Indie Roots, Immersive Vision: Nic Hill

Justin Levinson (00:00)‍

Hey guys, welcome to the Agency Side Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levinson. And today I'm joined with co-founder and chief innovation officer of Sawhorse Productions, a full-service production and post-house in Los Angeles. Over the past 14 years, he's helped build Sawhorse into a go-to creative partner for brands and platforms like Netflix, YouTube, the NFL, Lionsgate, and Pepsi, producing branded content in the form of video as well as immersive experience. Nikhil, it's great to have you here on the show. Thanks for being here.

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Nic Hill (00:28)

My pleasure, Justin. Thank you for having me.

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Justin Levinson (00:31)

Yeah. So to start off the conversation, maybe you can just briefly tell listeners how you got into this particular space.

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Nic Hill (00:37)

Yeah, my life story, how I got into this situation. Taking a few steps back, you know, I grew up always as a creative. I really loved making movies with the home camcorder and I really loved playing video games and just being creative and exploring art and lore as much as I could. And then as I sort of moved into my professional career, I focused on the video side. So I was creating, well, I got into the indie film world.

So I was like on indie film sets as a director and an editor, you know, putting stories together and kind of coming up during that time of the democratization of filmmaking, you know, where it was like the digital revolution where you didn't have to have super expensive cameras or super expensive edit bays. You could do everything with a camcorder and a home computer. So really kind of got cut my chops on that and then started a company which is Sawhorse where we were making then.

Branded content for all of these agencies, studios and brands. Short format video, creative video that could be run on all of the social platforms and distro platforms. So that was a big focus for us. And then during the pandemic, we had to kind of shut down because we couldn't be on set. A lot of what we would be shooting is with celebrities, with like sort of larger crews. So during the pandemic, that just completely killed all of that immediately.

and didn't want to lay anybody off. wanted to stay productive and stay, you know, profitable. So we kind of grew into, live streaming. So we did a ton of live streaming. did a ton of, remote shooting where we would just send out camera kits and then kind of get on zoom calls and coach, coach people through it. Like the other talent would be there and then it would be like the talents wife or the talents.

husband holding cameras and we're like directing them. And then I got a great opportunity because I had a close friend that worked at Roblox and he reached out and said, look, there's all these brands that want to be on this platform, but there aren't a lot of companies or especially agencies that can explain to them how to show up, manage the project, the process, and then deliver results. So it's an area that we got, I focused on.

And so we were able to create some projects that has really massive reach. And I really realized that it's a space that you can be ultra creative in and you can still tell brand stories the same way we would do with video. But now you're doing it in a 3D immersive, gamified, persistent way. And so for the past, I would say like three and a half, four years, I've...

sort of left the traditional side of the agency and now I'm running the interactive side of the agency. And we're building these immersive experiences for these brands on all the top UTC gaming platforms, as well as just leveraging new technology like gen AI or augmented reality to build out these immersive experiences for brands and engage in younger audiences way more immersive ways and deeper ways than standard video can offer.

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Justin Levinson (03:41)

Yeah. Did you have a background in Roblox before? Were you pretty privy to it or was your friend sort of like, like this would be a cool opportunity. And were you kind of just getting hip to it then?

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Nic Hill (03:50)

Definitely just getting hip to it then. You know, I did not, I had no background in Roblox. I had not even heard of it when he reached out. And now I think everyone's heard of it. But at the time it wasn't, wasn't as popular. The background, I had no background in software development in general. All my background was in video. So that was definitely a learning curve. I think the only consistency I had is I grew up as, as a gamer.

you know, playing video games. I understand game design. I understand retention mechanics just from a high level. Like I understand like why people play games and why games are fun. Yeah. But actually how to make it was a sharp learning curve. I just had some understanding of the concept.

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Justin Levinson (04:34)

Yeah. Where do even begin? If you don't know how to build a Roblox world, did you start going to like Udemy to learn how to courses or just kind of trial and error it?

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Nic Hill (04:44)

That's a great question. I am not a developer or a coder per se. I went about it looking at it in the same way we approached video creation. So it's a project or it's project based, right? So it's like, who's the client? What is their goal? What is the product or what is the video? What is the thing we're going to make? How many people do we need in order to do this? What disciplines do we need to cover? And it becomes just sort of strategic project management from there.

So I applied the same concept that we do for all video creation and just applied it to gaming. Got it. It's just all different kinds of team members that I wasn't used to previously, you know.

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Justin Levinson (05:25)

Yeah, that's pretty cool. yeah, cause I was looking on your, on the page and I'm seeing a lot of the roadblock stuff. That was pretty, was pretty awesome. guess you said you got this, this opportunity from this friend. you know, I imagine like, the stakes like pretty high? Like if you hadn't really, like you had experience like, you know, relevant experience, but maybe not direct experience. It, you know, that seems like a big undertaking.

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Nic Hill (05:47)

Yeah, I would say the stakes were extremely high and it was probably, um, probably the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my career because up until that point, was, think Sawhorse had been around for about 10 years at that point. And we've built up a lot of confidence knowing that we can take these money from these clients and produce really valuable things for them. And I can stand behind that. And here I am like on a call.

talking about how we're experts in the Roblox space and how we're building these amazing experiences. When I've never done it, I just felt like I was straight up lying to the client. I mean, it was like, it was a calculated risk, but it was a risk. I knew that we could do it. I just didn't know how well it would turn out. But we kind of took that leap of faith. As an agency, I think you have a responsibility to your client and you have a responsibility to...

oversee a vision and then deliver on it. Whether you're doing it yourself or you're hiring the right people or you're managing, you're communicating, you're just running this and you're producing, you're making it happen. So I knew that we would make it happen one way or another, but it was very uncomfortable. Tons of learnings through the process. A lot of late nights, a lot of stressful, you know, when your stomach drops and you're like, I remember like on the launch day of the first project we did, we did for Aloe.

the clothing company and mindfulness company, we made a Roblox experience for them. That was our very first interactive project. And I remember on the launch day, there was a bug. So as the players were spawning in to play, they were spawning into the floor. So it was the game was just broken. And I literally, it was like late at night, the client wasn't going to see it until the morning, but like, I just had a pit in my stomach. was like, what is happening? We just launched something that's broken. That's it. That's like, that's a huge problem.

If this was the equivalent in video, would be like the video that we just delivered, the master has all these black frames in it, or it's like just broken, right? Huge disaster. But what I learned in software was this like everything can be fixed. You just tweak the code and you push an update. And like this happens in professional software creation from the biggest companies in the world. And I remember talking to my devs that night and I was like, what is happening? I'm starting to freak out. You guys got to fix this. And they were so nonchalant about it. They're like, yeah, yeah, we're just trying to figure, look for the bug right now.

I was like, fix it. And they were just like, oh yeah, whatever. And then like an hour later, they're like, oh yeah, we found it. We just changed a couple lines of code and just, it's fine now. And I was just like, wow. So that's the difference in working in like linear versus, you know, a software, living software product.

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Justin Levinson (08:23)

Yeah, so you guys have a, do you have a couple of developers on your team?

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Nic Hill (08:27)

Yeah, so art, the full size of the company is about 50 full-time people. And then on the interactive side, we've got probably like 25 workers. And that's everything from creative directors to art directors to developers, scripters, 3D artists, and marketing individuals as well.

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Justin Levinson (08:47)

Great. So the, to finish your story. So the bug was solved before the client got it the next morning and there was no issue. Thanks for tuning in folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique creative recruitment agency. We disrupt the creative ecosystem by running sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with custom video and voice outreach that actually gets responses. We actively market the agencies and brands we represent.

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Nic Hill (09:27)

It

was, it was. you know, even if the client saw it and it was broken, they might like have a note and be like, why this is, I don't like this, what is this? It still would have been fixed within a couple hours. And then we would have just said, yeah, we've done this. And that's the one thing I've learned, like going from traditional linear to interactive is I'm already anticipating things breaking or broken or not working. Or sometimes the platform itself will do an update and that breaks your game.

And it's nothing that you did. And then everyone needs to have this flexibility to go, okay, well, now we have to fix it and we will fix it. People that are playing it right now are probably frustrated because it's not working, but that's just the way it is. So I've just sort of learned to like chill out when it comes to software stuff. And I've seen this across all the platforms we developed on and even in the, you know, the third party and independent immersive experiences we built with AR and GEN.AI same thing. It's like.

you know, bugs happen and you figure them out and you get through it.

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Justin Levinson (10:29)

was interested in how, you know, one job leads to the next, leads to the next. So seems like you've got, you've done this a few times now. So how did that first, I imagine the first campaign there was a big success, the first, so how did the next, how did the next opportunity come to you?

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Nic Hill (10:45)

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we were lucky in the fact that the first experience that we built was, we did a really good job. Client loved it. The community on the platform loved it. Roblox, our partners that are the partnership managers, they loved it too. And so everyone was sort of, had so much hype that, and you know, got picked up in the media. So a lot of people were writing about this and...

A lot of brands saw that and then they just thought, well, I want to get on Roblox too. Maybe I should talk to these guys. But I think that in general, as far as getting more work and growing your company, at least when it comes to the sawhorse experience, it's all been about doing amazing work and making the client super happy. And that is the best form of advertising because you have a happy client that works in agency or works at a brand. They have a call with their friends that work at other companies.

And then they say, man, you got to hire this company, Saw Horse. They were so easy to work with. The work was so awesome. Yeah, just get, these should be on your radar, right? And so we've done that sort of word, that telephone game or that word of mouth game for, you know, the entire 15 years the company's been around. So we've never done like marketing, you know, we've never like tried to go out and get work. We haven't even had any business development people on the company until just this year that we're starting to expand in that way.

But that is really, I stand behind that. Do amazing work, make it the best it can be, make it as easy for the client to make the best client experience and Word travels and Word and more work comes back to you.

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Justin Levinson (12:19)

find

that this space is getting more crowded now, that there's a lot more people trying to get in with this particular.

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Nic Hill (12:24)

Yeah, it

is growing. There's more more like, dev studios and agencies coming in, trying to figure it out. I think the tricky part is it's such a new space that like, you know, marketing inside of gaming is not really that new, you know, especially when it comes to like licensing or just putting IP in games. It's been around for like ever, but you know, when it comes to building your own world in a three-dimensional space for a brand and then.

you know, engaging an audience. It's only been around for a few years. So I think that the majority, like so many companies see the value in it. They, they know it's important because the audience is so big. To give you an example, like on Roblox, for instance, I think they're up to like 110 million daily active users. It's just mind blowing. yeah, there's just so much demand to be here. The question that everyone is raising is like, well, how do you actually equate the

the value and how do you benchmark that to the way we market on traditional media? Because with traditional media, there's been so many Nielsen studies and so much data that's been extracted and ways to prove attribution. And basically like they go great, I can get a million views on YouTube. So that's kind of worth X to me. I think that we don't really necessarily have that, that same sort of equivalent in the UGC gaming space yet.

So it's still very early days and yeah, there's plenty of people coming in wanting to work here.

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Justin Levinson (13:56)

Yeah. Do you have like, like when you're talking to a new client, are there some, you know, when you're, when you're pitching that this is going to be worth their while, there some, are there some things that you're telling them that they can expect or, or, you know, sort of maybe your last, you know, experience got X amount of eyeballs, X amount of sales. There's some data to follow. Is there, there's something that you kind of can, I know it's fairly new, can't.

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Nic Hill (14:21)

No, absolutely. think we try to establish what the KPIs are for the clients on every project. Based on the budget and the timeline and the idea, we can kind of like project and say, think we can get X amount of unique visitors to experience this piece of immersive marketing. We can kind of guesstimate how much time they're going to spend inside the experience. And then we try to put that together and pitch it back. then you can try to benchmark it to other things like...

Okay, well you guys are advertising on TV with 30 second spots. You're advertising with an influencer on TikTok. You might be spending X. The engagement time you're getting is pretty low. We're to get much longer session time in the thing that we're going to build over here. And then we'll get higher numbers than you're going to get over here. So trying to explain and benchmark that to them so they understand the value a little bit is kind of our approach.

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Justin Levinson (15:18)

Are you handling any the influencer relationships and that side of things?

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Nic Hill (15:23)

Yeah, so we're not like an agency that manages a bunch of influencers. like, we don't have a roster, but we, as a more holistic agency, we reach out and we partner with all kinds of different influencers. We bring them in and then they kind of work with us to create more media to...

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Justin Levinson (15:41)

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. was, I was interested in our conversation to do, cause we, we, we work with lot of companies in the influence, like in the experiential and immersive entertainment space, but it's a little bit different. Like we, we do work with like Cosm and that sort of, you know, big experience. We also work with lot of experiential marketing agencies, which, you know, do like events and pop-ups and things, but a lot of them also during COVID have pivoted to trying to do things that are

you know, through the computer, which is kind of, know, because obviously those events and everything kind of shut down. So we, you know, we work with lot of similar, in a similar vertical to the stuff you guys are doing. So I was very interested in having this conversation. How is the, technology changing? mean, obviously your story seems like you come from like a, an editorial background when you, when you were first starting. I mean, I'm sure you've probably seen a lot of different changes. Are you seeing a lot of different, is AI really affecting

your business now and what does that landscape look like?

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Nic Hill (16:38)

would say in general, the technology just keeps moving quickly. Everything keeps advancing. So like on these platforms, there's more that you can build. There's more functions that you can do. The art fidelity is getting higher. Like the basically immersion itself, you know, being able to like really captivate an audience that's improving on a, you know, every quarter it's like, wow, we can do this now. It moves that fast, which is exciting. When it comes to AI,

I mean, our teams are using it for as much as we can. anything, it just saves time and money. I really do not see it as a silver bullet or a magic bullet that comes in and just like, yeah, now I make the experiences with AI and then I make all the money because I don't do anything. I got him just, just not seeing that either on the video side or on the gaming side. I see it as like a support tool that can hypercharge employees to work faster and make.

better stuff and be more cost effective, but you still need humans behind the, you know, behind the machine, you know, steering it. And then beyond that, what I'm seeing is you can, Roblox, for instance, they just announced that inside of the games that you build, the players can use generative AI to create assets inside of the game in real time. So that's pretty cool. I think.

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Justin Levinson (17:43)

out.

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Nic Hill (18:02)

AI is really exciting for amateurs to be able to build. It's almost like how amateurs can use their cell phones to make little videos and then post that stuff on social. We're seeing like a, we're on the early stages of that same quick ability to make a game or make a virtual environment in real time just by using generative AI and then publish that.

So in the same way that we have the social media revolution, wherever everyone is creating content and sharing it, we're going to start to see that on the interactive side because of GNI.

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Justin Levinson (18:39)

Yeah. Are there any specific tools in your tech stack that you found have been really, you know, a difference maker to your company?

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Nic Hill (18:46)

What I've

found is that it's a combination of like everything, you know, it's like one tool or one AI tool is not enough. So it's like, we just keep hearing about a new one popping up all the time. And when it comes to creating a good piece of content and then getting it out, oftentimes that's a lot of traditional software that's being used plus like four or five different AI pieces of software. And then all the pieces are put together by a professional.

And then it's like an AI project and it goes out, but you know, it's still like gone through post-production. know, it's like, I very rarely will use like one gen AI product in the tech stack and just export that and use it.

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Justin Levinson (19:27)

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm interested in your biggest win. I mean, I know you told me about your sort of getting that first job. I that sounds like a pretty monumental win and kind of maybe in a way faking it till you make it. But now things are obviously, you've made it. Do you have any big, what's sort of like the big success that you could tell us about?

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Nic Hill (19:53)

Yeah, I could think of like two moments that were big wins for the company that really helped us grow. And the first would be in the early days when we were making branded content, we were making like this very cost effective, simple snackable video stuff for brands, a lot of smaller budget, smaller brands, smaller budget stuff. But the work was always really good. And I was wondering like, well, how do you get to the next step? Like, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing. And I had a buddy who was like,

the VP over at Conde Nast Entertainment. So when Conde Nast, the big magazine conglomerate was creating branded content. So they're taking like articles and they're taking the different ideas that the magazines were producing and they were making video content out of that. buddy of mine was kind of overseeing that and he brought Sawhorse in to start producing content. So we were making stuff for like Teen Vogue and GQ and Wired.

Golf Digest, and it was like a big scale moment. Where it was like, oh, you can do this one six minute video. And then we knocked it out of the park and they're like, cool, can you do like 20 of those for these six brands? And it's like, okay. So then it was like, we were able to actually hire more full-time employees. And that really helped us sort of grow. It was a lot of growing pains and challenges and stress, but over the next few years, we continued to keep that consistent.

volume influx. And so that helped the company grow. And then another moment I would mention is more recently when we won a contract to build a Roblox experience for Walmart. So obviously pretty massive brand came in. We were able to help them create an experience on Roblox that really connected well with the audience there and it performed extremely well. And that also grew in a really big way because

are the leadership at Walmart trusted us to help advise them on how to show up in virtual worlds beyond Roblox. So that's sort of where the agency side comes in, where it's like, they are trusting us to help them with strategy on how to show up. And it's a partnership at that point. It's not just a production company waiting for an RFP. What do you want me to build? All right, I'll just build it. Right. There's no thought there or less thought.

Still a of thought, but it's like, what are the business goals for the year? What are you trying to do? And then it's like, well, how can we ideate together? Like, maybe we should show up on this platform. Maybe it should be that platform. This one doesn't make any sense. And then we work together to ideate, creating the work from scratch and then doing the work. And we were able to bring Walmart to several different platforms. We created a two-sided marketplace online called Walmart Realm. And that's out there. Like it's all web-based.

not even on a platform. We also brought them into Zepeto, which is like a fashion-based UGC gaming platform, a bunch of other places. It's just been a wild ride.

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Justin Levinson (22:54)

Yeah, that's super cool. In your first, when you, talked about how you were scaling and that was a big growth moment. How did you guys go about finding talent and staffing up for the, the amount of work that was coming in?

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Nic Hill (23:08)

Are you talking about the first time with the video work or with the immersive stuff? Well, the video side was easier because we're based here in Los Angeles. We're part of the film industry. There's so many amazing, talented people and everyone's working in a freelance or permalance capacity where it's like you get like for post-production, for instance, all the assistant editors, editors, visual effects artists, motion graphics people, they're all sort of waiting for the next job and then you can easily book them for

Like a month, I'm to book you out for four weeks. Boom. You get an amazing motion graphics person. As long as you've got, you know, the budgets to support it and you don't have a toxic company culture, you can get any of these amazing people and then treat them well, manage the process, manage them. So we've, it's been very easy from the video side and production side to scale up and scale down all year, you know?

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Justin Levinson (24:01)

So you're working a lot with a primary like freelance freelance sort of model. ⁓

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Nic Hill (24:05)

Yeah.

I mean, we've got an amazing team. Like I said, it's like we have 50 people at work here that are amazingly talented. I'm like always beyond impressed of what the team does, but it's tough too. But then we'll get a job at a nowhere that's like, need 15 people on this for two weeks. And that would just break my company if I couldn't scale. So in addition to the amazing team, I'm always tapping, you know, freelance talent, bringing them in.

And then as the company grows, those sort of turn into full-time positions and some of those people stay. So we just need to kind of grow conservatively. I never want to be in that situation where we hire, you know, an army of top talent that we can't afford. And then, you know, two years later, you go out of business. So can't do that.

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Justin Levinson (24:48)

Yeah, because I've seen you guys have like a lot of niche positions like game capture artists I've seen that popped up and those are some of those are actually trickier to find. You know, there's sort of a niche, it's a niche position. A lot of people come to us and they're like, we need game shop directors, game capture artists. And yeah, that's, that's always been a tricky role for, companies. Have you found that tricky for you guys to find ever? is that pretty.

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Nic Hill (25:10)

Yeah,

no, totally. I think it's much harder on the interactive side. know, it's like, there's, the people are hard to find. A lot of them are younger and they're extremely talented, but they're like not on LinkedIn, you know? And oftentimes they're not going to be looking for jobs in the traditional places. So we go after top talent, always the best people possible, the most exciting people that made impact in the space. And oftentimes you need to find those people through word of mouth.

and like lurking in the discords and you know, like that's how we find some of the best people, you know, it's, it's like, for instance, we just hired an amazing game designer and on Roblox and I would challenge anybody listening to this to post for that role and get, you know, a rock star. Not easy. We found this person through a friend of a friend who reached out through their personal connections and this guy wasn't even looking for a job. didn't even want to work. had his other priorities, but we've, got on the phone with him.

We convinced him to join the team. He joined us. He's stoked. We're stoked. And it's awesome. But like, you know, we probably got 50 resumes for game designers that most of them didn't have any Roblox experience. So it was kind of like, it's not about just, it's not about just working with one recruiter and seeing what comes in. It's about throwing a wide net and going down every alley and asking all the right people.

That's how you find the amazing top talent.

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Justin Levinson (26:39)

Definitely. Yeah. mean, stuff like Game Capture artists, you some people don't even know that's a career, you know? It is very, it's a very niche one. Do you ever look on outside of LinkedIn? Are you ever looking on, you know, any portfolio websites or any other places where you have found talent?

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Nic Hill (26:55)

Yeah, we use everything possible. So we've got a free, fantastic recruiter that helps manage the process. He's looking at all these places. I think, yeah, we use everything. We're not lazy. And I think the bar is high so that like when the applicants come in, you know, I basically turn it over to my top talent and they're looking at that talent. And if they're not excited, then it's not good enough and we have to keep looking. We're fortunate enough to

have a bit of a reputation right now. Some people know who we are. lot of thanks to like our LinkedIn presence and the amount of like work that we're showing. So we're fortunate because we get a lot of inbound. So a lot of people will hit us up and just say, Hey, I want to work with you guys. Check out my resume, check out my portfolio. And sometimes it'll be good timing and we can just scoop them up to, you know, as a freelancer to join a project or we'll put them on the radar. And then when we have an opportunity, we'll come back to those amazing people.

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Justin Levinson (27:51)

Yeah, I love that. I'd be curious to learn a little bit more about your podcast as well, because I know that's something that I've seen on LinkedIn. What's Brands in Play? Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.

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Nic Hill (28:01)

Yeah.

So the podcast that we started about six months ago, Brands in Play, is all about immersive marketing. And the target audience is marketing people that are on marketing teams and people that are curious about taking marketing to the next level. You know, like the future of marketing, you know, getting away from linear and getting into what is an immersive ad? Like what is the future? Where, how are brands going to be showing up in the future on these new platforms and these new technologies?

To give you example, like, you know, with Meta Ray-Ban, we just, I was just had, dude, it was so awesome. I was up there for Meta Connect for the first time, which is great. was sitting four rows back from the keynote speech with Zuckerberg and I got to actually test the new display glasses. you know, we're kind of moving into a world where a lot of people will have wearables. There'll be this layer, invisible layer of augmented reality.

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Justin Levinson (28:35)

That's weird. Sorry guys.

right now. Nick.

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Nic Hill (28:59)

Yes, I have these, but these are the old ones. So I'm not recording. yes, these are the old ones. There is no display here, but the new ones coming out at the end of the month will have a display and you'll be able to see and interact with the functionality visually. And it's just, we're just not that far off from having augmented reality roll out across, you know, the globe. And then the question is like, well, how are brands going to show up there? You know, how, how should marketers be thinking about

you know, leveraging these new spaces to get their messages out. And so my podcast, Brands and Play is exploring that. And every week we interview different thought leaders that are making these forms of immersive marketing, sharing their best practices, their challenges. And we also cover a lot of the news that's happening in this immersive ad space. And yes, it's been a wild ride.

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Justin Levinson (29:48)

So basically you're thinking about how you're going to market to me through my new meta Ray-Ban glasses.

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Nic Hill (29:53)

Yes, a thousand percent. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (29:56)

am I

gonna see? uh, what is that? What do you think that's gonna look like?

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Nic Hill (30:00)

I don't know, because I was excited that during the keynote, they mentioned that they're going to be opening up the SDK for the glasses. So they're going to allow developers to actually make software that you can be downloaded and then ran on the glasses. They didn't explain what that was. That's very vague. But, you know, that opens up a ton of possibilities for brands, you know, like that are leveraging spatial computing.

And we're not quite at augmented reality yet, but like probably in the next six months or year, there's going to be those layers that roll out. The opportunities are endless. think, you know, the first obvious one is like, it's just in the real estate in the real world. Like you walk in down the street in a city, you see all these big buildings. They're basically like their prime real estate for ads. So you're going to have a ton of ads, know, brands coming in being like, cool.

You're running that AR app as you walk down the street in New York City. It can identify surfaces and it can throw ads up on surfaces. Like that's not very creative or exciting, but it's there will be a demand for that. And I think that there's so many creative opportunities beyond that. Like what if the characters jump out of the billboard and they're running around you on the street as you're walking down the street and they're telling you about the new product. I mean, there's just so many bizarre, fun, new ways to.

to reach consumers.

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Justin Levinson (31:22)

Yeah, it's like in Star Trek, that holodeck or whatever. Yes, the holodeck. We could go in there and experience. That was pretty cool. Maybe that could end up in a Wild West.

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Nic Hill (31:32)

Yeah, hopefully it's more like the holodeck and less like the danger room. Yeah, we'll see

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Justin Levinson (31:36)

Yeah. I, yeah, the future is coming. Like, I mean, I was just, I just rode in the Waymo for the first time last week for, and that to me was just like insane, but I can imagine. You know, wearing my headset, getting ads to me and the driverless car. guess all that stuff is kind of, kind of coming sooner than later.

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Nic Hill (31:54)

We're in it now, you know, it's a technology moves exponentially and also, you know, the AI revolution is, is mind blowing and it's, it's, it's going to send shock waves through a lot of industries. There's going to be a lot of displacement and a lot of changes coming. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (32:11)

You know, lot of our clients feel designers feeling the squeeze a lot copywriters. we don't need a copywriter. We just have GPT. You know, there's a lot of that sort of, which, you know, it's going to, there's going to be some shakeups for sure. But like you said before, think having somebody behind the machines is always going to be paramount. so outside of, you know, this immersive, world you build and everything here, maybe you could tell us what you do for fun outside of, of all this stuff.

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Nic Hill (32:35)

Personal question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as a father of two young ones, I don't have a lot of free time. So a lot of my time is working and being a father, being a husband and all that. But I love to go see live music as much as I can. I've really gotten into working out lately because I'm not getting any younger and I have to survive to support this family. So taking that seriously. I'm really into cycling.

So I try to ride my bike around the neighborhood every time I get the chance. I'm an ex graffiti writer. So I used to be a graffiti artist in San Francisco. I don't do much of that anymore. Although I just got asked to paint a mural at my kid's school. So I'm going to do that, which is cool. And then I dabbled in DJing for a while. So I've got like a DJ set up here at the house and I try to spin records and mix and stuff when I get the chance.

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Justin Levinson (33:08)

Yeah.

That's super fun. I've got two little kids too. All of my hobbies have been destroyed and I pretty much, I'm pretty much doing, yeah, lot of it's parental stuff as well. Um, I'm also a big music fan and recently just turned 40. So I actually just got a, like, I think it was just that midlife crisis. I kind of hit, uh, I went to my gym and I got a personal trainer to try to teach me how to at least use all of the gym equipment that they have. Okay. Yeah. I'm, trying to get on a fitness thing. So we'll see.

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Nic Hill (33:54)

Nice.

All

the young listeners, like this is what happens. You're gonna get married, you're gonna have a couple kids, and then you're gonna have zero time, and then you're get really into working out and going out to dinners, and that's your life.

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Justin Levinson (34:12)

The working out to hopefully live longer and maybe decrease some of the anxiety and the weight gain because that seems like it's just, yes, know, hip 40, you can't eat like you did in your college days anymore. And I don't drink really either. I have like one IPA and I'm like falling asleep in a chair. I think.

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Nic Hill (34:30)

That's what you can have to look forward to. Where he's getting one day closer to death every day.

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Justin Levinson (34:35)

Day,

it just keeps heading in that direction.

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Nic Hill (34:38)

Man, that's dark. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (34:40)

Yeah, it is, it is dark, but you know, being a, being a parent, feel like, you know, maybe you feel it too, but I feel like if I'm able to like re-experience childhood through their eyes, sometimes that really energizes me. And I can, I'm finding like, trying to find things that we're bonding on with gaming, for example, we play, I play video games for my oldest daughter, which is pretty fun. And I bought one of those older, like, it's like the all in one, like every game from your childhood, like in a, in a box you can like plug in.

and start playing. So playing like Battletoads and old Mario Brothers games and Metal Gear, Zelda things and like getting them into them and they dig those games too.

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Nic Hill (35:17)

Dude, I did the same thing. I got like a NES mod, you know, that has like all the old OG NES games that I grew up on. And I was playing with my kids and man, those games are so hard compared to games today. Like the learning curve is steep. My son was like way into Excitebike and Ninja Gaiden is what he gravitated toward. If you remember those jams.

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Justin Levinson (35:39)

don't actually remember this for NES games too?

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Nic Hill (35:41)

Those were NES. Excitebike was the side-scroller motorcycle game that you go over the little jumps. And Ninja Gating was like this one where your ninja runs around side-scroller that you throw ninja blades and kill dudes.

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Justin Levinson (35:53)

That's awesome. I, some of those things I like cause they get a lot of those games were straight to the point too. Like, you also play it like I enjoyed playing video games with another person when I was a kid, opposed to like, I know a lot of people now will just put on their headsets and they're playing in there. Like, you know, in the world around them, but I always liked the bonding of like playing with a friend, you know? Um, I remember like caveman games was one of my favorite because the whole idea was you would like, well, one of the levels is you would rub your sticks together and then you would like blow on your fire. if you first.

caveman to make the fire would win. so to win, basically have to push the buttons fast as you can. And then you push the down button for your head to blow on the fire. And my hands were like destroyed because I was just like,

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Nic Hill (36:31)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's different. It's like the games are less social, but they're more social. Because back in the day, like you said, you would have friends come over to play video games and then you'd have the two controllers and you'd sit down and you would like talk and you would play. And that's all done now. Now everything is like online and it's networked. But at the same time, you're basically talking to bigger friend groups and you guys are all sort of connecting.

That's one thing a lot of people don't realize in gaming is gaming is still very social. It's not like a introverted activity at all. It's a very social activity. Yeah, there's a that's only growing like the younger generations expect that because they've grown up on platforms like Roblox that are, you know, it's social gaming. A lot of times they'll just play that game to get in an experience with their friends and they're not really playing competitively if they're just joking around and like trying on clothes and telling jokes and stuff.

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Justin Levinson (37:29)

Yeah, that's cool. That's a whole different way of seeing it. And I think in a way the storytelling has improved in video games too. you know, half the games before you can even get to play them, there's like this whole like theatrical experience and they drop you into the world and then you're, really like part of the situation. And I think that's interesting too, cause back in the day, was just like press start and then you picked your world and there you are, you know.

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Nic Hill (37:51)

I think like the future of entertainment is just becoming more immersive. know, I think in the, the lives between video games and, and film is starting to also blur. think we're getting into a point where these entertainment experiences are going to be so just, they're just going to take over. You know, you're going to, as a technology continues to, you know, get better and better, they're just, the level of immersion is going to be insane. And we'll be able to see that in our lifetimes, which is, think.

Really exciting.

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Justin Levinson (38:21)

Yeah. Well, Nick, I think you are on the forefront of it and I appreciate all of your insights here today and talking to us about your journey. And yeah, I really love having you here today and hopefully we can continue the conversation on a future episode.

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Nic Hill (38:33)

Yeah, that sounds great, Justin. I appreciate you having me on and this has been an awesome talk. And yeah, I would love to come back anytime.

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Justin Levinson (38:42)

Awesome, Nick. Well, have a great rest of your day. Appreciate the time. Peace.

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Nic Hill (38:44)

YouTube, thanks.

Bye.