Yarnhub military history animator expands into gaming with community crowdfunding

Yarnhub Animation Studios gets 35 million views a month on YouTube for its military history animated videos. Now it’s expanding into gaming.

It’s a brilliant move, taking its popularity in military history with its Yarnhub and Blue Paw Print channels to new audiences who love the interactivity of gaming. It is raising funding from its community through the Picmii crowdfunding platform.

Founded by David Webb, Yarnhub has built a passionate audience, generating an impressive reach in the U.S., Japan, and major European countries with videos that tell stories about World War II heroes and more.

Recognizing the demand from its loyal community, Yarnhub is embarking on an ambitious journey into gaming, where each new animated film on YouTube contributes directly to the game. The transition into gaming is being spearheaded with the expertise of Cyril Barrow, a seasoned gaming executive with leadership experience at Electronic Arts and Rovio.

The transition is seamless in a way because the team already uses the Unreal game engine to make its cinematic videos; now it will use the engine to make games, Webb said.

“Our fans were saying to us all the time, ‘What game is this?’ And we formed the plan quite some time back that, with all of our team of about 40 people that we have, it would be relatively simple and much less of an uphill battle to extend the team into gaming,” Webb said.

He noted the social media following is huge with all of the YouTubue views, and it make sense to take advantage of that audience with a new immersive experience. Webb and Barrow talked a lot about using interactive images to connect to people on an emotional level. The video embedded at the top of the post shows how the heroism of a single American pilot turned the tide at the Battle of Midway in World War II. They didn’t immediately do the game, as Barrow was occupied with other work. When Barrow freed up last summer, they finally decided to forward with the plan.

“Our audience has grown around our love for storytelling, and from the very beginning, we envisioned creating games. Today, our audience is demanding a Yarnhub game, and we’re thrilled to take this next step with them,” said Webb, CEO of Yarnhub.

To bring its gaming vision to life, Yarnhub will leverage Unreal Engine 5, the same technology it uses to produce its high-quality animated films.

Unlike traditional game studios that allocate significant budgets to marketing and user acquisition, Yarnhub will dedicate the vast majority of the proceeds from the investment round to making the best game possible, Webb said. With its massive built-in audience, the company can focus entirely on development, ensuring a game that meets the high expectations of its community.

“For traditional game studios, acquiring and retaining players is both expensive and inefficient,” said Barrow, head of games at Yarnhub. “Yarnhub is in a unique position to build a true cross-media experience, where our 35 million monthly views naturally fuel game discovery and retention.”

Yarnhub is disrupting the industry by flipping the traditional game development model. Instead of building a game and then searching for an audience, Yarnhub has built a passionate fanbase first and is now creating a game using the same cutting-edge technology behind its animated films. This innovative approach extends to its fundraising strategy: By raising directly from its community, Yarnhub is ensuring that the players themselves are part of the journey from day one.

The funding will be used to expand the team with key gaming talent and to develop the company’s first game, designed to seamlessly integrate with Yarnhub’s existing universe.

This strategic move positions Yarnhub as a pioneer in blending animation and interactive entertainment, offering its community an unprecedented opportunity to be part of its evolution.

Origins

Webb spent a lot of time in tech, including a decade at Intel in software development roles. He started War History Online, The Vintage News and Abandoned Spaces. He grew the properties to 40 million monthly views and sold them to Openweb in 2021. He has also been on the board of the trustees of The Tank Museum since 2017. But he made it clear that the museum is not endorsing the company’s commercial ventures.

Meanwhile, Barrow has spent a career building and operating game studios. He’s the founder of Village Studio and was a studio manager for EA and Gameloft. He was head of operations at Rovio and Digital Chocolate, and he was a group manager at EA in charge of four studios: Tracktwenty, FireMonkeys, Slingshot and Pogo. Both Webb and Barrow knew each other for more than a decade.

The channel itself started about five years ago and it turned into full-time work in the past three years and a media business.

“We upped our game and increased the quality, and we produce all of the assets ourselves for the films using Unreal Engine,” Webb said.

The state of gaming and the collapse of user acquisition

Webb said that the game companies are struggling now because user acquisition is a nightmare.

“User acquisition is a nightmare because you pay a lot of money for it and the effectiveness is getting lower. Advertising restrictions are coming in place with regards to privacy,” Webb said. “What we’re doing, which is different, is creating an audience first that loves the content, and creating that content in a game engine,” Webb said. “And then we can create a game which dovetails into that content and that audience. Most game companies are buying mouse traps to try and catch their players. We are a pied piper. We’re playing a tune, and we’re making content that that everybody loves.”

Fans have been asking for the game for a long time. It’s kind of the reverse of what happened with Riot Games Arcane, which has had two successful seasons as an animated show on Netflix. Arcane builds on the lore of Riots’ highly successful League of Legends game.

“We’re doing it the other way around, where we’re creating the audience first, because it’s much easier to create and build a huge audience and then convert them into game,” Webb said.

At the Tank Museum, Webb does charity work, advising them on how to grow their own audience. Barrow and Webb started Yarnhub in 2021 and privately funded it. The animation studio is profitable. Now the company is doing a crowdfunding to get the attention of the audience. The team is about 40 people, including three full-time historians.

“We really work hard to get historical accuracy, get uniforms right, get the details right,” Webb said.

Building games

The first game is a historically accurate first-person shooter multiplayer game where three players can square off three more. The game will have live operations to keep players coming back. If the effort is successful, the company may raise more money and expand its team further.

There will be an opportunity to build plenty of other games. Rivals include War Thunder and World of Tanks, but Yarnhub has already done a collaboration with Wargaming, maker of World of Tanks, with a World of Warships animated collaboration.

Barrow said, “We have different scenarios depending on the amount of money we are going to raise through the crowdfunding. We’re going to recruit a team of 15 talents that are really gaming talent. We already have the assets, the animation, the tech and the story.”

The company isn’t planning to do modern conflicts and stray into the gunsights of Call of Duty. Rather, it will focus on wars of the 20th century.