 How's it going everyone? Welcome back to Blocks Talks. I'm finally back for my mysterious trip halfway across the country. If you want to know what I got up to during my time away, well, just stay tuned for Halloween. It's going to be a very interesting video that I think you're going to enjoy. Definitely surprised me, but again, I think it's going to make for a very enjoyable, funny video. And while I was away, I missed quite a lot of stuff, mainly FNAF news, but also every now and then I was able to check on Twitter and Discord and I saw a lot of people talking about this Candyland series. I didn't have a whole lot of time to actually look into it on my trip, but basically the second I got home, I wanted to see what all the discussion was about because there were some positives and also at the same time, a bunch of negatives I saw people discussing about the series. And I found out pretty swiftly on what exactly is going on here. So first up, what is Candyland? Let's figure that out. It's actually pretty easy to understand. This is Candyland. It's a brand new animatronic animated series created by Golden Lane Studio, who if you don't recognize the name right off the bat, don't worry, I'm sure you will recognize some of their most popular videos. They have been a iconic name in the FNAF animation scene for a very long time. As you can see, I'm sure we all remember, hey, if you're a FNAF OG seven years ago, the fan made FNAF 3 trailer. Again, seven years ago, even eight years ago. So they've made a name for themselves in the animation scene, especially with FNAF, grossing 1.68 million subscribers. And they made a post the other day saying Golden Lane Studios has partnered with Rowdy Roos to build a new horror IP named Candyland. Candyland is a new story driven IP. It is set to create a new standard of presentation and art in Web 3.0. We have partnered with best industry artists to create something beautiful and unique. We are super excited for the reveal tomorrow, which we will take a closer look at in a quick second. Together, we are creating web series that will reveal new and exciting animatronic designs, reveal their origin stories, and discover the twisted and tragic fate of the Candyland Park in the first four episodes. Tomorrow, which again, we'll take a look at in a quick second, we will be releasing the first episode of the Candyland series. And this exactly, this is what it is. It's called First Corruption. Let's just take a quick look through it because, wow, is it amazing? So this is Candy Kangaroo. Looks like he's a showtime performer at the Candyland Circus. Looks like, and I mean, right off the bat, immediately animation is insanely fluid. The character designs are super, super interesting. And they even have a bit of plot and storyline built into even the first episode. So you're hooked right off the bat. Because obviously with animatronic performers, not everything is going to go so smoothly. Looks like we got some hacker coming in, tampering with Candy. He goes back onto a show, but I don't think things are going to go so well for this next show. Gets out on stage and he gets corrupted. And that is where episode one leaves off. We're still waiting for episode two, but I think right now you get the idea of what the series is going for. So very clearly inspired by FNAF, which right off the bat, I just want to say, isn't necessarily a bad thing. That's not exactly why I'm calling them out in this video, because we get that all the time. We see that all the time with games like Case Animatronics. And also, I mean, just take a quick look at the steam results for five nights and you get a whole bunch of knockoffs that for some reason, you're able to purchase on the marketplace. But that isn't exactly where the backlash for this series is coming from. Because like I said, the animation is fantastic. The character designs are so, so intriguing. Everything looks amazing. So what's causing all the backlash? Well, it's the studio we mentioned earlier, Rowdy Ruse. Because these are the people behind Rowdy Ruse. As you can see, a couple of red flags, first and foremost, dare I say, they're an NFT company. And that leads us into the official Twitter account for Candyland, which for some reason doesn't market itself as a video series. It markets itself as an NFT brand. And you can see they're already starting to lean into the NFT scene. With another new character here called Susie Stacktime, who is just obviously a circus baby rip off with the design and the open faceplates. And it's not just Susie either. Because our dear friend Candy Kangaroo also features a very similar feature, the open faceplates. So again, clearly knockoffs of FNAF, the sister location, fun time animatronics, but the NFTs are really where we're driving or point into. And people were very quick to look into exactly why they're doing this. For example, Mercury here, a Twitter user, looked into the comments section and found some replies from Golden Lane Studio, saying Candyland is going to be more than just a series. Our partners from Rowdy Ruse will be releasing the NFT collection. What's wrong with it? So clearly they're not that educated in why NFTs are bad. At least that's what you may first suspect because it turns out, no, they know exactly they're bad, but they're throwing all that aside and saying, oh no, no, no, wait, you guys got it wrong. It depends on the algorithm being used. Duh, obviously. Yes, of course. Not all NFTs are bad, they claim. That's funny. That's real funny. And also while I was looking through this post, I scrolled down in some of the comments because I wanted to see what people's thoughts were and I found this. Someone said, why the NFTs though? Golden Lane replying saying, we have to pay the bills for ourselves and we want to be able to hire a team of artists and animators. Now, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not that educated in the animation scene. I'm not at all educated in Golden Lane Studios themselves. Again, I watched them so many years ago, I haven't been keeping up with them since. And I could be entirely wrong with this stance. You know, please correct me if I am, but surely they've made absolute bank for years and years and years with all of these insane, insanely high viewed video series. And again, I'm sure it costs a lot to make these animations but to go to such lengths as doing something so controversial for just quick extra bucks, I don't know, that just seems weird to me. I really do hope this is gonna be another like FNAF situation with the NFTs, like how Scott got tricked into thinking, oh, not all NFTs are bad. You know, as long as we don't hide lower in them, they're just extra bonuses for the fans. I really, really hope Golden Lane Studios finds out, maybe we shouldn't do this. I mean, with the insane amount of backlash, especially on the launch of your brand new IP. I really hope they can see the downside in all of this because like I said, the animations, the character designs all look fantastic. But just because they chose to do NFTs, everyone's like, I don't wanna support this. I just think it's a silly idea anyways, even if you need the extra money, which again, I can't fathom them needing extra money because they have so, so many views across their channel. 317 million total views on the channel, they've been doing this for ages. They have again, 1.68 million subs. So unless they're constantly, constantly losing money with these animations, I again, I just don't know why they would need the quick extra bucks from NFTs. You're trying to do your own thing, you've got amazing talent behind it. It's just crazy to me that you would throw it all out the window by making NFTs. Because even if you've got a whole bunch of like pump and dump people behind the scenes, you got all the crypto bros in on it, it's like your main audience, do not like NFTs and will not support you simply because you've connected NFTs with yourself and these projects. I'm kind of rambling at the end of this video, but I hopefully have made my point clear. I think they could absolutely make a lot, a lot of profit from just doing a YouTube video series. Again, there are so, so many supporters of your work. You've been doing it for so long, you've made a staple in the animation community. And again, I'm not well educated in the animation scene. So I don't know how many people they got working behind the scenes. I don't know how much money they make from a YouTube video series, but it just doesn't seem worth it in the end to do NFTs alongside this brand new IP. So that's my take, and that is also what I've been seeing a lot on Twitter. And I think they would have a lot more success with this brand new IP launch if they just decided to drop the NFTs entirely. That's gonna do it for this blocks, talks, video apologies, kind of just rambling at the end. But I do hope we can see a turnaround with this series in the future because again, I would love to see it succeed. I think they got a lot of talent behind it. And I would hate to see it just get crapped on just because they made a poor decision to include NFTs. But thank you so much for watching and I will see you all on the flip side. Goodbye.