NFT REVIEW MARKET
On Oct. 10, Yuga Labs and 10KTF announced that 10KTF, the lore-rich project founded in 2021 by WENEW Labs and acquired by Yuga in November 2022, has now been acquired by Possible Productions, an Emmy-award-winning production team that has contributed to Otherside and 10KTF releases.
The 10KTF team, led by new CEO Lisa Kang, will move from Yuga to Possible, operating as Kagami. Supported by Possible’s art and development team, Kagami will also be advised by Yuga Labs’ Chief Product Officer (and original WENEW co-founder) Michael Figge.
Possible, an experienced studio that has curated high-impact global events such as Coachella and the Super Bowl Halftime Show, will support Kagami as it takes over management of all 10KTF collections, IP, and integrations with Yuga’s Otherside platform.
Continuing Partnership with Yuga
According to a statement Yuga shared with nft now, 10KTF will remain a “key partner,” especially in the ongoing development of Otherside. “Wagmi-san’s shop is currently being built for another island and is being planned for other locations as well. The Grailed PFP will continue to have access to events,” they wrote.
The items crafted by holders will become digital wearables; during the most recent Project Dragon release, the 10KTF Flamethrower NFT, which was born in the gamified 10KTF companion app Battle.town, debuted as the first interoperable item in Otherside.
10KTF’s upcoming Season 3 will stay on track despite the acquisition: the upcoming Streets of New Tokyo racing game on ApeChain will include the IP from multiple beloved NFT projects. On Friday, Oct. 18, Kagami and Yuga will host a preview event at ApeFest in Lisbon, where press can get a first taste of the game.
This partnership allows us to collaborate with Possible on Otherside and bring 10KTF onto ApeChain while also enabling the team to explore new products and opportunities for their community.
Yuga Labs
A Trip to Wagmi-San’s Shop
Immediately after the announcement, Yuga and Kagami opened a surprise trip to the Otherside, where players could steer a Grailed PFP avatar—appearing for the first time in the platform—through a series of challenges, arriving at a gathering point where a Q and A session with the community opened up.
Kang was moved by the experience. “It’s been really emotional to be able to see New Tokyo come to life like this, and to see everybody in the same place at the same time. This is just the beginning of what is possible with the ODK, and we will continue to build this out to be able to build a much richer place there together with our community,” she told us.
The experience will remain open for users throughout the weekend, and the Q and A, commencing at 4:20 PM PST on Oct. 10, is taking place on X Spaces.
A Series Of Changes
The acquisition comes after a series of eventful changes at Yuga, including the departure of former CEO Daniel Alegre, cofounder Greg Solano re-taking the reins, PROOF joining Yuga, and the acquisition of HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara by gaming studio Faraway.
Analysts and observers will be curious about the financials of the latest deal, and its broader strategic import for Yuga as one of the largest and most influential companies in the space. “We’ve always seen 10KTF as an integral part of Otherside. This partnership allows us to collaborate with Possible on Otherside and bring 10KTF onto ApeChain while also enabling the team to explore new products and opportunities for their community,” a Yuga spokesperson told nft now.
While Yuga declined to disclose the terms of the acquisition, they were at pains to emphasize that the change in ownership poses no disruptions. “The core 10KTF team remains intact and will be reunited with some of their former colleagues at Possible. We’re extremely excited about collaborating with the broader team on the future of ApeChain and Otherside,” their spokesperson told us.
New 10KTF Head Lisa Kang
Lisa Kang, who will head 10KTF as it moves to Possible, has been with the brand from the beginning, participating in WENEW Labs’ development since 2020.
Trained as a classical cellist, dedicated gamer Kang built her events and production skills as a product lead for international esports events at Riot Games.
Kang got involved in Web3 back in 2017 and is well known as a passionate participant and builder within the space. At Yuga, she led the team on activations including Battle.town S2, the Grailed PFP collection, and the Kodapendant collaboration with Gucci.
Alongside her professional roles in the Yuga and 10KTF communities, Kang is an active and well-loved holder in the Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult community.
nft now spoke to Kang in a video interview.
nft now: You were a founding member of 10KTF, coming into Yuga with the brand. After nearly two years at Yuga, what lessons will you be taking with you into this new chapter as Kagami CEO?
Lisa Kang: I think two things are top of mind for me. Focus is just extremely important, whether it was watching my teammates at Yuga figure out their focus, or figuring out where our own team’s resources go when times are challenging for the market.
I think the most important thing is for us to commit to the most impactful ideas for the audience, over pursuing many different allegedly cool ideas.
I think in any industry, you have to listen and adapt—but I think in Web3 you have to listen, adapt and communicate.
We’ve always LARPed as characters in our story and repeatedly refused public experiences just to keep the magic alive in the experiences we do build.
But, when times got tough and we broke the fourth wall, being authentic and setting better expectations was well-received by the community, and that gave us the time and grace we needed.
In order to keep things fun, we’ll never give it all away—but it was really rewarding to feel like a community, letting them know, “Here are some challenges, and this is how things are going to go for a while,” and [the community] being really responsive to that.
Kagami comes into being as a multimedia company with many projects in development, including the racing game Streets of New Tokyo and the Otherside presence. How is the change in ownership going to affect ongoing projects?
Luckily, this acquisition has been being considered for a long time, so we knew that there would be some point when we need to move over.
Though one of the primary reasons we’re moving over is to have independence and to have more freedom to be able to create whatever we want to create, we know some of the things that we have in progress are already things that we’ve prioritized, and so everything that’s in the works will continue to be worked on. We’ll still be at ApeFest, and we will give the first taste of Streets of New Tokyo to our community and the involved teams there. Everything else that you’ve seen throughout the experience and the announcement today will be worked on at variable timelines, so none of that is going away. If anything, we will probably be focusing on one thing at a time and one thing at a time while focusing on building a product.
We think that it’s important to build a product to keep pushing Web3 forward, and—quite frankly—also to have a business that is not just selling NFTs to our community.
Kagami CEO Lisa Kang
Ah, are you referring to a new product in the pipeline?
We think that it’s important to build a product to keep pushing Web3 forward, and—quite frankly—also to have a business that is not just selling NFTs to our community.
And so one thing we’ll be focusing on outside of Streets of New Tokyo is that we have identified an opportunity, and we want to work on refining that for the remainder of this year. We can’t say what it is, but the focus in general for us is going to be on developing this product while continuing to grow 10KTF the brand.
Outside of polishing SoNT and refining this product, we’ve been laying down the foundation of Kagami kicking off for a while, and we’ll need a little time to literally get the company set up.
What will the relationship between Kagami and Yuga look like going forward, and by the same token, what opportunities arise with 10KTF becoming independent?
With Yuga, there’s not going to be that much that’s very different. We’re going to stay premier partners of Otherside, and we’ll be staying in close touch with the Otherside team to build WAGMI-san’s workshop in Otherside, and to materialize our ecosystem in their world—as people have seen with Project Dragon, we were able to put the first interoperable item in there: our flamethrower (which had no flames yet)!
We will continue building in the ODK (Otherside Development Kit). Our building in there has already helped the Otherside team test features that they’ve been working on, and work out some kinks. The Grailed will continue to be included in Otherside events.
Yuga will continue to be involved with us, as well: they’re one of the teams building SoNT, and ApeCoin is also one of those teams. And obviously, the game is using ApeChain, and we are going to be considering ApeChain when we build new products.
I think the biggest help is going to be Figge, sitting across both organizations; he will be an advisor to us, but he will remain as Chief Product Officer at Yuga, and that’s really going to help us identify more opportunities for us to keep working together.
On the Possible piece—so, Kagami is a subsidiary of Possible, and it will give us greater access to the artists and technologists there, but like I said before, focus is really the name of the game right now, so we are not planning a huge concert with Possible right now or anything like that! We will definitely be working with their team, but our main focus will currently be on SoNT and the product that we need to refine.
The post Exclusive: 10KTF Acquired By Possible Productions appeared first on nft now.
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