what can you tell us about that show? I know it's your limited. I think we can talk about the writer who's an extraordinary writer. Her name is Daisy Gardner and she was the showrunner on Silicon Valley for the last two years on Silicon Valley, which of course everybody loves Silicon Valley. It's a perfect fit with what we're doing. And the other is that we have a third executive producer named Debbie Liebling who's an amazing comedy kind of just producer in general. So it's the four of us who have been working on that show. Yeah and so we've developed with Debbie Liebling in the past and Debbie has a big hit on Hulu right now which is Pen 15 and she also was the executive producer of South Park and the South Park feature films and she's done an extraordinary number of things you know out in the industry and has also run studios. So we worked beautifully with her and then Daisy we hadn't worked with but Debbie had worked with her before. And what's really interesting about Daisy is she didn't really know anything about the east sports world but she knew the value of it from working on Silicon Valley because of all the other like you know gamers that she worked with. And so as soon as we went with her she said I'm in I know how to do this show I know what to do but we had to take her into the world of east sports which was you know the tremendous value that Jay brings is his relationships and his knowledge and you know he's got a significant footprint in that world so he was able to take Debbie and Daisy and me into that world and indoctrinate us and we were laughing because we just had a note session with the CW on the script they read the first draft of the script and it went really well but they had a couple of notes and after we got off the phone and we did a conference call with Debbie, Daisy and Jay and I we were all just like so impressed that Daisy had gone from the point so little to being like a true expert in that world. All right we started we went to the World of Warcraft Championships at Polly Pavilion and that was kind of the indoctrination into that watching tournament. We also had a really a great dinner one evening at Kim's at the pool in and Santa Monica where Kim lives. We had Jonathan was there who I know was on your show recently, Fatality is a good friend of mine and we had Eric Henderson from my face clan and we have a bunch of women who are women gamers they all came and we just had this great evening of talking about esports what it is how gamers think so Daisy really got the opportunity to get into the brains of all these folks and since then she speaks to them on a very regular basis so. And then Jay also took us to took us to some of the training houses and we spent time with the teams and the managers and the coaches and you know we spent time we were embedded with an all girl team which was so fascinating and they were just fantastic to get to know and you know and then we went to some other championships and tournaments and things so yeah it's been it's been really fascinating and the thing that I think is most interesting is that this whole world exists it is prospering and growing exponentially especially you know in the last eight months that Hollywood and we had no idea existed I had some sense of it because of Jay in the past but nothing like what it really is and you know Hollywood has to really embrace the people who are engaged in esports and video games because that's the future of our industry. Do you think that there are barriers to esports and intersecting with Hollywood? Yes I do. I mean Kim has incredible access to people in Hollywood as does Debbie and Stetson Daisy. Without that it's almost impossible for people from the game world or from the tech world or from the esports world to penetrate because it in both of these businesses are similar in the in the sense that they're both cottage industries right Hollywood is a cottage industry primarily located in one town and just about everybody who works in the in the industry knows it knows another person. Esports is more or less the same games are very similar to that as well but they're very different businesses they're located in different places they have a different flow to them they have a different culture and very few people actually intersect so in order to make this happen right I as a person who comes from the game business or esports and technology would need someone like Kim I couldn't do it without Kim being the person from Hollywood and Debbie and Daisy so it's it's these are very separate businesses very different cultures they don't intersect naturally What are your thoughts on that Kim? I was just going to say it's absolutely true we had really you know used the word cottage industry Jay but I think that's a really good choice of words and because you said that I was thinking because when we were doing our prep with Catherine we had talked about you know the differences and I think we should run through them of you know the game business versus Hollywood and the fact that we are all located in Los Angeles for the most part there's a you know there are segments around the country like in Oregon and you know New York and Chicago but the main the studios and the you know the platforms centers are all even when Netflix set up they didn't stay you know where they originally were they set up a whole operation and now they own a studio in Hollywood and I think it's more of a one-to-one kind of communication relationship physical relationship we you know speak more on the phone and we see each other before COVID hit we were physically you know the way our business operated we would go from building to building studio to studio meeting after meeting running all over town everything was very physically connected with Jay's business you guys are all over the world so when COVID hit our business slammed shut because we couldn't you know go into production we couldn't stay in production but also in development it took a while for the industry to get back up on its feet even to do development meetings through zoom because nobody was used to operating that way where Jay's side of the his industry never took a hit in fact probably prospered even more even though it was international and I think the reason you guys maybe aren't as physically connected is because it is an international business even though it's a newer business well it's so culturally different and one of the things that is so different is the way people communicate which is in the tech business in the games business for the most part and esports to maybe a little lesser degree you rarely have conversations with people it's almost all digital right you're in Trello you're in Slack you're texting you're emailing every once in a while you'll get on a zoom or a you know some other kind of way of hooking up for the most part you're communicating through your keyboard the entertainment business is talking there's a certain amount of digital transfer of information 90% of the time you're on phones zooming with people talking to people schmoozing with people all this kind of stuff it's just really different and it's taken me some time to get used to communicating with so that's another issue right so you have that kind of the two cottage businesses located in different places but you also have two different methods of communicating but you know there's also a generational difference too so Hollywood is much older and esports is much younger what have you noticed with that jay without without a doubt the game business is a younger business and more digital and the Hollywood is definitely I don't want to say an old business but people tend to be a little older they tend to be a lot less facile with technology which is which is not a small issue a big issue the other thing I'll just point out is that a lot of the people in Hollywood have assistance which is a very strange concept in the game business I mean I've been on the board to take two for 13 years and you know I deal with a lot of people but who will run game publishers and all these kinds of things and generally speaking they may have an assistant but they don't really use their assistant. Hollywood is all about assistance and that's that's a whole different level of gate keeping and getting through gates and all this kind of stuff which of course Kim is unbelievably good at sort of knowing how to navigate that world and I'm kind of clueless on how to navigate that. Hollywood is old it's not necessarily about the age because we have a lot of young people you know in the industry it's old school and trying it's kind of like trying to turn the titanic honestly you know in regards to tech and Jay and I know people who are running like studios who you know can't even use a digital phone still they have assistance chase them around with faxes if you can believe that and they print their emails right yes they print their emails we know people in Hollywood who have their emails printed and then they respond and the assistant will go and type it so these are very different worlds and they don't necessarily fit nicely together. Well you know what I thought was interesting is this email idea that that if if you're talking with someone in esports to say that you're going to email them that may be something that they aren't used to. What do you think Jay? No that's part of this whole cultural thing which is I never rarely ever use emails or get emails from companies portfolio companies people are working with. The Hollywood is run by email and that's pretty much it I mean some people use their personal texting but tools technology tools they just they just don't exist. Another thing I'll just point out is you have the rule of agents in Hollywood which is you know doesn't exist at all in the game business and in the esports business I mean they're starting to show up in the esports representing people but the this concept of having to deal with packaging and agents and all this kind of stuff that's a whole that's a very complex layer of things that Kim manages very well that I still just scratch my head about I don't understand Yeah it'll be interesting to see because you know the whole infrastructure of Hollywood because of the digital influence is starting to shift whether people want it to or not and so there's a whole thing going on with the writer's guild and the agencies where they're in a big court battle about packaging and all the things that are involved in that so right now there are a lot of writers who do not have agents because the two out top agencies CAA and and William Morris Endeavour you know aren't allowed to represent writers. On Jay's side of the business you don't have the agents and managers starting to come into his business because the talent on his side of the business is starting to like make a lot of money and it'll be interesting to see if agenting prospers on my side of the business continues to prosper and if it prospers on Jay's side of the business or it doesn't get the traction that he did on my side that I think is a big open question and we're watching it actually evolve in real time. So is there a difference between how things are made in Hollywood versus esports? Oh it's gigantic the difference. I would say first of all from a time standpoint right things in Hollywood take forever they move at glacial speeds and one of the big problems with that is when you move a glacial speed and then something changes everything goes into what they call turnaround. So it's kind of it's very volatile on the Hollywood side. Game side is much more it will take a long time to create a game or to create something but it's not dynamic it's not changing every three or four months because some senior executive is moving so that that process is just very very different. The idea of of selling an idea I get calls from people mainly from the children of my friends you know who are now green college going I have a great idea for a game and I'm like that's terrific but it'll never get made right because the game business is really about technology worlds and engines right and it's not so much about storyline. Kim's business and I'll let her talk about this because she's expert on it is really about storyline and using a common technology to create that. Right and I think that the challenge that Hollywood's facing is exactly what Jay just described that you know this our process is more dynamic it's constantly changing and so my business is a house of cards you pull one card out in the middle and you know the whole project collapses. We spend less money even though we spend a lot of money on content we spend much less money on content than Jay's side of the business but Jay's side of the business makes a lot more money believe it or not than my side of the business so and I think ours is more complicated I think Jay's business is more solid and you know is going to continue that's going to serve it really well going into the you know into the future where the fragility of my business is going to make it more vulnerable to tech. Yeah the the gang's business is not dependent on any individual. The the the business of Hollywood is often dependent on an individual. Whether it's a director, a star or a writer or a studio or a vision head president right but the game business doesn't operate that way it's much much longer arcs fewer projects etc etc. Jay's business is also a cleaner business because you know I don't know how the infrastructure of like you know the analogy of studios to platforms is on his side of the business but on my side of the business it's very messy and it's starting to become more cohesive and siloed and cleaner in that like Netflix wants to do business with Netflix studios they're not as interested in doing business unless there's a huge star a big piece of material with like a Warner Brothers or a Sony because that they don't you know they don't retain the profits the way they ordinarily would and the same thing with the studios ABC studios ABC network wants to be in business with their own studio they'll do business with other studios if the material is desirable but they prefer you know because of profit margins that is the thing of the just the last 10 years before it was a big cross-pollination and really messy and I hadn't really thought about until Jay pointed out to me you know that the linear business is you know more powerful and speaks to the future so Jay on your side of the business what's the analogy one of the things I'd like to sort of point to is if you go back two years and you take this thing called Quibi and you take this thing called TikTok right now TikTok is not classically a game but it's a game and it's an algorithm based business we all know what the result is right which is TikTok is the day worth 180 billion dollars although in trouble with the government one of the fastest growing tech businesses in the world and Quibi burned three two billion dollars and they closed it down it's essentially worth nothing because no one signed up for it and I think those two businesses illustrate Hollywood versus sort of the game business in the new world right Quibi was a top-down product in which they had studio executives trying to figure out what the consumer wanted and then making bets and then making everything fit in that model where TikTok was an algorithm that was fed by the consumer that actually formed the product and I think the joy's not out on which of those two models are going to be the successful model going forward it's going to be the TikTok model which is bottoms up technology driven by sort of the consumer not top-down yeah and I think you know the lesson is that like a 65 year old man no matter how much experience and success he's had in the business in the entertainment business on my side he should not you know within himself be determining what you know Jay's kids want to be watching by way of content or what kind of platform it should be and that's what I think happened with Quibi. We are nearing the end but I want to give each of you an opportunity to tell our viewers what you fairly briefly about what you see the future of esports in Hollywood to be. Jay? I think you're going to see a lot more scripted content around technology use and by that and I'll be quick is not technology as a prop but technology as a storyline I think you're going to that'll be the adaptation that will happen in Hollywood which is moving away from I have a phone longer to your text to the true implications of technology and and games in people's lives. Okay and Kim? Yeah I think the content will look more like what people more authentic to the lives of people live just as Jay had said so the vision for our studio opt-in studios if you go to that website you'll see the mission of you know what we're doing with our company which we believe is really a path forward for the industry. Well Jay and Kim thank you so much for being here today. Thank you our pleasure. Thank you for having us. Definitely learned a lot thank you our viewers for joining us today next week my guest will be esports entrepreneur Jordan DeKow. See you then. Thank you.