Microsoft's Gears of State of war is amongst the most over-the-top goriest video game franchises in history. Every bit a soldier fighting endless hordes of monsters, your primary weapon is literally an set on rifle wrapped in a serrated chainsaw. At close range, you slice through skin, sinew, and bone as blood fountains out from the clavicle of subterranean ogres.

[Paradigm: courtesy Microsoft]

Gears of War has been an anchor of Microsoft'south Xbox lineup since 2006, merely it is also a mature-rated game living in an increasingly PG-13 world. Rod Fergusson, head of the Microsoft-owned game studio Coalition, who develops the Gears of State of war brand, had been thinking nigh how Gears could grow and appeal to a more casual audition on platforms like mobile phones. How could it somehow experience more accessible, and less gory, just still like Gears?

That'south when he looked down to his desk at two Gears of War Funko Pop! figurines, the omnipresent bobble caput collectibles that plow anything from Breaking Bad's Walter White to Halloween's Michael Myers into the joyful, visual equivalent of PBS cartoons. Over the by 21 years—simply especially in the by decade—Funko has built a business that does $686 million a year in acquirement by selling Pop! units at prices starting around $5. Funko can take any dear amusement IP and turn information technology into a beautiful and cuddly, family-friendly character. Staring at the Funko toys, Fergusson realized the respond was correct in front end of him. Microsoft should make a Gears of State of war game out of digital Funko. (That game, Gears Popular!, will come out Baronial 22nd to iOS, Android, and Windows 10.)

There was but 1 twist: Typically, Funko pays partners similar Microsoft to produce figurines for their corporate IP, like Halo's Master Chief. This time, for the commencement time, Microsoft is paying Funko to license the Popular! make. It marks an important shift for Funko, in which the geeky toy company may operate more than like Lego, the Danish toy company that fabricated over $five billion in revenue last year. Lego, after all, sells Lego Star Wars sets (licensed from Disney) but also movies and games led by Lego'due south ain bricks and minifigs. Funko is growing from licensee to a brand with amusement value that'southward all its own.

Collectibles are a $200 billion market on their own, and video games are on pace to be a $300 billion manufacture by 2025. And Funko sits right in the middle of it all.

[Image: courtesy Microsoft]

The rise of Pop!

The Pop! brand itself is only x years old, merely it's get a cornerstone of geek ephemera as Comic-Con has get a major strength in mainstream culture. For Funko, it's all about specificity. The visitor actively licenses one,100 singled-out brands and characters today. "You lot might never have watched a show on Netflix, but if y'all're a Liverpool soccer fan, we've [still] got something for you," says Funko's CEO Brian Mariotti.

Mariotti explains that Funko's aesthetic is inspired largely past collector culture in Nippon, which has an endless appetite for figurines of all sorts—many of which are simply ambrosial in a look dubbed kawaii. The artful of a Funko Pop! is innocent by nature, with wide-spaced eyes that are hallmarks for innocent characters from E.T. to Hello Kitty. The first Funko was the rosy-cheeked American iconBig Boy.

"Aesthetically, we came upward with something that feels very stylized, whimsical, Asian influenced," says Mariotti. "Just I remember the event of it was that people that had never idea about buying a [highly realistic] Daenerys Game of Thrones action effigy, with xiv points of articulation, will buy a Pop!."

[Photo: Funko Pop!]

A cardinal moment for Mariotti understanding his own make was when he was speaking to a high-ranking executive from Warner Bros. about a give-and-take that had occurred at a recent studio meeting. "Somebody said, 'My god, what Funko is doing is hilarious—they found a mode to make Freddy Kruger cute and ambrosial.'"

Funko does this successfully, once more and again, by very carefully assigning the right projects to the correct designers. The company has about 800 employees worldwide, 150 of whom are artists creating new Popular! figures and other products. And when deciding who works on some obscure anime show, Funko asks who wants to work on that obscure anime show. Who likes it? "Nosotros always say 'designed by fans for fans,'" explains Mariotti.

It's a catchy marketing line, just it as well makes practical sense. For a collector to detect a small-scale detail in a Funko Pop! is like a tacit flash, an acknowledgement of a shared experience with a show or motion-picture show. And that momentary validation is an enticing sensation to spend money on to keep forever.

Putting Pop! into a game

Funko is very good at what it does; its revenue and fanbase is proof of that. But when Microsoft reached out well-nigh a video game collaboration, there were all sorts of new questions on Funko and Microsoft's part because Funko wasn't just an artful anymore; it had to exist interactive for the first time. And interactive is catchy. It forces designers to make up one's mind, how does a Funko walk? How does a Funko fight? Can a Funko bleed? (No, by the way, they can't).

The physical vinyl figure (left) and the digital version (right). [Images: Funko Pop!, Microsoft]

Funko's own animation department had already discovered applied issues in two-infinitesimal promotional shorts the company had produced in the past, too. If you just import a Funko Pop! model into an animation program, its head is so big that it can't reach to agree easily with another Funko Pop! And of course, there was the elephant in the room that Microsoft and Funko had to effigy out: "How do you make a mainstream belongings that [involves] chainsawing monsters in half," says Fergusson. "Because if you accept the chainsawing monsters in half out of the game, you lose what made it popular in the first place."

Working together, Funko taught Microsoft how to deconstruct some of its magic into what game developers dubbed "adorable badassery." Then Microsoft took the lead on interaction, game mechanics, and filling out new figures for the game. "It was interesting to come across. Initially, there was lots of feedback," says Fergusson. "Nosotros got better and better at being able to sympathise the Funko style and process. Information technology became more approvals as opposed to critiques."

[Paradigm: courtesy Microsoft]

The team at Coalition worked out body and head ratios and realized it had to reposition the camera because heads were actually blocking the proper view of the game. It worked out how Pops could be chainsawed, too. "Instead of cutting through the Funko, it vibrates it and the head pops off," says lead designer Tyler Bielman. "Information technology's a way to practice what we do without making it destructive to a Funko." When the head pops off, it'southward not as if the toy has died. Instead, the head flies out to become a pin that might exist redeployed onto the level later, similar a piece on a gameboard.

Through the process of turning its brand into a Funko pattern, the Gears squad learned that the franchise didn't need to be grounded in gore. Funko's soft-hearted aesthetic, already beloved by fans, gave Microsoft the confidence to sweeten one of the most gruesome games on the market to reach more than people. Fergusson readily credits Funko with helping his studio mature their thinking about the Gears global make. It doesn't demand to be encarmine; it can be simply be over-the-summit. What Funko learned from the Gears team was just how far a Pop! could be pushed and still exist a Pop!. This Gears partnership is certain to inspire future projects from Funko that don't demand to rely upon the IP of other companies to exist successful.

[Epitome: courtesy Microsoft]

"We have an blitheness studio, merely what [Microsoft has] done is next level," says Mariotti. "More than anything else, this is going to be the showtime exercise in storytelling but through a mobile platform. That will connect people into . . . god, you could exercise a movie with Pops!." And I'thousand betting that someone volition.