Gamefam CEO Joe Ferencz’s business is pulling beloved IP like Sonic the Hedgehog, Barbie or SpongeBob SquarePants into online gaming platforms “Roblox,” “Fortnite” and “Minecraft” and turning it into an interactive marketing experience that is, ideally, a good game in its own right.
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Founded by Ferencz in 2019, Gamefam is a metaverse game developer and publisher that creates connected experiences for brands across online gaming platforms, with its most recently announced collaborations being officially licensed “Roblox” games built out for Crunchyroll’s popular anime “My Hero Academia” and Chris Martin and Coldplay for their new album “Moon Music.”
Ferencz got the idea for his business while working in strategy roles at Mattel and Ubisoft. He began his career as an art director working on licensed consumer products for sports properties, including the NFL, NCAA and NHL. His game design and producing credits include “He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe,” “Star Wars Rebels Recon Missions” and “Hot Wheels Race Off,” which has more than 100 million downloads.
“It was during those years consulting and doing some startups in my other time that I became aware of the Roblox platform, which, back then, had, I believe, 30 million monthly active users. Now it has 80 million daily active users,” Ferencz tells Variety ‘s “Strictly Business.” “And I was at a point my career where I had worked on so many great brands and IPs, starting with sports licensing, doing NFL licensed posters, and then working at Ubisoft on licensing out and doing strategy for ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ and then being a licensee of ‘Star Wars’ and helping grow the ‘Hot Wheels’ gaming business and helping relaunch ‘He-Man’ and I said, ‘I want to try to get into making new and wild stuff. And I think Roblox is the place to do it. I think the platform is going to explode. All the fundamentals are there, and I think we’ve only been surprised at how big it has gotten and how big it is likely to continue to get.'”
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For the second quarter of 2024, Roblox said its average daily active users totaled 79.5 million, up 21% year-over-year. The company reported revenue of $893.5 million, up 31% year-over-year, and a net loss of $205.9 million (compared with a net loss of $282.8 million in the year-earlier period). To date, companies including the NFL, Warner Music Group, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Mattel, Sony, Samsung and Disney are relying on Gamefam to help them navigate that large market.
“Strictly Business” is Variety ’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
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