Adrian (3:45)

So in honor of all of that, we've essentially rewritten how Fantasy is going to work for the year. It's quite an overhaul, isn't it? You'd have to say there's some of it's recognizable, but, like, the bare bones of it, the actual skeleton is not.

Colin (4:04)

Yeah. The only thing you're going to recognize is the color purple. That's pretty much it.

Adrian (4:09)

Now, we could sit here and try and explain the fundamentals of it and we'd completely butcher it, like we so often do here on this podcast. But in this instance, we thought the amount of time and effort and passion that's gone into it. Shall we just get it right for once and let the man that codes it from scratch tell us how it's. How it's going to go? So here he is. His name is Christian Rolly. We bloody love him.

Colin (4:34)

All right, Rolly, we're here to talk Fantasy. What's new, what's changing, and why are we making these changes, buddy?

Christian Rolly (4:40)

Well, we kind of figured we got to, like, we were just playing Fantasy. Everyone was picking. Lorenzo was picking Harlem was picking Leonardo, and we had loads of teams that just looked the same, and it didn't really excite us personally, I think, that much. So we figured, like, we. We gotta change something. We. We gotta make something up, do something that is maybe more complex, more strategic, more engaging, and hopefully more rewarding. I mean, that's the. That's the big part. So we kind of came up with this completely different system of now not just picking writers and feeling like who is the best, but actually having to play the game a little bit like you used to as a little school kid, collecting those Panini collectors cards and trading them around and doing all that stuff.

Colin (5:34)

Yeah, a little bit like Pokemon or something like that. Right. Where you collect cards. Is that. Is that the sort of format you're looking to go to?

Christian Rolly (5:40)

Yeah, like we're going to change it. Not that everyone can have all the writers at their expense and then just pick the best or who they feel are the best. We're going to go to a different format where actually you, like, get those draft picks and you open them up, you kind of have this little bit of excitement of who's going to be in my draft pick, who do I have? And then, yeah, maybe. Maybe you're stuck with someone that you feel like they're just gonna exit in round two. I don't want this card. So you. You go and find someone else to sell the card off to, get another card, maybe get another draft deck to do that sort of stuff. And I think that's going to be just another format that may bring way more fun to the game.

Colin (6:22)

By the way, I like playing fantasy before, but you're right, it almost came to look, I know I'm going to take Lorenzo. He scores the. But you know, when you're playing in your little home leagues, you're like, man, I have to pick someone different because I need to get that jump ahead. But it sort of became a bit of luck rather than a bit of strategy, I found. Right. And there was more people just having the same teams and, you know, we had multiple occurrences where we had draws and that. That just caused us a problem logistically as well, you know?

Christian Rolly (6:49)

Yeah, for sure. Plus, I think also another factor is we've been thinking about this, like, how can we implement something that like our supporters, our subscribers from Portrait can like, get. Get more out of it as well. Because currently it was just like for everyone playing field, everyone picking, and that was it. But we. We wanted to have this little bit of bonus for subscribers as well. So, yeah, we we just introduced our own little virtual currency. Whoever's a subscriber already, they, they get a little bit more of a, of, of a higher starting account and, and you can use that virtual currency to, to buy more draft picks and by that increasing your chances of like getting those high value cards of a Lorenzo or like a, let's say, trilogy Andrea, that has just beaten everyone in 23. So that, that's also something that we'll certainly look into. I think throughout the year, depending on like what the rankings are and how the scoring works out, we'll introduce special cards. Like maybe there's this special trilogy Lorenzo the special trilogy Andrea, that just gets us a little bit of a bonus multiplier and everything is still going to be based on the real heat scoring. We do mingle with the numbers a little bit because I think another one that we kind of noticed was whoever you picked on the women's side for your overall score didn't make too much of a difference. It was, it would have been maybe just this little one between like second or third place, but it wasn't the big difference maker because obviously the guys with the bigger fleets, they have more heats so they score more points. So the difference is way bigger between the guys than it is between the girls. So what we decided to do is let's just normalize that and basically divide the score by the amount of heats that the genders actually have. And with that, now it becomes way more important to also pick the right goal and not only the right guy in TierB or whatever.

Colin (9:11)

So let's start at the top. I mean, we're using the same app that we've always had. But how do you play and how does it work?

Christian Rolly (9:17)

This is still the first prototype. They're the first one seeing this. So yeah, let's quickly go through the onboarding. The rules kind of are laid out. You get those draft picks, you open them, that makes up your collection which will be like all the cards from all the draft picks. And out of that collection you are picking your team. For every event. It's always going to be four riders and one brand or team card. Like we will make teams like SpaceX, we may make teams like the Trap, obviously with certain rarity. So not everyone is getting the Trap, but it's like that one special card out of a thousand and you're still deciding that that X factor that gives you double points. One caveat. If, for example, a competition, let's say Colter Y doesn't have a women's fleet, we're still going to stick with four riders. The only difference is going to be usually we're going to have one tier A rider, two tier B riders and a woman. So we're kind of changing the tiers a little bit as well. Tier A being the absolute top favorites for winning or making the podium. Basically those guys that make it to the final every time to be being the rest of the guys and then the women being just in this one big tier. And yeah, it's always going to be them, but if the women don't compete, then we're just going to go with one tier A and three tier B writers. So always four riders, one like collective card. We're also going to dish out that virtual currency, the breeze, as a reward for like actually getting positions. So you'll get breeze for making top 10, you'll get breeze for making top 3 or even winning. And you will be able to use that for draft picks. You will be able to also use it to get a portrait subscription. So if you're tight on money, but you're really good at playing fantasy, you can basically finance your own portrait subscription through this.

Colin (11:22)

How much of these packs to buy? I mean, how does that work out? Because I guess most people are going to say, what's with the money?

Christian Rolly (11:27)

Yeah, so people can spend money like getting these virtual coins to get more draft picks. I mean, realistically speaking, we've. If you look at fantasy in the past and the kind of prices we've dished out, which were like three thousand dollar kites or great trips to Makani, like those are valuable money prizes and we kind of run this on nothing and like to at least cover the costs. If people want to support us, buy some breeze. If you are a subscriber and support us that way, you are already supporting us. So you're getting more breeze anyways. And giving you a little bit of that head start doesn't mean that the game itself will become this free to play, pay to win kind of system. Because at the end of the day it's still always going to be based on the writers and their performance at the event. So of course you can spend all the money you have on more draft picks. More draft picks and getting maybe Andrea because you believe he will be the winner. If like at coda he gets upset by Zach with his own trick, then that money was not well invested. So yeah, this is, this is not really a money making machine. It's still going to be a fair game for everyone to play. And I think for us this whole virtual currency system is more about like making it more rewarding having something to like pile up and throughout the season gaining more and more and also being strategic on whether you want to, want to save it to get that portrait subscription and redeem that or maybe you want to spend it to increase your chances and win that I don't know kite at the end of the year that we're giving out.

Colin (13:20)

So let's just break a few things down there. You can see here we've got buy Breeze 100, 350. How much does a 100 Breeze cost?

Christian Rolly (13:29)

So 100 Breeze is 99 cents. 3529-990069-92000 is 1499. And then to get the draft packs it will be 200 breeze for a single pack, 450 for triple pack. So at that stage you're already getting 25 off or 40% on the five pack. So realistically speaking, everyone will get 100 breeze from the get go. If you are a subscriber, you will get 200 breeze from the get go for every event. Just so basically your advantage as a subscriber is where every free user gets one draft pick for event you get two. So that doubles your chances of getting better cards. Realistically speaking, you can spend three quid and buy a five pack. So you get five draft picks for

Colin (14:30)

$2.99 and each of those packs, how many cards are there?

Christian Rolly (14:34)

Every pack has five cards and they are always distributed. So you have a full team. Like every pack will have someone from tier A, will have someone from tier B, a woman and a collective. So either a brand or a team. So with one pack you will be able to to build a team. So this is not about having to spend money to even like getting your team, but this is more about being strategic and improving your team. One important note is once you have those cards and you lock them up for a team, that doesn't mean that card is gone. You can reuse that card throughout the entire year for every other event as well. The only caveat there is every time you reuse the card, it will lose 10% of its, let's say power. So if Lorenzo scores 100 points on an event, if you reuse Lorenzo for the second event, that 100 points is going to go down to 90 points. So that kind of makes sure that the people that get lucky getting those high value cards in the beginning, they're not just going to stick to those cards and play the rest of the year just with Those cards. But they actually do have to be strategic in getting new cards, maybe putting some on the marketplace, selling them off, buying others for cheap. And also this kind of stimulates the market in the sense that someone who does have a Lorenzo at 80% can put that on the marketplace and someone else can buy it for cheap. But maybe he feels that 80% Lorenzo is still more worth than my 100. Whatever other writer I have in Tra.

Colin (16:23)

Let's talk about the trading and marketplace because that sounds like a cool new addition to this and I think that sounds like a lot of fun.

Christian Rolly (16:30)

Before we go there, let's just get a draft pick, let's open it, and let's actually have a look at what cards we then have and then decide from there, like, if we want to list one of those cards on the. On the trading block or not.

Colin (16:45)

All right, let's do it.

Christian Rolly (16:46)

Claiming my one free pack for this event. Time to open my Lots of Tramp pack. Let's see what I got.

Colin (16:52)

Oh, we got a brand fest.

Christian Rolly (16:53)

Okay, so slingshot for brand Elliot Bhutar and Tier B mate.

Colin (16:58)

Elliot's going to be very happy with that photo of himself. Elliot looks better there than he does in real life.

Christian Rolly (17:07)

Okay, Timo and Tim B. Yeah, that's not. That's not bad actually. Keep going. Oh, sorry, Sadiq. Oh. Third place last year at Lots of Tram. That's. That's a pretty good pick as well. So who do we have in tier 8? It's gonna be a deal breaker, Jamie.

Colin (17:23)

Okay.

Christian Rolly (17:23)

I'm already happy with my team.

Colin (17:26)

That's a great team. That's a great team. So I guess people will look to trade fairly quickly, right, to upskill their team up. Will people trade straight away or will they go and try and buy more packs? What. What do you think?

Christian Rolly (17:39)

I think it really depends on, like, what kind of team you're getting. I mean, obviously I. I would like to maybe look into getting another pack, maybe two, just to like, I'm. I'm pretty happy with brand and Tier A. Like, that works. That works out well. Tb, maybe get another one that I can upgrade that and yeah, add that to my collection. But at that stage, if I'm already happy with. With that kind of team and those cards, maybe I'll just wait for others that, like, especially the subscribers that do have two draft picks and are probably gonna draft 10 cards and they will have someone in tier B that they may want to get rid of. So they can sell those somewhere between 20, 50 and 200 breeze. So maybe I'll just get 100 breeze for quit and then see if someone is on the marketplace at a fairly cheap price that still upgrades my Tier B. So this is, this is why I have to spend my time now looking what's going on in the marketplace.

Colin (18:50)

So can people set the card at any value they want?

Christian Rolly (18:56)

Not any value. We've summarized all the rules in the, in the how to play. Price range will have to be between 20 and 500 breeze. This is for two reasons. One is, we've seen in the past people get very creative and whenever you play a game, people do kind of try to gain the system as well. So we did have players that all of a sudden had 10 user accounts playing with 10 different teams, increasing their chances. I mean, fair enough, you can do it. That's fine. Just gives you a bit of a headache with customer support if all of a sudden something else doesn't work.

Colin (19:35)

We always catch them. We always catch them.

Christian Rolly (19:38)

But yeah, like what? We, we certainly don't want people exploiting that in the sense of, okay, I'm gonna register 10 accounts, I'm gonna draft these cards and I'm gonna sell good cards for cheap and really shit cars, cards for expensive thing, and then kind of bump my breeze that way. So we kind of have to limit the marketplace there and having them at like 20 to 500 degrees, that also gives users, I think, a pretty good impression of what the marketplace is supposed to be like. This, this is nothing that we want people trading cards for hundreds and thousands of Euros. This, this is meant to be a fun game that everyone can play in

Colin (20:24)

regards to the prizes. Last time we were doing prizes at the end of each event. We're not going to do that this time. We're just going to have prizes at the end of the year and I think we're going down those lines because it's probably going to take people, let's be honest, maybe a couple events to, to build up the cards they like. And I think it's kind of unfair to put people, you know, to be giving these prizes out when it's a lot more luck. Right. So we are going to be doing great prizes, but that will be at the end of the year. So it will be a running table as per usual, but it will actually take the pressure off people purchasing cards maybe not getting that what they want. Going to market, looking, taking some time for the next event and, and building up. I, I really like that the cards get weaker. I think that's really cool because that's going to that's going to bring in more strategy and I think that's what we are missing last time, more strategy. Because I think last time it was just head versus heart. This is head versus heart. But this is like having to actually do some analysis and just like any fantasy game, you know, someone's injured, you can take them out. You know, let's say Timo Touchwood gets injured before the event. You know, you can replace him with another rider and that, that's also cool.

Christian Rolly (21:31)

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's, that's, that's the whole idea of this. Right. Like we said, we, we want to make it more engaging, want to gamify it more, but also make it more rewarding. And yeah, we're only dishing out a big prize at the end of the season now. A couple of big prizes. But yeah, like I said, throughout the year, everyone scoring with their team in the top 10, they're going to earn Breathe, which will give them a head start for the next event or it will like bump up their wallet to redeem that portrait subscription if they don't have it already. Everyone scoring in top three is going to get even more. So, yeah, it's, there's still this rewarding factor at the end of an event, but yeah, now we want this to actually be played all year long and we don't want these, yeah, kind of more luck factor. Things where someone swoops in for a single event and he takes the first prize even though he's played like one event and someone else has already played 20. So, yeah, that's that, that's the, that's the big objective.

Colin (22:42)

This rewards consistency. Right. So get in and play, get your team in. You know, you can't really miss events. So I think before, I think guys missed events, they came in, played other events. If you were out of that sort of top 10 in the global rankings, you sort of maybe didn't really want to compete in every event. But I think this one's going to reward more people, are consistent and put a bit more time into the game as well. By the way, I love what you've done with the, with the, with the baseball cards mixing up and actually using like characters versus photos. That's just because it's hard to get all the photos. I know.

Christian Rolly (23:12)

Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a practicality factor to it also. We are, we are living in an age where AI can do magic things and actually puts out pretty cool stuff.

Colin (23:24)

When is this going to officially open? Do we have an Official opening date when people can start a buying their breeze, start trading, start looking at the teams they've got. Do we? Do we? I know because we're planning to run for March 28th, which is the Lords of Tram.

Christian Rolly (23:39)

Yeah. 1, 100. Like this is. I, I said this is the first prototype, but by the end of this week this is going to be at least submitted to the stores. Then it's, it's always a little bit of a lottery with, with Apple and Google whether they accept your update or have some, something to complain about to reject it. But yeah, we'll definitely have this, have this up and running a couple of days before the wind window for Lottotrem opens. And yeah, this, this, hope they don't call it on the first day again. This, this will also give people enough time to get the feel of it and fiddle around a little.

Colin (24:22)

Are people going to be able to cash out their breeze at any time? How does that work?

Christian Rolly (24:27)

No, that's, that's never going to happen for two reasons. First of all, we don't want to get in the banking and financing business and all that regulation that comes with it as well as like if, if you go down that path, you are really close to gambling, which is like even another, another factor, especially if you look at the majority of the user base playing in the European Union. So EU laws apply. We're not going to do that. The closest to cashing out is just us rewarding users with being able to redeem the breeze for a portrait subscription.

Colin (25:11)

Well, look, Rolly, it looks super exciting. I think you and I are going to do some fantasy file podcasts. I don't actually know how that's going to work yet. Picking, because I guess we're only going to be picking from our own selections. But I think it might be quite fun for us to look at the transfer markets and what's going on in the trading thing and looking what people are offering. And I think there could be some fun, exciting times with this and I'm looking forward to this change. It's really cool. I mean the, the app looks great. I mean this is basically on the same as the, if you have the original app, it will just populate with the new, with the new data. Well, this is going to be a new app to download.

Christian Rolly (25:45)

No, no, no, same app. This is just, just an update. If you're connected to your wi fi and your phone's connected to, to power, it's probably going to upload it by itself. It's still the same portrait user Account, sign in things. So nothing changes. Same username, same password, everything stays. It's just. Except for the game itself. That's completely new.

Colin (26:12)

Awesome. Well, I think you and I should probably jump on just before the green light and talk about our cards and our picks and this will go out on the Portrait Fantasy files. I'm looking forward to this, man. I mean, dude, you've done an amazing job. I love the cards, I love the new concept, and I think this is going to bring a little bit more excitement and gamification is a great way to say it, right. And just get everyone a bit more excited to play Fantasy again. Because I did. I did feel like it got a bit stale at the end and like you're saying, people sort of had worked it out almost, you know, worked out the secret to getting big scores. So, yeah, this is going to bring, yeah, a whole lot more excitement.

Christian Rolly (26:47)

Yeah, for sure.

Colin (26:48)

Thanks, mate.

Christian Rolly (26:49)

Thanks for having me, guys.

Colin (26:50)

I'll put that full part of the podcast up on Portrait. I think we might make that one free. And I'll put it out so you guys can go and actually look at the graphics and see what Rolly's talking about. Because at times, homes there, he's talking about stuff that you can't see. But yeah, super interesting. Really looking forward to that. I love the fact that it's going to bring a little bit more strategy. I kind of feel last time, Colin, that we got stuck with, you know, head versus Heart and, you know, Raleigh said it best there. If you pick Lorenzo, you picked Harlem. You just picked up too many points. So this is going to make it a lot more difficult, a lot more fun. I'm really excited to see the marketplace. I think that's going to be a really, really cool, really cool thing. There should be some good stories in there. Colin. Road to Pro is out next week. Do we have a official name for this or is this just going to be Road to Pro Season 3?

Adrian (27:36)

It was going to be called Banned from Japan for. For a bit there. But this is actually season two of Road to Pro, isn't it? Road to Pro launched last year with them all. Them all being Jason Vanderspay, Jetta Kuano and Stezy Pete in Cape Town making complete tours of themselves. And then we took the same three and the same premise. Took them to Japan to bastardize the Japanese culture, instead of which they're very, very effective at, particularly with Jettos. You know, he had the keys to unlock it and so, yeah, we got ourselves over to Ishigaki and Made that happen. What can you expect? Do you want to start? Give him a little something?

Colin (28:16)

Oh, I think you're gonna see a very different kite movie than you've ever seen before. It's going to be more fun than kiting, let's put it that way. Would that be fair to say?

Adrian (28:28)

It's going to be more stupid?

Colin (28:30)

More stupid, yeah. It's going to be more stupid than kiting, but a lot of fun. It's. The bottom line is fun.

Adrian (28:36)

Yeah, we. We. We needn't really have gone to Japan to do this. This is what we all realized once we got there, because we filmed half of it in our apartment with a green screen, and we were like, oh, we could have done this at home.

Colin (28:53)

It would be cheaper to fly Jetto.

Adrian (28:54)

And it was. Yeah, it was seriously stupid throughout the whole thing, but that was our goal. We did want to produce the most stupid kite video ever made, and as the leaders in that category, we felt pretty well equipped to do so. And, you know, without having released it and felt the reception, I well and truly think we've achieved that and we

Colin (29:15)

have the right cast as well. I mean, Jason Van Der Spee is unbelievable and is probably the only pro that would do something like this. I think that's fair to say. I don't think you get any other guy to let his guard down as much as Jason's prepared to do, which is actually pretty funny.

Adrian (29:32)

It's heroic.

Colin (29:33)

It's heroic. That's a great word for it. Heroic is a great word also to,

Adrian (29:37)

like, keep up with Pete's wit is difficult, but Jason can do it. And then it's just, like, be able to just survive that shitstorm of Pete and Jetto being in the vicinity of each other. And, like, you've already heard on this podcast, but, like, them going. Trying to go foiling in one inch of water and stuff, that's not for a joke. They are actually trying to do that. We don't set that up.

Colin (30:04)

That's actually it. I mean, we are literally flies on the wall to these guys. You know, we're just standing back laughing and, you know, trying to keep our emotions to ourselves because we don't want to disturb these guys as they go to work and create stuff. And that's actually interesting to see that with. With very little direction. They can just. They can do it. That's actually kind of cool.

Adrian (30:25)

Very talented individuals, aren't they? In a funny sort of way.

Colin (30:30)

I think Jason and Pete get it straight away, and Jetto just follows.

Adrian (30:34)

Jesso doesn't have any idea what's going on any of the time.

Colin (30:37)

Jitter just does what he's told. And that's actually, that's actually the good part. Jason Vanderspay has a kind of behind the scenes video coming out. Do we, do we know when he's going to release that? Because we should promote that as well because I think that's going to give everyone a great insight to this project. Do you know when he's releasing that?

Adrian (30:55)

It'll be just after we release. That will be probably Monday or Tuesday, I guess next week.

Colin (31:01)

Wow, cool. So this is coming out next Friday.

Adrian (31:04)

So this is coming out next Friday. Let me work out the date. Gonna be the 27th and then Jason's will come out on the 31st, the last day of March. Yeah. And it's gonna be one of a three or four part series, depending on how long we think we can drag this puppy out for. She's a biggie.

Colin (31:21)

By the way, I want to shout out to you guys, the editors, mate. Very, very impressive turnaround here, Colin. I mean, just wrapped. We wrapped up two weeks ago and we already got the first one coming out. I'm liking this.

Adrian (31:33)

It's very impressive, isn't it?

Colin (31:35)

It's the new look. We. We record and we start editing on the way home.

Adrian (31:38)

We literally did edit on the way home, actually.

Colin (31:41)

We were editing actually stuff when we're there. It was pretty funny. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. It was a great trip, lots of fun. And yeah, if you haven't seen any of the Road to Pros, definitely go to Portrait and check out that because it is very, very different. Well, this one is going to be very different than episode one. Extremely different, but a lot of fun. And if you're sick of the old boring kite videos, but it's just the same old hours and hours of tricks. This is not it. This is personality. This is inside world of. Here's inside too. Jason Vander Spay, the professional kite border, who is. Could be a television presenter. He's that good in front of camera.

Adrian (32:18)

All right, very good. Is that enough for this one?

Colin (32:21)

I think so, yeah.

Adrian (32:22)

So we, when we tune in next week, it might even be like the, the, the pre show to Lord Tram. I said depending on what's happening. But otherwise we'll bring you some excerpts from the Road to Pro and maybe we'll try and bring Pete on as well. That'd be quite good, wouldn't it?

Colin (32:36)

Let's get Pete on for sure. When Pete's on. I'M happy.

Adrian (32:38)

Very good. All right. Thanks to us, as always. And we'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.