Samantha Herrick:
This is a podcast brought to you by Alumni Ventures. Welcome to the Tech Optimist. This is a show where we tell you the stories and people creating tomorrow.

David T. Scott:
I never thought I'd be building a business, which is supporting this amazing industry, this $30 billion industry.

Samantha Herrick:
That is David T. Scott, CEO at Evil Genius Games.

Jason Bird:
How is Evil Genius Games aligning with current trends in the gaming and entertainment industries?

Samantha Herrick:
And that is Jason Bird. He is our guide for today, an associate at Alumni Ventures. It's this game and the storytelling platform that is just taken the world by storm right now. And yeah, over 70,000 people played D&D remotely in 2018. And that's me. My name is Samantha Herrick and I'm the editor for this show. You'll hear my voice here in a few minutes.
Okay, a bit more about the startup today, Evil Genius Games. So it was founded in December of 2021, and they focus on developing tabletop role-playing games. So TTRPGs, including Everyday Heroes, which we're going to hear about, a reboot of the D20 modern system based on D&D 5E rules. And they have licensed adventure settings for movie franchise like Pacific Rim, Kong, Skull Island, Highlander, all kinds of stuff like that. So they raised nearly $400,000 through Kickstarter in May of 2022, and they secured a million dollars from venture capitalists and tech companies in 2023. So as of recently, as of June of this year, the company appears to be reengaging with cryptocurrency and NFT projects. They presented at a cryptocurrency convention discussing plans for NFTs related to their licensed products.
But for now, we'll let Dave and Jason take it away. First, we're going to hop into a quick ad and then we'll be right into the interview. So hang tight.

Speaker 4:
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Samantha Herrick:
As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for the informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice, and it's not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

Jason Bird:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. I'm Jason Bird, associate on the SEED Fund here at Alumni Ventures, and I'm here with Dave Scott, the CEO of Evil Genius Games. So let's jump right in. Dave, can you tell us a bit about yourself and talk a bit about what you're building over at Evil Genius Games?

David T. Scott:
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Dave Scott. I'm a serial entrepreneur. This is my fourth startup and I'm always on in learning mode for sure. I never thought I'd do this fourth startup, but I'll tell you a little bit of story about myself. I'm a lifelong Dungeons & Dragons fan. When I was 11 years old, I went away to sleep away camp and they were playing this game called Dungeons & Dragons, fell in love with it. And since then I've been playing it every single week with my friends from high school, my friends from college. I never thought I'd be building a business which is supporting this amazing industry, this $30 billion industry. But I found myself in having an opportunity to meet one of my idols, a guy named Jeff Grubb, who is, from my perspective, one of the fathers of modern-day Dungeons & Dragons, really responsible for a lot of some of the amazing stuff that was going on there.
I never thought that I'd be running a game company, a game tech, game infrastructure company because most of my career has been spent in B2B. What we found out was during COVID, you couldn't get together and play these games in person. So you needed technology to do it. And the technology that I saw wasn't great. It wasn't really servicing the purpose of being able to get me and my friends around the table to play these kinds of games. So we created Everyday Heroes and Evil Genius Games. And what Evil Genius Games is it's a gaming platform which allows you to play modern day TTRPGs, which are tabletop role-playing games, using some of the most cutting-edge technology to be able to facilitate that session, that event, that adventure gaming session that allows you to have that experience with your friends online.

Jason Bird:
Awesome. How is Evil Genius Games aligning with current trends in the gaming and entertainment industries?

David T. Scott:
So interestingly enough, Evil Genius Games is based on this TTRPG space, which is 50 years old. And if you take a look at Dungeons & Dragons, for example, back in the 1970s, and you look at it today, you won't see much change or evolution. It's pen, it's paper, it's dice, it's little miniatures. It's all sorts of things like that. And I think that what we're taking is a real digital first approach to being able to make this game work. And that means creating a platform where people can log on and they can get access to their game library, they can get on and they could find people to play games with. They can actually play the games online. And those types of innovations require technology. And so we're using some of the most modern technologies out there to be able to make sure that this is a really good experience for our customer base, and that they have a frictionless experience in being able to play these games together.

Samantha Herrick:
Okay. So I want to provide a few more statistics on D&D stats and just TTRPG stats. So like Dave had said, TTRPG stands for a tabletop role-playing game, and they are all the rage right now, especially for people of my generation. I'm a huge fan of just the storytelling aspect of the game. I follow a lot of different groups that tell stories this way. There are some big names out there, like Critical Role, Dimension 20, etc, I could go on and on. My friends and I even have our own little [inaudible 00:06:59] called Danger Sense, which is also a TTRPG streaming platform. Totally shameless plug there, but hop over there if you want to listen to any cool stories. But I want to provide some stats for some like TTRPG popularity as of late. So as of 2020, just the game sphere or just the hemisphere, saw a 33% growth in sales in 2020.
So this really was an excuse for how people could connect and tell stories and play games together. And over 50 million people worldwide have played these type of games. As far as demographics, 40% of players are aged 25 or younger. 39% of the players identify as female, showing increased diversity in the player base since the 1970s and 1980s. As far as online engagement, which I had talked about earlier, there are 4.3 billion minutes of TTRPG content that has been watched on Twitch. And like the channel I had mentioned earlier, Critical Role, a popular D&D live play show generated nearly $10 million on Twitch over the past two years. And the reason that this game has sort of exploded to, or another catalyst for how this has exploded in the most recent years is season four of Stranger Things as well had a very large emphasis, and the show always has had a very large emphasis on Dungeons & Dragons.
And so it's this game and the storytelling platform that has just taken the world by storm right now. And yeah, over 70,000 people played D&D remotely in 2018, and it has expanded into other media. There was a Dungeons & Dragons movie that came these past few years. There's video games that like Baldur's Gate 3, which is super eccentric on the mechanics that are found within tabletop RPGs. And there are dozens of storytelling podcasts out there that are from homebrew TTRPG games. So it's just a great catalyst in a great sort of platform for telling really cool fantasy stories. Okay, we're going to hop into an ad and then we're going to finish out the interview. Hang tight, don't go anywhere.

Speaker 4:
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Jason Bird:
Thank you. What makes Evil Genius Games distinct in the crowded RPG market?

David T. Scott:
Oh, man. Yes, it is a bit crowded. I mean, what's beautiful about our industry is that if you have an idea, you can create a game. But really the industry is dominated by fantasy and particularly European fantasy. And European fantasy doesn't appeal to everyone, particularly people who are not of European descent, people like myself. And so what we've done is we've created one of the very few modern day role-playing games. And what that means is that you could play... instead of playing an elf wizard, you could play John Wick or you could play Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious, Toretto. And it gives you the ability to sort of create a more inclusive experience first and foremost, but then also to be able to relive some of your favorite action films. And so that's the place where we play a role, and then we also open it up.
And so we work with Hollywood Studios so that Hollywood Studios can continue the adventure after people leave the movie theater. And we've got partnerships for movies like Rambo and Pacific Rim and Kong Skull Island. And then what we're also doing is we're really sort of embracing the community and giving the community the opportunity to be able to actually tell their own stories and to be able to publish those stories as well, and creating a marketplace of user-generated content to allow that to happen. And it's all thanks to the fact that we've created this modern day platform that allows anyone to be able to tell a story and share that story with their friends.

Jason Bird:
What are the primary needs or asks for Evil Genius Games at this stage of its growth?

David T. Scott:
So Evil Genius Games is really blessed to have an amazing staff, gives us the ability to be able to create games that people love. We have over a thousand five-star reviews on review sites like Amazon, but we struggle like everyone else struggles as a fledgling startup. First and foremost, we're always fundraising right Jason? And we'd love to sort of fill our cap table with people who believe in what we're doing and want to see us sort of solve this problem in a very meaningful and thoughtful way.
And then also we have amazing relationships with the movie studios, but we could always use more as we start to build out our library of really amazing IP, entertainment based IP. And so we always love introductions to people within the Hollywood space so that we can help continue to tell our story and evangelize, and then of course, we could can use some cheerleaders, people who can sort of convince existing TTRPG players to try our game. What we found out is that when they do try our game, they like it, and that's good news. So we just need to get as many people to try it as possible.

Jason Bird:
As the CEO, what has been the hardest challenge to overcome in leading Evil Genius Games, and how have you addressed this challenge?

David T. Scott:
Yeah, I mean, I think the hardest challenge is leadership, and I've been humbled by the leadership challenges associated with this company. You'd like to think that people are people, you'd like to think every industry is the same, but what I found is that this industry particularly is a bit peculiar. And I think part of it is that it's creative led. What I mean by that is the people who've been successful in this industry are creatives. They started out as game designers, and oh, by the way, now they run a company. And so when you have a lot of creatives in the industry, the communication is different, the emotions are different, the professionalism is different because they're artists. And so that's really caused me to really change the way that I lead in this particular industry today.

Jason Bird:
Well, that concludes this episode. Thank you, Dave, for joining today. I really enjoyed it.

David T. Scott:
My pleasure. Thanks, Jason.

Jason Bird:
Oh, it's a pleasure.

Samantha Herrick:
Thanks again for tuning into the Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a rating on whichever podcast app you're using and remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. So please email us at info@techoptimist.vc with any of those and be sure to visit our website at av.vc. As always, keep building.