A few weeks back I mentioned that Johnny (formerly known as Businesmoose) and I would be rebooting an old idea we had: The Moose and Polo Show! But what we didn’t mention was what that show would be. Let me get into that a bit here 🙂

A brief history of The Moose and Polo Show

Back in early 2013, the two of us were still both working on Club Penguin. We were talking about the idea of creating a sketch comedy show, like an asdfmovie but filmed within Club Penguin. And when I say talking, I mean just talk.

We shared the (very rough) pitch with Chris (aka Spike Hike) when we were talking, and he liked the general first concept.

And then… Johnny put in his notice to leave Club Penguin to go work on Mech Mice at Hyper Hippo! At that point, it didn’t make any sense to have a show with “Moose” in the name. It was just too personal, and not enough about the community.

Since Johnny was gone, I was temporarily without a video editor on my team.

As he was leaving, we decided it was best to let a new team take the rough idea and make it their own. Chris set up a super-talented little crew down in LA to roll with that original “asdfpenguin” concept.

And that was that. There was no “Moose and Polo Show” aside from a couple conversations. It was no longer about Polo or Moose. And that’s a good thing. The new creative team took the reins and turned the brain-fart into a real project.

They called the show #WaddleOn. Chris (Spike Hike) set up the talented Christopher Painter (aka Painterbird) to write and lead the project. Painterbird wrote the show and worked with two other talented folks to shoot, edit, and finalize the videos. Then our awesome audio director Toby performed his magic on everything you’d hear in an episode. Since there was no voiceover, it was very dependent on Toby’s SFX and audio expertise to land the jokes!

The #WaddleOn crew would observe interesting roleplay online and try to incorporate the ideas into episodes. It was our way of making it comedy that emerged from the community, and to empower the wider team to contribute their own creativity.

The problem with the original idea

The problem with these ideas was that they were still a little bit too much about us.

Even though we were writing episodes of #WaddleOn or The Spoiler Alert to be representative of what we were seeing in the community, they weren’t the community. It was a step removed. It wasn’t fully driven by the community or lead by the community.

Johnny and I both prefer to create things that raise up the community’s talents and ideas. Not to just push our own ideas, but to act as activators, catalysts, maximizers! And we know that there are so many creative, talented people that were in the community, not observing it.

What if we did something where the community lead the project instead?

The new idea in 2021

Fast forward to now! For the first time in 8 years, Johnny and I now work together again at RocketSnail. Lance has empowered us to dream up what we want to build.

What better time than now to start a new show? A show lead by the community?

Our idea is that we want to make a community-driven show. Instead of just farting out our own dumb ideas, we set up a flow where we collaborate with the community.

When Johnny and I chatted this year (2021), we talked about recording a podcast or something. We decided that we wanted to do this our way, so it made sense to name it after what the community still calls us today: Moose and Polo.

Enter The Moose and Polo Show.

The best part? We have only have a very loose idea for it: we are going to build two new virtual worlds directly with the community.

And we’re going to do it live on Twitch.

I’m building a little 3D virtual world called Party Parrot World, and a kid-safe launcher to install and run it called Hideaway.

I bought a domain name and Discord channel. I reserved the usernames everywhere. And we hired a couple of really talented contractors to help!

The plan

Here’s the plan!

1. Weekly Challenge
   1. On Moose Monday each week we announce a new Weekly Challenge on social media
   2. Of course, this limits us to people ages 13 and up, but I know most of you are already in your 20s, so it’s all good
   3. The theme would be “ninjas” or “coffee” or “dance music” or whatever
2. Create Content
   1. Discord will be our ongoing chat when we’re not live
   2. Eventually we will move onto the Moose Land and Club Party Parrot worlds instead, but for now it’s the best platform for chatting.
   3. Submissions will be received thru the Moose and Polo Website (via Airtable form)
3. Share on Livestream
   1. We host weekly livestreams via Twitch on Field Friday:
      1. Creative – we review all the latest submissions! We brainstorm! (We also might draw, write, make vids, but only if they’re about bringing the community’s ideas to life!)
      2. Just Chatting – talking about the latest concepts and collaborating. I might draw, Moose might make vids, we review latest community submissions, etc.
   2. We share exclusives on Patreon:
      1. Poll for next week’s theme
      2. Exclusive podcast and Discord channels for patrons
      3. Any money collected from patrons gets re-invested into paid commissions for work from the community! So the community is supporting the community

And most importantly, we incorporate the best ideas into actual virtual worlds with RocketSnail! We’ll turn all this stuff into reality! Our hope is to make fun places for us and players of the future, too.

Will they work in today’s market? Who knows? Will it take a year or two to turn them into reality? Probably! The main thing that matters is that we make a couple charming little worlds that we can hang out in. Worlds that we created together with you – the community!

How will it all unfold? Who knows! But let’s find out.

What do you think? Will you take part in the Moose and Polo Show? Let us know!