Building a New Kind of Studio | Be Protagonist! Ep. 4

Building a New Kind of Studio | Be Protagonist! Ep. 4

Show Notes: Most platforms take a large cut and call it a distribution fee. The creators, contributors, and workers who make the thing possible get what's left. This episode asks whether it has to be that way. Robyn Pacetti (Founder and CEO of Protagonists!) and Guillaume Gayot (finance advisor, novelist, and former Amazon colleague of Robyn's) join Sean to pull apart how Protagonists! is trying to build something different: a platform that records and rewards contribution fairly, resists the VC pressure to optimize for exit over audience, and treats creators as partners in the ecosystem rather than inventory on a shelf. Along the way: the chaos of early-stage game development, what 50 meetings at Gamescom 2019 taught them, why healthy friction in a team is a feature not a bug, and the difference between rigidity and rigor. Topics covered: * Why founders lose perspective on their own best skills * The "power of and" in a multi-background team * Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law (and when gray areas are your friend) * The food delivery problem: who gets rewarded and why * Guillaume's "collective of professionals" framework * Why VC money has strings and what alternatives exist * Disagreeing with ideas, not people

The Origin of Forgotten Skies | Be Protagonist! Ep. 3

Robyn Pacetti has been building the world of Forgotten Skies since 2007. It started as a personal TTRPG campaign world, built because she was tired of spending hundreds of hours in universes she didn't own. Nearly 20 years later, it's the demo world for Protagonists! In this episode, Robyn and Sean discuss where Forgotten Skies came from, how it grew, and why Robyn hesitated to use her own life's work as the platform's demo world. The world: Nimora has no land, only floating islands and continents drifting above a shoreless ocean. Its people, the skylings, live on shifting landmasses with no fixed maps, no oil, and a class system that new technology is beginning to destabilise. Every detail of the world follows from its first conditions. Nothing is in the world just because it looks interesting. In this episode: * The TTRPG origin: running three campaigns at once in a borrowed universe, and deciding to build her own * World-building from first principles: what you can and cannot bomb, how you fuel ships without oil, how maps work when the islands drift * How 20 years of player questions kept pushing the world's edges further * Why mystery at the world level is different from mystery inside a story * The factions: an empire inspired by Roman antiquity, with elaborate craftsmanship, legionnaires in gas masks, and a social order under pressure from exploration * Chosen family as the emotional engine of the Forgotten Skies experience * Why audio may be the ideal format for a world that has never been fully shown to anyone * The plan to open parts of the world to community creators Join the waitlist at www.protagonists.com

Who We're Building For | Be Protagonist! Ep. 2

In episode 2 of Be Prontagonist!, Sean and Robyn get specific about who this platform is for and why that question shapes every design decision they make. They introduce two personas: the Solo Adventurer, a player who wants to lose themselves in a world where their choices actually matter, and the Entertainer, a creator who has a world in their head and wants an audience to walk through it. The conversation moves through the psychology of imagination, why meaningful choices feel different from the illusion of choice, and how a world that persists and reacts to your specific actions creates something that passive audio formats simply cannot. Robyn also shares the story behind Forgotten Skies, an IP she has been building across tabletop campaigns since 2006, and what it means to finally give it a home. If you are a listener who has ever preferred a book's version of a character to a film's, or a creator who has been running campaigns for the same five friends and wondering if there is a bigger stage, this one is for you. Be Prontagonist! is the podcast about making Protagonists!, the first platform for screen-free interactive audio worlds. New episodes weekly.

Why We're Doing This | Be Protagonist! Ep. 1

In our first episode, Sean sits down with Robyn Pacetti, founder and Sky Captain of Protagonists!, to answer the question at the heart of everything: why does this need to exist? Robyn shares the surprisingly personal story behind the platform, from pandemic-era walks through an empty Prague, to the frustration of never finding an audio experience that was actually worth coming back to. She talks about what it felt like when nobody believed in the idea, what scared her enough to liquidate her retirement fund, and what Forgotten Skies, Protagonists!' first audio RPG, needs to make you feel in the first five minutes. This is a show that builds in public. That means you'll hear the real version of how this gets made, not the pitch deck version. If you've ever wanted your commute, your chores, or your evening walk to feel like an adventure, this is where it starts. In this episode: * Why screen fatigue is real, but nobody has built a real alternative for adults * The moment Robyn realised she would have to build it herself * What Protagonists! actually is, and why it's a platform, not just a game * The world of Forgotten Skies and what it feels like to step inside it * What success looks like in the first five minutes of your first Journey * Join the waitlist: https://protagonists.com/#alpha [https://protagonists.com/#alpha] Next week: Who are we actually building this for? We have a theory, and it might surprise you.