Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2022-05-25

The merch box from the 2021 holiday season was Magic Machine's first foray into merchandising.

Where in the World is Magic Machine?

Elf was not at the beginning of today’s Wizard Wednesday, because he is giving a TED talk! Bearsnake was at a merch convention in Las Vegas. Dotta and new team member Jitcy hosted today.

Merchandising and Forgotten Runes

The FRWC License Agreement for NFT Holders was made public in May 2022. This is the header for the license agreement page on the official website.

Dotta opened by talking about the Hello Kitty (HK) franchise (which is a grail franchise many NFT projects aspire to match). Dotta mentioned that HK didn’t start as a game or movie - it started as a humble coin purse in 1975. They built their empire on merch, and the media adaptations didn’t come until the 90’s. Dotta can visualize key FRWC characters being very successful in the merch realm, especially if the show gets released on a major platform. Dotta’s wife reminded him that Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears started as greeting cards, and later gained popularity and became wider media properties. He sees some parallels with FRWC, a family of NFT collections looking to become something bigger. The challenge he sees is that there are so many FRWC characters, so you have to focus on a few types for merchandising lines. Kobolds were recognized as a sub-group that has a head start in this area.

Forgotten Runes NFT License Agreement Released

The official legal terms for the IP rights were released shortly before the Warriors collection opened for minting. Dotta discussed how Harry Potter has a large fanfic community but they have no commercial outlet. FRWC wants to give holders more rights, but CC0 doesn’t fit, because he sees that as unlimited supply. At the same time, he doesn’t want large corps to grab too many tokens that grant unlimited, exclusive rights, because that would allow them to keep all revenues without giving back to the FRWC community.

Twitter announcement for the official Forgotten Runes poster contest prior to NFT NYC in 2022. The contest was successful in drawing additional artists to the Cult.

With FRWC, you can create any derivative NON-commercial works you want, with any characters. You don’t have to hold the tokens to do this. However, if you DO hold a token for a Forgotten Runes character, you have a COMMERCIAL right to the image + the character you create. You don’t owe any royalties for up to $5 million of revenues; above that, there are royalties that are paid to Magic Machine (MM). It is 20% by default, but it’s negotiable with MM (for example, a merchandising business may not have 20% margins, and MM recognizes that).

Dotta confirmed that you can even create a derivative NFT collection based on your character(s)! These rights are non-exclusive, however; MM reserves the right to use any of the characters for their media (comic book, TV show, game, books, etc.) If you really have an issue with MM using your characters, you can talk with them directly to request that they not use them.

When MM starts getting revenues from their media properties, they want to give royalties back. However, from a regulatory perspective, it’s very difficult to re-invent how royalties work and get royalties back to individual holders. But MM is not giving up on this matter and will continue to innovate in this area. Some other projects are also promising individual royalties right away, but they may be based overseas or not be fully aware of the regulatory environment.

Upcoming Events at NFT NYC

LachnessMonsta and Jitcy are creating a map of various events going on in the city during NFT NYC, that visiting wizards and warriors may want to attend. Anyone interested in hosting/organizing an outing, get in touch with them! There is a poster art contest for the event, that is currently open! There will be a cosplay contest at the event as well.

The Complicated Relationship between Artists and NFTs

Dotta talked about jmw327 and their big entry into NFTs. Dotta saw jmw’s post, went to the Foundation platform, and made a bid for 5 ETH to make a statement (this was worth around $10K USD at the time, a bid which was the same as what the artist claimed was their previous yearly earnings from art). And others were also inspired, so eventually the piece sold for 20 ETH (around $40K USD at the time)! MM put out an open job offer to jmw if they want it.

The First-Ever Set of House of Wizards Proposals

Elf and Dotta meet in person on a sunny California beach, circa May 2022. Image courtesy of Magic Machine.

Voting on the opening set of House of Wizards DAO proposals will occur in two weeks! These proposals will be up for a vote:

• Monday Magic Memos: Led by Henry Boyd, this is a weekly recap news show about all wizard community happenings. The request is for a video editor to help put together the videos.
• The Professor’s Library: Led by O, interactive multimedia series to teach new people about cult concepts, and later on key security topics for people new to NFTs.
• Black Letter of the Lich by CyberwaffleH (300-page novel)
• Legends of the Forgotten Runes - The Shadow Keep by derekthesphinx (120K word novel)

Elf Returns from his TED Talk

Part-way through WW, Elf jumped in directly after his TED talk, where he talked about decentralized world-building. He said it went well, and that he mentioned a few community-owned wizards during the talk. Elf also did an interview with Bonzo that was an hour long. The video should be released on Saturday/Sunday (depending on your time zone), and no spoilers were provided! Finally, last week Elf, dotta, and bearsnake met in person, all at the same time, for the first time, along with other members of Magic Machine. A lot of brainstorming, talks and planning occurred, plus some in-person team-building. We also learned a fun fact - Elf found out he enjoys drinking milkshakes on the beach.