Maureen Fan On Medium-Agnostic IP, the Magic of XR Interaction, & Making You Matter

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Reality Labs, and we’re celebrating some of the developers who’ve made the last decade of magic possible. First, we interviewed Jesse Schell, a noted game designer, author, and CEO of Schell Games. Last week, we caught up with Polyarc CEO & Co-Founder Tam Armstrong. Today, we’re sitting down with Baobab Studios Co-Founder & CEO Maureen Fan.

Founded in 2015, Baobab Studios helped put VR animation on the map. From the tree of life and the balance between nature and humanity to an exploration of darkness and music and beyond, they’ve continuously pushed the medium forward while pulling at our heart strings. With the studio’s own 10-year anniversary following close on the heels of our own, it felt like the perfect time to catch up with Fan and pick her brain for some reflections on a decade working in the XR space and a look at what’s to come.

Maureen Fan: Well, it’s because I love animation really—because animation makes you feel that that world that you could have never imagined is so real that you think you could reach out and touch it. And that’s basically the definition of VR.

MF: It’s that world that’s so real that you think you could reach out and touch it. Who would not want to live in their favorite worlds, whether it’s Lord of the Rings or whatnot? I just saw the potential for enhancing the things I love about animation the most.

MF: I’ve loved animation since I was young. I just love the imagination and the ability to escape—that you could make crazy things in your mind. It’s not limited by reality, which live-action is somewhat still constrained by reality, but animation is limited only by the creativity within the director’s head. I’ve always loved it. But I was playing Final Fantasy VIII, the opening sequence, and realized that a game can have this cinematic world. That made me think, “Oh, this is something I can actually do for a living.”

I designed my college major as computer science, art, and psychology to do animation, but my parents told me I wasn’t allowed to. It’s like if I tried to do anything in Hollywood or entertainment, I’d be poor and destitute. But watching My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, too, that really made me fall in love with these worlds.

So after I designed my major, I went to be a UI designer at eBay and then a user experience researcher and a product manager. But nights and weekends, I continued to draw and take classes because I was waiting for the day where I saved up enough money from my stock options to do what I really want to do, which was animation.

But I will say that whether it’s UI, user research, or business school, or production at Pixar or even Zynga, this helped me develop empathy for all these different types of roles. These were my roles with every company, and when you’re trying to create a creative product that requires all these different functions, I think having empathy and understanding for each function, how it fits in, what they care about—that makes it easier for me to lead those people and also hopefully bring out the best in each of those things. And you also start realizing that everyone just really wants the same thing. They just have different languages to talk about it.

MF: My aspiration was always to create a company that rivaled Disney, that created IP that people fall in love with. It’s actually my mission in life, which I made the vision of the company.

I often talk about how, when you’re young, you think you could do anything—you’re invincible—but something happens as we get older and we conform to societal values of fame, money, fortune, and we get put into these buckets and told what we’re supposed to do. Like, “You should follow this path. No, you can’t go into animation.”

But I believe there’s still a dreamer in us all, and I know that to be true because that’s why we go to the movies and play games. And so for me, the goal of the company and my life’s goal is to inspire people to dream. I think that child within you is still there, and you just have to bring it out. If people just realized how much potential they have, they would actually go after what they truly want to do and they’d be way happier. So ultimately the mission was to inspire the world to dream, bring out your sense of wonder, and make you matter. That’s what I care about in my life.

And that idea of making you matter, that’s what differentiates us from other studios. It’s not just a linear narrative, though we also make those experiences. I’m more interested in you developing a relationship with those characters, impacting their worlds and impacting them because then you’re so much more engaged and drawn in. You really matter to that world. I would love to matter to the Lord of the Rings world. I would love to be a part of it, not just watch it. And VR lets you do that.

From a business perspective, trying to create a company that rivals Disney, unless you have an unfair distribution advantage or a ton of capital, you can’t compete. I saw VR also as my Trojan horse way in because no one has an advantage when there’s technological disruption. It doesn’t matter how much money somebody has. No one knows what they’re doing because it’s a new technology. I knew if I assembled an amazing team and we could be more creative, nimble, and work faster than some of these big goliaths, that we could figure it out in this new way and not be bogged down by the traditional core business models. The plan was always to create IP, to make a name for ourselves in VR and then take that IP and branch out and be able to put it out onto all the other different platforms too.

MF: I think one is about data. Zynga, where I started, was so different in its thinking than entertainment and what I knew at Pixar. Usually in traditional entertainment companies, you just do whatever the creative person says—whoever is the loudest in the room, the most senior, whoever stands at the board with a marker—and Zynga really taught me, like, who’s to say that person should be the one? Usually they have a track record, but who knows if what they’re saying is right? You should let people—the audience—actually tell you what works or not. So you put out an A/B test and see what works better. In a way, it eliminates politics, too—instead of whoever’s the most senior in the hierarchy, let the audience tell you what to do.

I was constantly humbled by the data at Zynga—I thought I knew something, but the audience told me something different. I try to be humble and not always think that I know the most, which also comes from my user research and UI background—talking to people and figuring that out and bringing that to creativity. And sometimes, creative people feel threatened by that. But it’s true that users can tell you what they want. They can tell you what they don’t want. The way you put it out there, you can see how they actually interact with it and you can know if it worked or not, right? So you should figure out processes that integrate data, user data, with the creative’s brilliant mind.

You also need to be really open-minded. At Zynga, a lot of traditional AAA game people pooh-poohed what we were doing. Well, we helped make people who don’t think that they’re gamers into gamers—like middle-aged people, lots of women. I was really proud of what we did at Zynga in birthing social casual games. And that’s the attitude you need when you’re trying to create VR. It’s a new technological medium, and we’re trying to merge games and film together. So we have to not just think about it from the film side or from the game perspective. I’m creating something different and new, and to have that open mind is really important.

Of course, working with game engines helped for sure in terms of creating those experiences. And then having all these people from animation on my team like Eric Darnell and Larry Cutler—they refused to accept the production quality that was afforded to us by the game engine because they had film standards. They wrestled with the game engine to force it to do what we wanted. It made us build all this technology that allows you to have Pixar-quality animation running in a real-time game engine, which got us all these awards and patents.

MF: A lot of the IP comes internally. Eric Darnell, my chief creative officer, wrote and directed all the Madagascar films and Antz and Intercats. He’s one of the highest box office grossing animation writer/directors of all time. The interesting thing there is that he’s not just a director, but he’s a writer, too, which means he comes up with the idea. All our VR ideas come from him. We also have Osnat Shurer, who’s joined us as co-chief creative officer. She produced Moana and Raya and the Last Dragon, so she’s amazing as well. And we have Kane Lee, our chief content officer.

We also take in ideas from other people outside, too. For example, Momoguro, which we launched as a bunch of Roblox games and is now becoming a TV show—Nico Casavecchia and Martin Allais, who created BATTLESCAR: Punk Was Invented By Girls, were huge fans of that IP. They came to us and shared their idea for Momoguro, saying, “Hey, we can take this really broad across all different mediums.” So we decided to work with them to develop it into something even larger. We have our entire studio vote on all the projects, because that’s where my data comes in.

MF: We have a film TV division, we have a gaming division, and VR, there’s publishing, a books division. I have the whole studio vote on all the IP. Can we sell plushie toys with this? Is this going to be a hit? Do you think it’s better as a film, TV, or books? Then I have the leads vote for them. And then, we see where there’s a difference between what the leads said and what the whole studio said. Then we have a session where the studio tries to convince the leads that they’re wrong. It’s a fun process, and it allows everyone in the studio to be involved in the process. And ultimately, we land on numbers. I love numbers. And we use those numbers to decide how to prioritize the IP.

MF: Sure. We think that we’re medium-agnostic and have always believed that great stories and characters transcend mediums. Shakespeare was great as a book, great as a play, great as movies, great as animation—The Lion King, right? That’s straight-up Shakespeare. We only create experiences that can work across all sorts of mediums. That being said, our mission statement about making you matter—nothing does that better than VR, XR, where you actually get to be totally inside that experience and matter.

Even with games right now, with a game console, there’s still some separation between you and that environment. You have to click on a keyboard or move a mouse around—there’s something that takes you out of it. But in VR and XR, you’re totally without boundaries. We will always love that, and it’s always something that we’re going to be a part of.

A lot of the projects that we’re doing right now start off as one medium and move to another. For example, Momoguro was a line of Roblox games and now it’s a TV show. And Baba Yaga was originally an Oculus exclusive, and then now, it’s a TV series with Disney+.

MF: Yeah, we’re really excited. We’re turning it into a witch anthology series—like the world of witches. And then Intercats, we originated that as a graphic novel series with Macmillan, and now it’s becoming a TV show at Disney+.

The Magic Paintbrush, you can imagine how awesome that would be in VR. We’re trying to figure out technologically how to do that, but that came out as a multi-book series with Penguin Random House for AAPI Heritage month. It’s based off of the old Chinese tale about the poor farmer boy who drew things and it became real. Of course, the evil guy wants to take the magic paintbrush for his own use.

And then INVASION!, which was our first project ever. We then did Asteroids with VR, and then we created Galactic Catch, the game with that and it will become a movie. And there’s a lot more we can’t talk about. But as you see, a lot of the things that we’ve done have originated in our roots, which is in VR, in XR.

MF: It’s kind of boring, but mobile GPU and CPUs just allowing for higher visuals at a higher frame rate, all on wireless devices. I mean, my co-founder, Eric, he’s loved VR since many decades ago when he first started doing commercials at DreamWorks—except he would be pulled around in a wheelchair with a big television representing each eye in front of him attached to the wheelchair. It was always there, but to make it so that it’s consumer-friendly, so you can actually put it on and it’s affordable, all that. That’s all because of the advancement. Better costs, better form factor, and much more consumer-friendly, but I still think we have a huge way to go. That’s for sure.

MF: I hope, and where it needs to be in order for consumer mass adoption, is that I’m acting like I naturally would in the physical world. What I was saying before about how with game consoles, you still have something in between you and the virtual world—so I’m hoping that goes away. I like hand tracking.

That being said, having some form of controller or something attached to your hand to give you the tactile feel when you’re touching something—I think that it blows people’s minds. When we did Jack, the experience where we set up at Tribeca based on Jack and the Beanstalk—there’s a light and you touched it and people were just like, “Whoa!”

I do think I want it to be so that there’s no controllers, but there’s still something that gives you the tactile feel of things. I think that will be the dominant mode because you get to interact seamlessly but still get that haptic feedback. There’s a reason why game controllers are still here and the mouse and keyboard are still—because you do need that feedback and the precision controllers do so well. And I think hand tracking and eye tracking will be great enhancements to controllers and in certain applications, they’ll be a fine substitute. I’m hoping it gets to the point where it’s so high fidelity that I don’t need controllers, but even if I don’t need them, I still need the tactile response.

MF: I think my favorite and also Eric’s favorite is when we were at Tribeca, where we premiered INVASION! as our first experience, and adults and kids, when they put on the headsets and that little bunny came out. People squealed with delight, and they started playing with her. They started getting on the ground and mimicking her movements as though they were playing with her, and they were convinced that Chloe, the bunny, was reacting to them and mimicking their movements.

MF: And that they believed that was real, even though, you know, it’s not. Even adults truly believed that it was real, and that just showed us the power of VR. It showed us that these things totally feel completely real.

And also through that experience, I met Jane Rosenthal, who heads up Tribeca—she founded it—and she became my mentor and then now is an advisor for the company. I’m just thankful to have such a kick-ass, powerful, talented woman to look up to and who helps me all the time, both in professional life and personal life. I’m thankful for that experience, and without VR, that wouldn’t have happened. Creating a new medium is just amazing

And then this is more an anecdote about starting a company. They always say when you’re founders, you need to figure out how you interact. So I try to pick fights with them. I read this book that said you should try to figure out your conflict styles and how they work to see if you’re compatible. And Eric Romo, who had created AltspaceVR, let us squat in his space for free when we hadn’t raised money yet for several months. So how the XR community was just helping each other out, and he in particular was just so kind for giving us free space—that’s a great memory. And we also pretended we were students at Stanford to use their space for free, especially at the Cantor Arts Center. We were sitting there a lot. Those are fun stories.

MF: I think people are much more measured now. Before, everyone was so excited because everyone thought, “The technology is here, and it’s going to change everything.” And the thing I learned in business school from Anita Elberse’s class is that, based off of past data, technology takes a lot longer than we expect to become a thing that impacts us—but when it does, the impact is much greater than we could have ever imagined or anticipated.

So I think there was the initial wave of crazy excitement. Everyone thought, “It’s here!” And now they’re realizing that it wasn’t here yet. So now, people are doing the hard work of figuring out what it’s going to take to actually make it into a thing. I think people realize they have to have true, strong business models. People are looking hard at the fundamental economics and business, which I think is good. And now with the new headsets like Meta Quest 3 and 3S and XR becoming a thing, I see the excitement again, but it’s a much more measured excitement. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, right? People are realizing you need to chill out for your personal health.

MF: For specifically the XR space, I’m excited about innovation creatively. I’m very proud of the advancements we’ve made. Through every single project, we’ve asked: How do we make you matter to the story?

In the beginning, there was no real interaction—just eye contact. Then the question became: How can you actually change a story in your role as a sidekick vs. a main character? How do you do branching narrative? Are the choices meaningful rather than just gimmicks? All those things, I’m very excited about, but I still feel there’s so much more innovation in the creative space. We need the technology to advance, especially the form factor, for consumers to get the ticket, but we still need killer content that’s not just geared towards the small demographic of VR fanatics, which tends to be white men who are very engaged gamers. If you want to reach a Zynga-sized audience, like a casual gamer audience, if you want to become super mass-market, that requires innovation, creative storytelling, and the content itself.

And outside of XR, I’m excited about creating a superior type of medium, which is interactive game mechanics paired with great storytelling and characters. I feel like the two industries do not get along and do not understand each other. That’s all our studio has been doing. It’s like forcing them together, but they do not understand each other, they do not play well together, they have different philosophies. But if you can have the best of both worlds in creating one medium, that medium’s going to be superior. So that’s what we’re working on.