HappyGiant and Tippett Studio - as in visual effects living legend Phil Tippet, veteran of franchises like Star Wars and Jurassic Park - revealed a Kickstarter campaign for HoloGrid: Monster Battle.
Today, not coincidentally on Star Wars Day 2016, the full scope of Levine's plan became clear. He won't tell me all the details of his plan, but several times he mentions Exploding Kittens - the most successful gaming Kickstarter to date that wrapped up its crowdfunding campaign in February 2015 with $8.7 million from backers.
It's based in part on a decades-long friendship founded when he worked at LucasArts, but it's also based on creating something that's an awful lot like Star Wars, but ultimately isn't. Or he does at least for a minute, until he reconsiders. It takes a bit of inspiration from a popular toys-to-life franchise, mixes it with real-world cards, though he rejects the idea of a purely digital purchasing option. HoloGrid: Monster Battle, he tells me, takes the world's most popular app distribution ecosystem but rejects the most lucrative way to make money there. Either way, I can't stop thinking about it. Sometimes, there'a a fine line between bold and unrealistic.
He's explaining his plan for the game, and it's nothing if not bold. "It's really a giant fuck you to the free-to-play model," Levine tells me standing among tens of thousands of attendees at PAX East, in front of an iPad showing a pre-release version of his unreleased game, HoloGrid: Monster Battle. It takes less than five minutes into my meeting with Mike Levine, president of developer HappyGiant, before he smiles behind his beard and drops his first goodnatured f-bomb.