[Honey’s Anime Interview] Mattie Fairchild, Senior Director of Community and Developer Relations at Manticore Games
Hello and welcome to Honey’s Anime for another wonderful interview with industry people from around the world. In this interview, we have a wonderful discussion with Mattie Fairchild, Senior Director of Core’s community and developer relations. We previously reviewed Manticore Games when they launched about a year into its launch in 2021. Now, they have grown to be a huge community creative space for all those who strive to be a developer whether in games or any other virtual space. Manticore Games is absolutely dedicated to bringing a safe and productive space for those who want to practice their skills and unleash their full potential. Manticore Games has also been paying attention to the trends and interests developing on their platform which they add new features and other tools to help accommodate users' needs! Without further ado, please read on and get to know more about Manticore Games and the efforts they’ve been making to help build what the Metaverse should be!
Mattie Fairchild
Honey-Chan
Interview with Mattie Fairchild
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How did Core Games come to be and what is the mission or end goal to begin this journey of a create and earn platform for beginners and veterans alike?
Core started as a fantasy team battle game inspired by World of Warcraft’s battlegrounds. The early team knew they wanted wildly extensible modding tools to support the game. Many of us entered the game industry through the modding community, so we’ve seen what can happen when creators take the lead. We believe that anyone can be a creator, whether you’re making a game, hosting a night with friends, or just fighting it out on a competitive ladder. The more we invested in the tools, the more we realized they were the best part. We began focusing on user-generated content and tools to support it. Core creators have grown exponentially since our launch and they have created hundreds of thousands of games, including a remake of that original battleground prototype.
How easy is it for a beginner to start developing their own game via Core Games? Generally speaking, how long would it take to create a game or experience on Core?
We aim both for totally new creators and for experienced devs who want to apply their skills in making multiplayer-ready 3D worlds. Even among completely new game creators, you see very diverse skills. They might be a high school student just starting out, or a 30-year tech engineer applying their coding skills to their first game. Some of our most exciting games have come from 2D game developers who made the switch to 3D thanks to Core. Creators from all of the groups I just mentioned have won game jams, some of them just two weeks after seeing Core for the first time.
For the anime and manga content being created on Core, was this something that was planned, or did the users suddenly start creating content and you noticed the rise in numbers?
The rise in anime and manga content started with two sources: one of our most successful creators, and one of our most successful jams. I’ll talk about the first one here and you’ll hear more about the jam later. The top creator, Eskil, is a tank engineer from France who loves anime. He was also one of the first Core creators. He started out by making RPGs and platformers that grew his fanbase and used the tech he made in each game to take on bigger and bigger designs, eventually launching what would become one of the most-played Core games ever: Heroes. Inspired by anime, Heroes was so popular that it was the second game on Core to break 1M plays.
What do you think is the reason for the sudden popularity of anime and manga content?
What Eskil discovered was that anime fans enjoy hanging out in spaces that remind them of their favorite stories – and they love to expand those stories in a kind of collaborative fiction. Eskil followed Heroes with several new anime-themed titles, and we started to see other titles like Katana Dash by Obazu and Ninja Tycoon by Mizvi, which also hit the most popular ranks.
For users creating anime and manga content on Core and to get an idea of how much it has grown, what are the numbers of active users for anime and manga content vs. other categories on Core?
Three of the top twenty most-played games of all time are anime-themed, making it the most represented subgenre. Others like survival, team shooters, and farming sims top out at two entries. It’s even more apparent when you look at monetizing games, where they make up four of the top ten.
And since knowing the rise in popularity of anime and manga content, have there been any efforts on your end to retain current users and/or acquire new users?
Anime Jam is a big part of it! We find that fans like to play more content of what they like. If you enjoyed a tycoon game, you’ll look for more tycoon games. Meanwhile, Core creators can make an incredible amount of content in a one-month contest. We use jam categories to create creative energy both on concepts that do well, and also that we don’t think are well represented yet. I’m excited about one particular category: we need more mecha games! I was coding one myself for a while, but since it’s a category in Anime Jam, I get to see what the community does with it.
With all the anime and manga the users are creating, have you added any features, templates, or tools to help users to be more creative with their creations?
At Manticore, we watch for what the community is enjoying, and then make new primitives and content that creators can use that builds on it. When we saw anime games taking off we began work on a mecha kit, which has 55 guns, chassis parts, and wings that can be remixed into giant robots. Or tiny robots, or flying robots – your call. We also released a Japan-themed set, which we timed to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and to our own pan-dimensional sporting event, the Multiverse Games. Creators can also create templates to share with other creators. For the jam itself, another creator, LotusCracker, created a certain ninja-filled village that creators can use in the jam. We’ve seen modules for wall-running, ledge mantling, and grapple hooking, as well as high school academy scenes.
Considering Japan has some intense copyright laws, is there anything to worry about regarding copyrights issues when users are developing their versions of anime and manga series via Core?
We’re very clear with creators that they must be creating their own work and not to use content they don’t have the rights to. We abide by the DMCA and address all takedown requests as required. Games have a long history of taking inspiration all the way back to Tolkein, but you have to make it your own work.
It looks like Anime Jam is the first contest you all are holding for the community, how did this idea come up, and was it always a plan to hold such a contest for the community?
That gets to the second source. One of our most successful jams ever was D&D Design-a-Dungeon. We worked with Wizards of the Coast on a game jam where the premise was to recreate your favorite D&D experience. The prompt was more open-ended than we’d tried previously, and it targeted a different audience than typical game developers. The results were incredible, ranging from classic dungeon crawlers to arena melee combat. Design-a-Dungeon was the first jam where we created special tools, which we still spot being used in new top games today. Many of our current most active creators came from that D&D cohort. A big part of why it worked so well was the audience it brought. D&D fans love to create shared experiences. We started looking for more communities like that. We found a surprising source in our deadmau5 jam, when fans of the artist created post-apocalyptic scenes that he featured in his new music video.
How was the planning and process during the pandemic? Were there any issues or setbacks you all experienced?
We launched Core in closed alpha in March 2020. We had some plans, in particular a huge launch event at Game Developers Conference in the middle of San Francisco. That GDC never happened. The world entered cascading shutdowns and the day we picked as launch day, March 16, was the same day California’s shelter in place order went into effect. But we had new plans. When events began shutting down, our team pivoted to running a virtual launch day. The results were amazing: we focused on Twitch, online content, and showcasing existing creators from across the community, resulting in what was our largest jump in users at the time. The team incorporated those learnings into what would become our jam process. In fact, the same team member who was running logistics for our GDC event, Max, ran them for Anime Jam.
Were there any highlights you have experienced that you hold dear during the whole process from Core Games and leading up to the Anime Jam contest?
We’ve since run jams to create sports for the Multiverse Games, gorgeous scenes from around the planet, and all of the visuals for a deadmau5 music video. Both the community and new creators really show up when they have an exciting prompt. Prizes help, too, but the biggest driver is when you feel like your work will be featured in some larger way. Aside from D&D, the events I most remember are a jam where creators created gorgeous scenes from around the planet, and then we worked with the winners to run a metaverse-wide easter egg hunt. Seeing the deadmau5 music video filled with familiar names was an emotional moment for me. And we’re incredibly proud of the Multiverse Games, when we saw 10+ new sports invented and players competing from around the globe.
When the contest ends and there is positive reception, what is next for the Manticore team? Do you hope to work with a specific company to meet your goals?
No announcements yet, but everyone should tune into Core’s first anniversary of Early Access on April 15th. I can share that the companies we’re now talking to go way beyond gaming. Think experiences people share with one another in sports, music, and luxury.
Do you have a message you would like to send out to all the participants of Anime Jam?
Remember: the most important thing is to publish! Games are never “finished”. You are in tremendous company for putting your vision into the metaverse, and as soon as you publish you can invite your friends. Many of Core’s top games started as jam entries, which they expanded over time. Some of them didn’t even win the original jam, and now are the most active on the platform. The best way to make that happen is to do what Eskil did: start small, make something you love, and then invite the community to build it with you.
Final Thoughts
And that is it for this interview with Mattie Fairchild, Senior Director of Core’s community and developer relations. We hope you enjoyed this intriguing read as Anime Jam is currently active and ready for you to get creative and have your peers join in on the fun! Just to get you started on Manticore Games, below, you will find a few creations to try out from some of Manticore Games' popular creators and the Top 3 anime-spired games right now:
- Online Pirate - Inspired by One Piece, play as a pirate building their freebooting empire.
- Ninja Tycoon - Make your way as a shinobi and become the greatest ninja.
- Heroes - Play as a magical hero in a world of heroes and villains, inspired by My Hero Academia.
- All three of the above are top games in terms of player count and monetizing.
- ‘Heroes’ was one of the first games on Core to break one million plays.
- Anime-themed games are particularly found in RPGs and survival.
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