A Story about Papermint.
My name is Babsi and I am Art Director of a virtual world called Papermint.
This is a love letter.
Please allow me to tell you – merely from my humble perspective – the unbelievable but true story about us, Avaloop, the team that created Papermint. It's a story about friendship and independence, about how to lose a multi-million lottery ticket, about the really unique thing we created and about hope. Because hope dies last.
By now I should have been buzzing around somewhere in Shibuya, working as TV music show producer. My rampant Japanophilia started when I lived and worked as designer in Tokyo around eight years ago. Tokyo, mon amour! For ages, I wanted to go back so badly that it was almost driving me nuts. And then, finally, I held in my hands the working papers for my new position in the country which I hoped would satisfy literally all of my desires...
But then...
Instead, I am sitting here at a desk in front of a computer, somewhere in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. It's not a city that's exactly known for its flamboyant pop-culture, nor as the centre of IT innovations. I work in an office in a former cinema, with a supermarket providing the only nearby gastronomic supply, alongside a cafeteria of a geriatric clinic and a coffin factory. As I sit here my spine slightly starts to mimic the shape of a banana, my eyes yearn for my glasses and my mouse-hand needs a break. There's not a single Japanese (in both senses of the word 'single') around me... I'm just sitting here... writing this to you...
And you know what? I do not regret a thing!
Because what I have found here in this place has been one the most exciting moments in my life. Hütteldorf CAN beat Shibuya in the thrill and excitement and emotional memories... It can when you decide to believe in your friends, yourself and dedicate three years of your life to build something just because you want to... something really great, like what Papermint has become.
It's when you care about anything but the two things screaming in you - those two things called creativity and fun.
We built a virtual world!
We are the proud creators of Papermint!
Soon, everything will change. Of course we still will be proud, but the next step takes more than pride. It takes true sacrifice. But more of that later...
Right now Papermint is in labour. Papermint is a free-to-play online world where you can navigate in a 3D environment, but where everything is built from paper. This isn't Second Life; nobody in Papermint has to care about their virtual cup-size because everyone is flat anyway. Beside the decision to ignore any trend towards hyper-realism in videogames and do it the stylized way, Papermint offers a unique way to socialise, express oneself, and grow one's personality.
But if fate hadn’t made that little twist right in the last second, I probably wouldn't have to tell you this. Everyone would have already known about Papermint. If fate just had refrained from taking that itsy-bitsy twist in the very last moment, nobody could save one-self right now from flashy ads, banners, clips, pop-ups, apps, widgets and ring tones all dictating you to play Papermint. Luckliy fate always does what it wants. And fate doesn't care about market research.
When Papermint was conceived.
But please let me start from the beginning:
First there was Lev. Lev and I had known each other for 12 years. He made feature films before. And he was somehow fascinated by utopian societies, especially by these virtual online environments called MUDs, MOOs and MMOs. At parties, he loved to invent social games out of nothing and somehow he manages to get people to join these improvised games and make them entertain themselves.
And there was Claudia. She was introduced to me by Lev as the "solution" for his new plan. Lev wanted to make a game for non-gamers... and Claudia would put that into code. Lev and I were driving in a rented car through California and Nevada to have a dance in some casino bars or parking decks when he showed me her on some photos. She seemed a bit serious in the pictures. I did not know by then that Claudia should become one of the most important persons in my life... one with an incomparable sense of humour, infinite warmth, and a power that seems indestructible.
I did not know back then that these were the qualities we would need so badly during the nerve-wrecking times during the production of Papermint.
Lev asked me to do graphics for this game project... a virtual world. And I agreed. That’s a friendship thing I thought.
We had no idea how to actually do it, but we founded a company. Our troupe of dreamers found a man, Martin, who was a down-to-Earth fellow – and thus believed in the potential of Papermint. The company was called Avaloop, the team located in an old cinema from 1907 which Lev had renovated himself, and everyone who worked at Avaloop was truly special and was or became a friend. That was the unique spirit of this non-exchangeable team. The spirit of every single one shaped the world of Papermint.
Lev had a plan. Papermint should become something nobody really had tried in this form before. Okay, it seemed to me like a mad plan but when he was talking about the “charismatic visualisation of one's soul”, “a world than can totally be recycled and re-used by its inhabitants”, the “mighty golden bikini” and “players having sex to make kids – namely other players”... this whole thing sounded somehow brilliant to me. It was a pleasure to do my best to materialise his vision into shape and colour.
We could have never foreseen what happened next. We had a totally independent team, 3 in its smallest, 17 in its largest size. A team that has never built a virtual world before, hidden in the middle of the web-2.0-nowhere, which suddenly got noticed on the global radar of the biggest of the big. Suddenly we were invited to present Papermint everywhere... at small game-festivals, big game industry events, LAN parties, academic conferences, fashion shows, exhibition openings, press conferences – and in the huge corporate meeting rooms in skyscrapers somewhere over the ocean.
We had shown the prototype of Papermint for the first time to the public at a one-month exhibition about virtual worlds in the museums quarter in the historic heart of Vienna. Three months later, and after raising some funding from the government, we presented this prototype in May 2007 at the Nordic Game conference, the largest game conference for professionals in Europe.
We weren't really well-prepared. We enjoyed the fun of being on stage, and we performed wearing wigs. Our "lecture" was called "The Future of the Social Networking Game". It was a morning lecture but the room was packed and the bouncers prevented more people from flooding in. Only one man managed to still get in, just five minutes before the show was over. He approached us after the presentation. He was an energetic guy who wore a pink shirt and had a charming French accent. Desperately he tried to get our attention but we were way too excited and too hungry for lunch to give him any. He followed us like a shadow the whole day. Apparently he's not that kind of guy who'd easily give up, and grabbed us at the buffet queue and plied us with his business card... an all black one – featuring the logo of the largest computer company in the world. He just asked: “Do you wanna go console with us?”
I was kind of surprised but sceptical at the same time and answered quite calmly: “No thank you. We are only interested in Nintendo.” At the time the Wii was the main competitor to that hi-def-hi-rez console made in USA. When the pink-shirted man posed the same question to Claudia, our lead programmer, she just replied with a winning smile: “Why not?”
And Lev said yes anyway.
On the last day of the conference, right before the doors were closed, we had a talk with the big M in the Sony meeting room. It was a short meeting and we were extremely exhausted. It was after all the conference that featured games like LocoRoco, Singstar, Guitarhero, Osu! Tatakae Ouendan!, Parappa the Rapper, Lumines, Alien Hominid, Puzzle Pirates, Maple Story and EVE Online. We were tired because of the excessive partying in that infamous beach house in the middle of nowhere together with the creators of these groundbreaking games. And we were thinking about the local beer tasting and a full-moon midnight swim in the Baltic Sea that we had planned for later that day. Distracted, we mumbled some things about global warming, wellness games, and girls.
How it feels to have a multi-million lottery ticket in your hand
Two days later the Non-Disclosure Agreement with the biggest of the big was in our inbox. Again, counting the team back then, we were five boys and girls who didn't really care about the big money or the big publishers. We just wanted someone to log into Papermint and enjoy playing what we have enjoyed creating. But we were overwhelmed by the interest we had raised in big corporations just after three months of going out with nothing more than a prototype that was actually not more than a chat featuring wacky papery avatars.
Although we were a highly ambitious team, we honestly did not really spend much thought on server scaling or business plans, but we put a lot of our heart inside. Back then Papermint already featured a special poetic feel; a charm that could not be found in many other "IT solutions".
Suddenly, we were forced to take three steps at once, and suddenly did not only have to satisfy the requirements of Mr Big but also handle the incoming interest from Real Networks, Orange, Disney, Coca-Cola and MTV.
A team dedicated to building a world we just liked to hang out in with friends now had to grow extremely quickly into a group of people understanding the big economical, social and technological questions of our times. We were suddenly supposed to be the creative experts with that special innate understanding for high-quality online communication and entertainment. We along with our wigs flew over to Redmond, meeting big M's VP's and GM's, our pink-shirted advocate always by our side to manage us like a rock band on tour, talking about the 260 millions of MSN users just waiting for a thing like Papermint.
“Wow! Look! Nintendo of America just across the street!”, we remarked, while not having revealed to him that we also had scheduled a meeting with Real Networks the same day down town Seattle. Because we had some more time that afternoon and an afternoon in Seattle might have felt a bit boring otherwise. Oh, and there were also those talks with Sony, IBM, Intel, THQ, NCsoft, Nexon and UPC back home in Europe.
We were bathing in that strange state of mind of how it feels to play around with the big ones. I have to admit – it was really fun. But what also happened was that we found ourselves losing all the time and energy to develop our thing further. Papermint was put to sleep so that we could prepare all the slide presentations, the calculations, the business dinners, taking our Papermint-cosplay-costumes to the cleaning shop, reading economic news and imagining how to spend the big cash.
It was not about emotions, fun or friendship anymore but about concurrent users, payment solutions, “eternal scaling” and corporate strategies.
It was not about us anymore... not about Papermint. It was about the money.
It all looked so good. Everyone wanted us. The big M literally fought for us. Our hot-blooded, pink-shirted warrior crashed office desks and doors of superiors at the big M who would hesitate to sign Papermint. In the summer of 2007 they sent an eleven-headed team to Austria, which was bigger than our own crew. We were extremely nervous and I have to admit that I had actually never heard the term “due-diligence” before. M's group was a party of outstanding personalities: Art Directors, Leads of Technology, Heads of Business Development, Executive Producers, General Managers. And they were extremely understanding, helpful, enthusiastic and smart.
In the eyes of this delegation from overseas, Papermint was the remedy. Papermint should herald the new era of the big M's game products: family-friendly, innovative, creative and stylish. I remember having an unforgettable summer evening with these people, on the hills with a breathtaking view over Vienna, the city that should soon become known by the world as the birthplace of the real web 2.0 innovation... and the happily jumping, proud heart welcoming the bright future. We felt we were in good hands and they said with that very special sparkle of care in their eyes: “We don't wanna M... you to death".
In the same breath we talked about the ten thousands of concurrent users Papermint would attract.
Everything had to be kept secret, our mouths were shut by big corporations and their contracts that bound our hands, preventing us from doing anything else. It felt like in a special agent thriller, but although Mr Big's carried us on his hands and fed us well during Tokyo Game Show in September 2007 we somehow felt we were being the passive part. Because of that we tried to break out of this situation of dependency.
We played poker with the “high rollers”. We were the small, unspoilt, creative team they all wanted. Maybe they had no idea that something had changed us. It was them that had changed us. We also suddenly caught ourselves thinking not just about money... we were thinking about the millions we were facing in case of the acquisition of Avaloop.
And I smugly filed my official request for young Japanese interns. But wait! Wasn’t there an Avaloop Tokyo office planned anyway – which I would be in charge of soon?
Influential people from NCsoft said "Papermint is the hottest thing around. Soon Nintendo will knock on your door". But they didn't.
In late fall 2007 it became clear that we had lost the poker game. One by one the 'high rollers' had left the game. They still liked us, they liked Papermint - but the big ones were afraid of the risk. Papermint maybe came too early - for them at least. Nobody wanted to be the first. The last partner we still sat at one table with was Mr Big. And they were in an easy position... as we found ourselves suddenly all alone as we had not been allowed to talk to anyone else.
But because of an inconveniently timed internal restructuring the biggest of all software giants became more hesitant. Everything became more tedious, our prospected million shrinking away. The new superiors, coming straight from EA and having managed to turn The Sims Online into a flop in their earlier careers were of the opinion an alternative project like Papermint was too risky for a corporation like the big M.
After months of internal debates our pink-shirted friend called from Redmond to say it's over.
In the meantime though, while we were riding so high, we had hired people and we had taken out loans just waiting for the big moment of signature with the big one.
We staggered in a state of shock but we did not give up. We spent our very last money for the last action we could take: a very expensive booth at Game Connection in Lyon/France in order to meet other possible investors or partners quickly and save our team.
A few days later I also got 3 minutes to present Papermint at an investors' forum in London and struck down by an incredible cold I almost crawled to Guildford to visit Peter Molyneux at Lionhead Studios for a consulting lesson... and he suddenly outed himself as a fan of Papermint and offered us all his help. But wasn't it too late?
I spent the cold December evening eating steak with the Nordic Game conference director and the Director of Development of NCsoft Europe (personally a big supporter of Papermint as well). I was exhausted, sick, desperate and being dependent on someone to pay my steak... when Claudia called from Vienna and told me in an excited and slightly tipsy voice: "Babsi, they said yes!"
What? Why? Now?
I just wanted to celebrate the soul out of me but it seemed all of London had gone to sleep... and I felt so far away from my team and Viennese beer.
I was not allowed to tell my friends this night who that person was whose YES meant so much for me... but I made sure they understood that I was not talking about any fiancé.
However, it happened exactly at the right time! We knew that if no money would come during the next two weeks, we would have to close the doors of our little cinema forever.
So, nine incredibly thrilling months after the pink shirt had asked us for the first time "Do you wanna go console with us?", after hours and hours of discussions, meetings and PowerPoint presentations, a Letter of Agreement was finally signed at an executive conference in Las Vegas in February 2008.
On a bowling lane I was dancing with the pink shirt.
Two weeks later we enjoyed the big M's party at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco – for the first time since we were visiting this conference we were official guests and not just parasites who slipped through the door. We celebrated the pink shirt's birthday by drinking minty Mojitos and were invited to the big M's VIP dinner being seated vis-à-vis Peter Molyneux, having expensive wine and striking conversations.
During this conference my mother died. No flight would have taken me back in time so that I would have been able to be in the Austrian countryside in order to attend her funeral. I knew she would have wanted me to take credit for all our hard work. I had to be away from her so many times because I was somewhere above the clouds in a plane. I felt her wanting me to keep fighting our fight and attend the meetings with the big M, hold my lecture at the largest game conference in the world and spread the word about Papermint. So after a hard struggle with myself and empowered by the unbelievable friendship of Claudia and Lev who were with me I decided to stay in the US and fulfil my duties for Papermint. I sang my Mum's song at karaoke, danced with her in my mind and felt the spirit of success – which was of course also her success as she always encouraged me to do what I wanted. I felt her power in me. I was double as strong.
After this incredibly alienating trip to the US our everyday lives would not return to normal. I went home to my family's place and avoided all communication. The only thing that kept my hopes up was Papermint and the team I was creating it with. Full of enthusiasm I helped my friend who was director at NCsoft with his decision to finally leave the big company to join our little team as VP of Strategy.
Claudia was there for me any time I needed to talk to a real friend on the phone and kept me up to date and full of life.
We all were on a high again... together.
Nothing could stop us.
Because we knew... although this first preliminary agreement with the big M was signed we could not be 100% sure until the actual contract was nailed down. And this contract was still in development. And again, despite another government funding we had raised in the meantime... the money was running out. We had to close the deal as soon as possible not to have to fire our team just because of a lack of money.
And we knew... the people are the most important... we would have rather died than having to send anyone of them away.
Papermint is them.
When I came back from the countryside to that cinema in Vienna I was welcomed with so much warmth and enthusiasm. It was just wonderful. I knew that nothing could ever blow us off our little indie feet... whatever the future will bring. With or without Mister Big.
Suddenly we felt this spirit of freedom again! The spirit we were lacking while being drunk of that strange hope for money or fame or security... whatever it was... it had tamed us. Papermint had not grown the natural way during the “PowerPoint”-times... it was endangered to be squeezed into a shape that was not its true shape... it was a marketing/PR/get more users/blah blah/demographic needs-shape we had not consciously cared for in our original plan.
But somehow we were able to stop that deformation in our minds and went back to the original plan, our plan of independence, even though there still was that Letter of Intent with the largest computer company in the world.
But our mindset was free again. The last year in the crystal castles of the “bigs” helped us to grow, to see this other world, and made us appreciate what we have: freedom to do what WE WANT.
And to do Papermint the Avaloop way.
One night after my arrival from my family's place I met the love of my life. In Vienna. And not in Shibuya as I had always thought.
The strength of my Mum in me, and my love, the strong bonds of friendship amongst the Papermint team and the newly found spirit of freedom and creativity made me immune to the first signs of reluctance when M's team visited us again in Vienna. It should be the last time.
The end of our story. The Beginning of Papermint!
The meeting was very nice, from a personal point of view. Nevertheless the contract expired and there was political restructuring in the superior league at the big M again. But actually... they also did not dare to be the first.
We did not care.
We were all alone again.
We had no money at all.
But we were free again.
And we believed in Papermint.
And we still do!
In the meantime of waiting for the prince to come on his white horse, we stopped to just hope in a state of numbness. We just took action and had developed Papermint further, in exactly the direction we wanted. It may sound strange, but somehow it was Papermint itself that told us how it wanted to be developed.
And now Papermint is here! Exactly the Papermint as we wanted it to be. We managed the incredible. We managed to create this unique and rich world by staying truly independent the whole time.
November 2008. We obviously lack every marketing budget, but at least all that gambling and coin-counting has an end.
Don't let yourself be misled when I tell you that it is with our very last resources we have created this press kit and open the Beta. This is a fact. Nevertheless we have a reason to smile.
Papermint is never going to stop! We are ready to launch like a rocket for its journey to the stars.
Yes, we are truly faithful again!
Recently I walked through the vast lands of Papermint, the world we have created and I nearly burst into tears facing these wonderful, lonely strange lands... just waiting to be populated.
We have proceeded to develop the world of Papermint further the way we wanted. And now it is in the state of being able to accommodate its inhabitants.
There is no strategy and no poker playing any more. We just open the gates and welcome everyone with all our warmth.
Hey, be part when Papermint, this truly independent world, is taking off!
Avaloop sincerely invites you to join the new wave of virtual "indieness"!
In the meantime...well...
Claudia and Lev will chiefly handle the users that will find Papermint loveable.
I won't move to Tokyo for now but to London, together with my love, who owns an indie record label.
Maybe there is a chance to meet you and tell you our story face to face. We don't have millions, but what we do have is a story, our story, and Papermint. The end of our story means the beginning of Papermint. I invite you to try it out!
It's a really special thing :)
Babsi
...and if you fancy hearing the story from Lev's and Claudia's perspective I'd suggest you just ask them yourself:
Lev Ledit, lead game designer and the inventor of Papermint.
Claudia Kogler, lead programmer and the heart of Papermint.
Creating the world of Papermint would not have been possible without these outstanding people
Lev, Claudia, Martin P, Martin S, Markus, Ho, Matthias, Tom, Wolfram, Philipp, Miriam, Brad, Geoff, Matto, Marc, Michi, Sepp, Monika, Ulrike, Marek, Maurice, Julia, Lydia, Doris, Elvyra, Birgit, Eva, Paul, Mirko, Stemes, Markus W., Papyrus, Caludai, Levienne, Seppl, Matt, Honami, Puku, Wutzel, Spoony, Sally, Origami, Babsirella, Zelda, Babette, Tomtom, Dirk, Rhysell, Ejned, Mr Rez, M-san, Sébastien, Thomas, Peter M, Masaya, Teresa, Christian, Franz, Christine.
My name is Babsi and I am Art Director of a virtual world called Papermint.
This is a love letter.
Please allow me to tell you – merely from my humble perspective – the unbelievable but true story about us, Avaloop, the team that created Papermint. It's a story about friendship and independence, about how to lose a multi-million lottery ticket, about the really unique thing we created and about hope. Because hope dies last.
By now I should have been buzzing around somewhere in Shibuya, working as TV music show producer. My rampant Japanophilia started when I lived and worked as designer in Tokyo around eight years ago. Tokyo, mon amour! For ages, I wanted to go back so badly that it was almost driving me nuts. And then, finally, I held in my hands the working papers for my new position in the country which I hoped would satisfy literally all of my desires...
But then...
Instead, I am sitting here at a desk in front of a computer, somewhere in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. It's not a city that's exactly known for its flamboyant pop-culture, nor as the centre of IT innovations. I work in an office in a former cinema, with a supermarket providing the only nearby gastronomic supply, alongside a cafeteria of a geriatric clinic and a coffin factory. As I sit here my spine slightly starts to mimic the shape of a banana, my eyes yearn for my glasses and my mouse-hand needs a break. There's not a single Japanese (in both senses of the word 'single') around me... I'm just sitting here... writing this to you...
And you know what? I do not regret a thing!
Because what I have found here in this place has been one the most exciting moments in my life. Hütteldorf CAN beat Shibuya in the thrill and excitement and emotional memories... It can when you decide to believe in your friends, yourself and dedicate three years of your life to build something just because you want to... something really great, like what Papermint has become.
It's when you care about anything but the two things screaming in you - those two things called creativity and fun.
We built a virtual world!
We are the proud creators of Papermint!
Soon, everything will change. Of course we still will be proud, but the next step takes more than pride. It takes true sacrifice. But more of that later...
Right now Papermint is in labour. Papermint is a free-to-play online world where you can navigate in a 3D environment, but where everything is built from paper. This isn't Second Life; nobody in Papermint has to care about their virtual cup-size because everyone is flat anyway. Beside the decision to ignore any trend towards hyper-realism in videogames and do it the stylized way, Papermint offers a unique way to socialise, express oneself, and grow one's personality.
But if fate hadn’t made that little twist right in the last second, I probably wouldn't have to tell you this. Everyone would have already known about Papermint. If fate just had refrained from taking that itsy-bitsy twist in the very last moment, nobody could save one-self right now from flashy ads, banners, clips, pop-ups, apps, widgets and ring tones all dictating you to play Papermint. Luckliy fate always does what it wants. And fate doesn't care about market research.
When Papermint was conceived.
But please let me start from the beginning:
First there was Lev. Lev and I had known each other for 12 years. He made feature films before. And he was somehow fascinated by utopian societies, especially by these virtual online environments called MUDs, MOOs and MMOs. At parties, he loved to invent social games out of nothing and somehow he manages to get people to join these improvised games and make them entertain themselves.
And there was Claudia. She was introduced to me by Lev as the "solution" for his new plan. Lev wanted to make a game for non-gamers... and Claudia would put that into code. Lev and I were driving in a rented car through California and Nevada to have a dance in some casino bars or parking decks when he showed me her on some photos. She seemed a bit serious in the pictures. I did not know by then that Claudia should become one of the most important persons in my life... one with an incomparable sense of humour, infinite warmth, and a power that seems indestructible.
I did not know back then that these were the qualities we would need so badly during the nerve-wrecking times during the production of Papermint.
Lev asked me to do graphics for this game project... a virtual world. And I agreed. That’s a friendship thing I thought.
We had no idea how to actually do it, but we founded a company. Our troupe of dreamers found a man, Martin, who was a down-to-Earth fellow – and thus believed in the potential of Papermint. The company was called Avaloop, the team located in an old cinema from 1907 which Lev had renovated himself, and everyone who worked at Avaloop was truly special and was or became a friend. That was the unique spirit of this non-exchangeable team. The spirit of every single one shaped the world of Papermint.
Lev had a plan. Papermint should become something nobody really had tried in this form before. Okay, it seemed to me like a mad plan but when he was talking about the “charismatic visualisation of one's soul”, “a world than can totally be recycled and re-used by its inhabitants”, the “mighty golden bikini” and “players having sex to make kids – namely other players”... this whole thing sounded somehow brilliant to me. It was a pleasure to do my best to materialise his vision into shape and colour.
We could have never foreseen what happened next. We had a totally independent team, 3 in its smallest, 17 in its largest size. A team that has never built a virtual world before, hidden in the middle of the web-2.0-nowhere, which suddenly got noticed on the global radar of the biggest of the big. Suddenly we were invited to present Papermint everywhere... at small game-festivals, big game industry events, LAN parties, academic conferences, fashion shows, exhibition openings, press conferences – and in the huge corporate meeting rooms in skyscrapers somewhere over the ocean.
We had shown the prototype of Papermint for the first time to the public at a one-month exhibition about virtual worlds in the museums quarter in the historic heart of Vienna. Three months later, and after raising some funding from the government, we presented this prototype in May 2007 at the Nordic Game conference, the largest game conference for professionals in Europe.
We weren't really well-prepared. We enjoyed the fun of being on stage, and we performed wearing wigs. Our "lecture" was called "The Future of the Social Networking Game". It was a morning lecture but the room was packed and the bouncers prevented more people from flooding in. Only one man managed to still get in, just five minutes before the show was over. He approached us after the presentation. He was an energetic guy who wore a pink shirt and had a charming French accent. Desperately he tried to get our attention but we were way too excited and too hungry for lunch to give him any. He followed us like a shadow the whole day. Apparently he's not that kind of guy who'd easily give up, and grabbed us at the buffet queue and plied us with his business card... an all black one – featuring the logo of the largest computer company in the world. He just asked: “Do you wanna go console with us?”
I was kind of surprised but sceptical at the same time and answered quite calmly: “No thank you. We are only interested in Nintendo.” At the time the Wii was the main competitor to that hi-def-hi-rez console made in USA. When the pink-shirted man posed the same question to Claudia, our lead programmer, she just replied with a winning smile: “Why not?”
And Lev said yes anyway.
On the last day of the conference, right before the doors were closed, we had a talk with the big M in the Sony meeting room. It was a short meeting and we were extremely exhausted. It was after all the conference that featured games like LocoRoco, Singstar, Guitarhero, Osu! Tatakae Ouendan!, Parappa the Rapper, Lumines, Alien Hominid, Puzzle Pirates, Maple Story and EVE Online. We were tired because of the excessive partying in that infamous beach house in the middle of nowhere together with the creators of these groundbreaking games. And we were thinking about the local beer tasting and a full-moon midnight swim in the Baltic Sea that we had planned for later that day. Distracted, we mumbled some things about global warming, wellness games, and girls.
How it feels to have a multi-million lottery ticket in your hand
Two days later the Non-Disclosure Agreement with the biggest of the big was in our inbox. Again, counting the team back then, we were five boys and girls who didn't really care about the big money or the big publishers. We just wanted someone to log into Papermint and enjoy playing what we have enjoyed creating. But we were overwhelmed by the interest we had raised in big corporations just after three months of going out with nothing more than a prototype that was actually not more than a chat featuring wacky papery avatars.
Although we were a highly ambitious team, we honestly did not really spend much thought on server scaling or business plans, but we put a lot of our heart inside. Back then Papermint already featured a special poetic feel; a charm that could not be found in many other "IT solutions".
Suddenly, we were forced to take three steps at once, and suddenly did not only have to satisfy the requirements of Mr Big but also handle the incoming interest from Real Networks, Orange, Disney, Coca-Cola and MTV.
A team dedicated to building a world we just liked to hang out in with friends now had to grow extremely quickly into a group of people understanding the big economical, social and technological questions of our times. We were suddenly supposed to be the creative experts with that special innate understanding for high-quality online communication and entertainment. We along with our wigs flew over to Redmond, meeting big M's VP's and GM's, our pink-shirted advocate always by our side to manage us like a rock band on tour, talking about the 260 millions of MSN users just waiting for a thing like Papermint.
“Wow! Look! Nintendo of America just across the street!”, we remarked, while not having revealed to him that we also had scheduled a meeting with Real Networks the same day down town Seattle. Because we had some more time that afternoon and an afternoon in Seattle might have felt a bit boring otherwise. Oh, and there were also those talks with Sony, IBM, Intel, THQ, NCsoft, Nexon and UPC back home in Europe.
We were bathing in that strange state of mind of how it feels to play around with the big ones. I have to admit – it was really fun. But what also happened was that we found ourselves losing all the time and energy to develop our thing further. Papermint was put to sleep so that we could prepare all the slide presentations, the calculations, the business dinners, taking our Papermint-cosplay-costumes to the cleaning shop, reading economic news and imagining how to spend the big cash.
It was not about emotions, fun or friendship anymore but about concurrent users, payment solutions, “eternal scaling” and corporate strategies.
It was not about us anymore... not about Papermint. It was about the money.
It all looked so good. Everyone wanted us. The big M literally fought for us. Our hot-blooded, pink-shirted warrior crashed office desks and doors of superiors at the big M who would hesitate to sign Papermint. In the summer of 2007 they sent an eleven-headed team to Austria, which was bigger than our own crew. We were extremely nervous and I have to admit that I had actually never heard the term “due-diligence” before. M's group was a party of outstanding personalities: Art Directors, Leads of Technology, Heads of Business Development, Executive Producers, General Managers. And they were extremely understanding, helpful, enthusiastic and smart.
In the eyes of this delegation from overseas, Papermint was the remedy. Papermint should herald the new era of the big M's game products: family-friendly, innovative, creative and stylish. I remember having an unforgettable summer evening with these people, on the hills with a breathtaking view over Vienna, the city that should soon become known by the world as the birthplace of the real web 2.0 innovation... and the happily jumping, proud heart welcoming the bright future. We felt we were in good hands and they said with that very special sparkle of care in their eyes: “We don't wanna M... you to death".
In the same breath we talked about the ten thousands of concurrent users Papermint would attract.
Everything had to be kept secret, our mouths were shut by big corporations and their contracts that bound our hands, preventing us from doing anything else. It felt like in a special agent thriller, but although Mr Big's carried us on his hands and fed us well during Tokyo Game Show in September 2007 we somehow felt we were being the passive part. Because of that we tried to break out of this situation of dependency.
We played poker with the “high rollers”. We were the small, unspoilt, creative team they all wanted. Maybe they had no idea that something had changed us. It was them that had changed us. We also suddenly caught ourselves thinking not just about money... we were thinking about the millions we were facing in case of the acquisition of Avaloop.
And I smugly filed my official request for young Japanese interns. But wait! Wasn’t there an Avaloop Tokyo office planned anyway – which I would be in charge of soon?
Influential people from NCsoft said "Papermint is the hottest thing around. Soon Nintendo will knock on your door". But they didn't.
In late fall 2007 it became clear that we had lost the poker game. One by one the 'high rollers' had left the game. They still liked us, they liked Papermint - but the big ones were afraid of the risk. Papermint maybe came too early - for them at least. Nobody wanted to be the first. The last partner we still sat at one table with was Mr Big. And they were in an easy position... as we found ourselves suddenly all alone as we had not been allowed to talk to anyone else.
But because of an inconveniently timed internal restructuring the biggest of all software giants became more hesitant. Everything became more tedious, our prospected million shrinking away. The new superiors, coming straight from EA and having managed to turn The Sims Online into a flop in their earlier careers were of the opinion an alternative project like Papermint was too risky for a corporation like the big M.
After months of internal debates our pink-shirted friend called from Redmond to say it's over.
In the meantime though, while we were riding so high, we had hired people and we had taken out loans just waiting for the big moment of signature with the big one.
We staggered in a state of shock but we did not give up. We spent our very last money for the last action we could take: a very expensive booth at Game Connection in Lyon/France in order to meet other possible investors or partners quickly and save our team.
A few days later I also got 3 minutes to present Papermint at an investors' forum in London and struck down by an incredible cold I almost crawled to Guildford to visit Peter Molyneux at Lionhead Studios for a consulting lesson... and he suddenly outed himself as a fan of Papermint and offered us all his help. But wasn't it too late?
I spent the cold December evening eating steak with the Nordic Game conference director and the Director of Development of NCsoft Europe (personally a big supporter of Papermint as well). I was exhausted, sick, desperate and being dependent on someone to pay my steak... when Claudia called from Vienna and told me in an excited and slightly tipsy voice: "Babsi, they said yes!"
What? Why? Now?
I just wanted to celebrate the soul out of me but it seemed all of London had gone to sleep... and I felt so far away from my team and Viennese beer.
I was not allowed to tell my friends this night who that person was whose YES meant so much for me... but I made sure they understood that I was not talking about any fiancé.
However, it happened exactly at the right time! We knew that if no money would come during the next two weeks, we would have to close the doors of our little cinema forever.
So, nine incredibly thrilling months after the pink shirt had asked us for the first time "Do you wanna go console with us?", after hours and hours of discussions, meetings and PowerPoint presentations, a Letter of Agreement was finally signed at an executive conference in Las Vegas in February 2008.
On a bowling lane I was dancing with the pink shirt.
Two weeks later we enjoyed the big M's party at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco – for the first time since we were visiting this conference we were official guests and not just parasites who slipped through the door. We celebrated the pink shirt's birthday by drinking minty Mojitos and were invited to the big M's VIP dinner being seated vis-à-vis Peter Molyneux, having expensive wine and striking conversations.
During this conference my mother died. No flight would have taken me back in time so that I would have been able to be in the Austrian countryside in order to attend her funeral. I knew she would have wanted me to take credit for all our hard work. I had to be away from her so many times because I was somewhere above the clouds in a plane. I felt her wanting me to keep fighting our fight and attend the meetings with the big M, hold my lecture at the largest game conference in the world and spread the word about Papermint. So after a hard struggle with myself and empowered by the unbelievable friendship of Claudia and Lev who were with me I decided to stay in the US and fulfil my duties for Papermint. I sang my Mum's song at karaoke, danced with her in my mind and felt the spirit of success – which was of course also her success as she always encouraged me to do what I wanted. I felt her power in me. I was double as strong.
After this incredibly alienating trip to the US our everyday lives would not return to normal. I went home to my family's place and avoided all communication. The only thing that kept my hopes up was Papermint and the team I was creating it with. Full of enthusiasm I helped my friend who was director at NCsoft with his decision to finally leave the big company to join our little team as VP of Strategy.
Claudia was there for me any time I needed to talk to a real friend on the phone and kept me up to date and full of life.
We all were on a high again... together.
Nothing could stop us.
Because we knew... although this first preliminary agreement with the big M was signed we could not be 100% sure until the actual contract was nailed down. And this contract was still in development. And again, despite another government funding we had raised in the meantime... the money was running out. We had to close the deal as soon as possible not to have to fire our team just because of a lack of money.
And we knew... the people are the most important... we would have rather died than having to send anyone of them away.
Papermint is them.
When I came back from the countryside to that cinema in Vienna I was welcomed with so much warmth and enthusiasm. It was just wonderful. I knew that nothing could ever blow us off our little indie feet... whatever the future will bring. With or without Mister Big.
Suddenly we felt this spirit of freedom again! The spirit we were lacking while being drunk of that strange hope for money or fame or security... whatever it was... it had tamed us. Papermint had not grown the natural way during the “PowerPoint”-times... it was endangered to be squeezed into a shape that was not its true shape... it was a marketing/PR/get more users/blah blah/demographic needs-shape we had not consciously cared for in our original plan.
But somehow we were able to stop that deformation in our minds and went back to the original plan, our plan of independence, even though there still was that Letter of Intent with the largest computer company in the world.
But our mindset was free again. The last year in the crystal castles of the “bigs” helped us to grow, to see this other world, and made us appreciate what we have: freedom to do what WE WANT.
And to do Papermint the Avaloop way.
One night after my arrival from my family's place I met the love of my life. In Vienna. And not in Shibuya as I had always thought.
The strength of my Mum in me, and my love, the strong bonds of friendship amongst the Papermint team and the newly found spirit of freedom and creativity made me immune to the first signs of reluctance when M's team visited us again in Vienna. It should be the last time.
The end of our story. The Beginning of Papermint!
The meeting was very nice, from a personal point of view. Nevertheless the contract expired and there was political restructuring in the superior league at the big M again. But actually... they also did not dare to be the first.
We did not care.
We were all alone again.
We had no money at all.
But we were free again.
And we believed in Papermint.
And we still do!
In the meantime of waiting for the prince to come on his white horse, we stopped to just hope in a state of numbness. We just took action and had developed Papermint further, in exactly the direction we wanted. It may sound strange, but somehow it was Papermint itself that told us how it wanted to be developed.
And now Papermint is here! Exactly the Papermint as we wanted it to be. We managed the incredible. We managed to create this unique and rich world by staying truly independent the whole time.
November 2008. We obviously lack every marketing budget, but at least all that gambling and coin-counting has an end.
Don't let yourself be misled when I tell you that it is with our very last resources we have created this press kit and open the Beta. This is a fact. Nevertheless we have a reason to smile.
Papermint is never going to stop! We are ready to launch like a rocket for its journey to the stars.
Yes, we are truly faithful again!
Recently I walked through the vast lands of Papermint, the world we have created and I nearly burst into tears facing these wonderful, lonely strange lands... just waiting to be populated.
We have proceeded to develop the world of Papermint further the way we wanted. And now it is in the state of being able to accommodate its inhabitants.
There is no strategy and no poker playing any more. We just open the gates and welcome everyone with all our warmth.
Hey, be part when Papermint, this truly independent world, is taking off!
Avaloop sincerely invites you to join the new wave of virtual "indieness"!
In the meantime...well...
Claudia and Lev will chiefly handle the users that will find Papermint loveable.
I won't move to Tokyo for now but to London, together with my love, who owns an indie record label.
Maybe there is a chance to meet you and tell you our story face to face. We don't have millions, but what we do have is a story, our story, and Papermint. The end of our story means the beginning of Papermint. I invite you to try it out!
It's a really special thing :)
Babsi
...and if you fancy hearing the story from Lev's and Claudia's perspective I'd suggest you just ask them yourself:
Lev Ledit, lead game designer and the inventor of Papermint.
Claudia Kogler, lead programmer and the heart of Papermint.
Creating the world of Papermint would not have been possible without these outstanding people
Lev, Claudia, Martin P, Martin S, Markus, Ho, Matthias, Tom, Wolfram, Philipp, Miriam, Brad, Geoff, Matto, Marc, Michi, Sepp, Monika, Ulrike, Marek, Maurice, Julia, Lydia, Doris, Elvyra, Birgit, Eva, Paul, Mirko, Stemes, Markus W., Papyrus, Caludai, Levienne, Seppl, Matt, Honami, Puku, Wutzel, Spoony, Sally, Origami, Babsirella, Zelda, Babette, Tomtom, Dirk, Rhysell, Ejned, Mr Rez, M-san, Sébastien, Thomas, Peter M, Masaya, Teresa, Christian, Franz, Christine.
Thank you very much, and hope to see you in Papermint again!
