Funko Fusionis a third-person action-adventure game that blends numerous fandoms in Funko! Pop form. As a result,Funko Fusionmashes up pop-culture characters and locationswith NBCUniversal properties leading the way. For instance, it mixes old-school classics like John Carpenter’sThe Thingwith gaming favorites likeMega Man, to pinpoint just a couple of examples from its 60+ characters and 20+ franchises announced thus far. The multi-faceted world ofFunko Fusionalso welcomes to its cast several IPs making their gaming space debut, such as Jordan Peele’sNopeand action-comedy hitHot Fuzz. Yet, whileFunko Fusionis a celebration of all these different fandoms coming together, it also brings in various flavors from a genre perspective by adding other elements like horror and sci-fi.
Game Rant recently sat down with Jason Bischoff, VP for Licensing and Business Development at Funko, to learn how the licensing side of things came into play inFunko Fusionand how the game seeks to evolve its genre. Bischoff also detailed more about the various worlds ofFunko Fusion,which include cameo worlds. It also seems like cameos could show up in other ways when considering the overarching world of Funko itself, with Bischoff teasing that other companies could also make an appearance.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Funko Fusion Announcements, Adding IPs, and More
Q: I’ve seenFunko Fusiona few times now - can you bring me up to speed as to where we’re at now with reveals and everything?The first time I saw it there were other things to announce. Now, more things have been announced, and additional things announced as part of Gamescom.
A:Well, I’ve seen a lot of things too over the last three years. In the box - and this is one thing I want to drive home - it’s a comprehensive experience. Everything is in the box, right? This is not a microtransactions game. It’s seven boss worlds or core worlds, each one with a boss fight at the end of it.
Seven cameo worlds are hidden throughout those seven boss worlds and then there are seven cameo quests that we have announced. In totality, it’s about 21 properties across the breadth of NBCUniversal. Then there are a couple of outside picks that you have since seen, likeFive Nights At Freddy’s,Invincible, and then, most recently this week,Mega Man.
We are sampling a little bit from across the worlds and genres. We’re not being too sacred about it.Mega Man, for us, was driven by a variety of things. There are a lot of long-time game developers and game players. I’m also that dude that was totally all aboutMega Manfor all of my sophomore year in high school, in the games' lab, in the computer lab, just going nuts.
In terms of releases and announcements,I’m happy to say that weare looking at a bunch of other things that could yet still be added to the game, and maybe even a couple of announcements before we release.
A:Oh yeah, interesting, so we kind of tackled it both ways. To tackle theMega Manpiece, a lot of that, again, is just being honorific of the genre. This is our first step into games - we want to do it right. We’ve had many gaming partners through the years, and soMega Man’s one example, orTeam Fortress 2, which is exclusive to PC, right? We’re just celebrating fans entering a new space.
Inversely to your question, we also had an awesome opportunity through the game to really tackle a lot of these franchises that were never explored interactively before. I don’t know how it happened, butShaun of the Dead, it’s never been a game. It’s never been an integration, as far as I know. Similarly toHot Fuzz, so it’s an awesome responsibility to take a property like that and then also find a unique core gameplay mechanic that’s going to drive that environment, that feels intuitive to that IP and ultimately finding all the right gags, which is a big part of the overall experience.
10:10, considering their pedigree, that’s a big part of their background. It’s equal parts responsibility and equal parts “let’s just have a good time. Let’s be fans first and deliver something that’s not only authentic but feels like it adds something to the overall love of those IPs.”
Q: It’s a very fascinating thing that I’ve asked different people. I asked about it at Comic-Con. As far as getting one property versus the other, what’s that experience like? Of, okay, “We’re making a partnership with NBC Universal.” Do they just say, “Here’s a list, you can pick what you want” or for something likeMega Man, is that more challenging because it’s a video game and there are more protective feelings about it?
A:I can answer this in all sorts of different ways. I’m the licensing guy atFunko. Licensing is kind of my world, right? I guess, first and foremost, it starts from a place of authenticity. Believe it or not, three years ago, John and I did a summit with a couple ofFunkocreatives. Over the course of a weekend, we basically mapped out what eventually became most of the game, really, and it started at that property level of what makes sense from a genre perspective. How do we make sure that we tackle horror and sci-fi and action and theunexpected? That’s where those buckets kind of started.
Obviously, in brokering the deal withNBCUniversal, they were very generous about showing us what was available. Admittedly, there were things on that list that were instant gaps. There were other things that we honestly had to have conversations with some of their important third-party stakeholders to make sure that everybody felt comfortable about what it was we were attempting to do, like Amblin. Amblin is very sensitive about their IPs, right? If we were going to do something with the world ofJurassic, how do we show them that we’re going to honor the IP, we’re not going to stretch it too far, but we’re still going to be true to ourselves, right?
Another example isScott Pilgrim. Edgar Wright and team – they had a very clear vision of how to adapt the original Brian Lee O’Malley material into theatrical. We wanted to make sure that the choices that we were making, again, they felt comfortable with us coming into this space, right? Into a space that they had created. The process, again, always started from a place of authentic fandom and then part of it was semi-strategic, if only because we wanted to tackle different flavors of genre. Part of it was just, “Okay, we’ve got this far. What are our personal wants where we can still add a little bit of gravy on top?”
The Video Game Licensing Process for Funko Fusion
Q: How much of it is easy for you specifically because you’ve done it for so long, as far as doing the licensing and reaching out? And how much of it did you find was different for the video game world?
A:Interesting question. I would say, atFunko,we have the great privilege of a vast assortment of partnerships, and all of those partnerships start with a degree of trust. We’ve built a rapport with those groups. When we pick up the phone, or rather, when our partners pick up the phone, they inherently understand that we’re coming at this from not only the uniqueFunkostylized lens, but we’ve got a point of view too. Again, it’s that dichotomy of how do we shine a light on the thing that makes your thing, the thing that it is that people love but on the same token, lives in our world.
Those conversations were particularly different from what we normally handle in a day-to-day product perspective. I think the biggest challenge was just getting folks initially to see - 10:10 is quote/unquote, “a new studio.” It was a wealth of pedigree there that was driving it. As soon as we were able to demonstrate that, people were all in. Calling and saying, “Hey, we want you to be part of our first foray into the gaming space, doing something big. It’s the biggest content bite we’ve ever taken in our 26 years of history, and we want to do it within and through your brands.” I think a lot of groups were just quick to raise their hands, recognizing the momentum.
Q: When approaching 10:10 or the collaboration on the game, was there an expectation of, “We know your pedigree, we kind of want you to do something similar to what you had done in the past.” Or did Dave say, “Well, this is what we do. Can we marry them together?” Because although it is a new game, it does have a lot of roots in the same stuff that 10:10’s membership has done before.
A:Absolutely. Literally, John Burton fell into my DMs on LinkedIn, and roughly speaking, his thesis was, “Look, we’ve done all of these previousaction platformer titles. People know what that is. People love that genre, and for no good reason, people kind of age out of that genre because there’s nothing there waiting for them. What I want to do is the things that we know what to do, but also evolve it so it’s cooler, older, bigger, badder, co-op, and Funko.” That was initially the pitch, and ultimately that thesis has proved true, right?
It has been a real North Star for us because we’re not trying to pretend there isn’t precedence in this space, but what we are trying to do is take all the best stuff that people seem to celebrate around that genre and then evolve it to its next form. How do you go from literally, E for Everyone to T for Teen? How do you tackle properties that other groups have never touched or would never touch? How do we speak to gamers in a way that – you know, the genre is aging with them, as opposed to abandoning them?
Adding Funko Pops into Funko Fusion and Creating New Funko Characters
Q: Were there any challenges in adapting Funko Pops into the video game world, or has that work already been done with other media to decide, like, “What’s this? They’re this tall in the digital world.”
A:Well, I guess there was some precedence in that we had been producing these fully-rendered animated shorts for years now, and those shorts actually taught us quite a bit going into this project, which is pantomime is key. Celebrating the fact that it’s not a true and authentic version of the character - it’s the toy-stylized version or a collectible stylized version. You could be a bit more tongue-in-cheek, in that a head can pop off or a thing only a collectible can do.
Those were major learnings coming into this project because we knew we didn’t want it to be fully voice-acted. We thought the pantomime thing would ultimately lead to better gags, frankly. Then we could actually lean on the idea of vinyl as not only the raw material by which the entirety of the world is built, but it literally became our currency. In-game, when you play and your characters take damage, like flame damage for example, your collectible’s head will melt, exposing a toy skeleton inside, so you’re going to have to collect vinyl, the raw resource.
They look like Gushers in-game to not only restore your figure, but ultimately, we use that final as in-game currency to mold and craft gadgets. I don’t know. It was like, “Hey, how do we just lean into some of the things we’ve been seeing or saying for years and then just take it to a slightly elevated level where now the agency is in the hands of players?”
Q: At Comic-Con, there was sort of the reveal of new characters. A lot of it has been adapting existing properties. Can you talk about that process of working with 10:10 and making characters that could essentially be Funkos beyond the game now and have their own fandom?
A:It’s an awesome responsibility. It’s certainly an opportunity, a privilege. It’s something I don’t take lightly. I’ve had the good fortune of not only working on the title from the licensing side but also with John on the creative side of things. We have been scripting this thing out together since day one.
What I would tell you is, we at Funko have been telling a very light version ofFreddy’s storyfor about 26 years. Most people know Freddy as, “Oh, the guy who dresses up as the characters I love, and I get those Pops at Fun Days," right? Or maybe in some of our in-booth ephemera, online, or in our branding. People have a general sense of Freddy’s character, but it’s never really been spelled out before. More recently, we’ve been introducing characters like Proto his dog, his best friend, and then even this year, we introduced Franny, his twin sister.
We took the pieces that we had at the start of the project three years ago, which at that time was still just Freddy. We took a bunch of the stories that had been taken, and then we ultimately had to codify that into a Funko mythology, so literally working with several different groups and our original co-founder, Mike Becker. We were able to kind of map out all the - quote/unquote - “history of Funko” from a content perspective, at least from a lore perspective, and then from there it was a matter of evolution. How do we start telling this story in a more overt way? When we are introducing new characters like Eddy, how are we doing it and making sure that it makes as big a splash as possible?
I will tell you, three years ago, we knew definitively we wanted anantithetical characterto Freddy. Freddy, by definition, is a bit more of a perennial, 10-year-old kid. He has this unique ability to kind of become anybody. He’s very innocent. He’s very - for lack of a better example off the top of my head - he’s very Richie Cunningham. He’s very squeaky clean, right?
That works for us as a corporate mascot, but what’s really driving Freddy? Inversely, the antithetical. At that time, he had no name. Eventually, it became Eddy, not only in a riff of Freddy but more specifically, because Eddy, like in currents in the ocean, speaks to kind of like a flowy nature.
In the antithetical, we basically wanted to personify the opposite of a Funko fan. If Freddy is the ultimate fan, then Eddy is the ultimate critic. We’ve taken a bunch of the haterade that is out there, and we’ve literally given body and voice to it.
Because ultimately, everybody has a place at the Funko table. Maybe you’re a hardcore fan, you get it out the gate. This feels like a fulfillment of the prophecy that we’ve been laying down for two and a half decades. Or maybe you’re a huge critic, and that’s cool too. Maybe through the voice of Eddy, you’ll find, like, “Hey, it’s not one thing. There’s a multi-dynamism at play here” and so long as you’re a fan of something, maybe you can be a part of this, too. That’s the Funko story more than anything else. We’re creating a platform, and we’re creating characters where everybody feels like they’re at the same table.
Q: It’s almost cyclical in nature in that you’re making a game with Funkos, and now there are Funkos of the Funkos. How does that process work in terms of, like are you thinking about, “Okay, well, we want these to be different enough from existing Funkos, because we would like to make Funkos of them”?
A:It is a bit like Ouroboros. We knew out the gate that we were going to be doing a robust line of collectibles. They would be dedicated toFunko Fusion. We wanted to celebrate some of the IPs that are heavily featured in-game, so we knew all that stuff. As you’re continuing to add ingredients into that overall formula, I would say, we tried to focus on things that have never been done before or things we haven’t done in a really long time.
A great example is the Indominus Rex, the Indo Rex we never did in the originalJurassic Worldseries. I don’t know how that happened. I literally have no idea. Fans have been very loud for a while. Well, considering he’s the boss at the end ofJurassic World, we thought this is a great opportunity to make him, capture old-school fans that have been waiting for a long time, and also celebrate the moment.
Independent of that, it was like, “Hey, we haven’t done a Cylon for a decade. Maybe we should talk about that." Or the case of Scare Mare and Scare Glow - literally characters that we created with the Mondo team and with Mattel. We turned it into a bigger moment in time where they’re doing the authentic one-six-take version, and then you can experience our Pop version as the end boss ofMasters of the Universe.
Outside of that, there were other little things that we were considering, like “Hey, Eddy Funko, shape-changer, can possess a lot of forms. That’s a great excuse for Chase variants.” You’ll find in our series there’s kind of a purple, craggy-eyed version of the Indo Rex or the Blair thing or the Cylon, right? Those are Chase components. They’re one and six. We’re just trying to turn on fans at all ends of the spectrum and then not to be overlooked, but we do have five pieces of exclusive DLC that you’re able to only get in the physical Pops themselves.
[END]
