Arthur Parsons Discusses Funko Fusion, How It Was Born and What We Can Expect Going Forward (INTERVIEW)

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Arthur Parsons Discusses Funko Fusion, How It Was Born and What We Can Expect Going Forward (INTERVIEW)

Funko Fusion has hit the shelves and digital storefronts as a celebration of a mass of different IPs. Developed by 1010 Games, led by two of the original guys behind Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO Games, Funko Fusion’s more than what the LEGO games aimed to be, aimed at pleasing fans of the franchises old and new alike.

I was lucky enough to discuss the game, the future of the franchise and what we can expect, and much more with Arthur Parsons, game director and driving visionary of Funko Fusion at Gamescom 2024.

[Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity]

Funko Fusion is More Than a LEGO-Reskin

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First of all, thanks for your time! Would you mind explaining who you are and what the studio is working on?

So, I’m Arthur Parsons, and Funko Fusion is 22 different IP brought together in basically a celebration of fandom. I don’t know if you know the history of the studio, but we’ve been going about just over three years. But myself, John, my boss, we’re ex-TT Games, so John was the original founder of Traveller’s Tales. I worked for him there for 23 years.

Between myself and John, we pretty much game-directed each of the Lego games so we’ve worked with IP a lot, obviously, we’ve worked on mashups before with Lego Dimensions and stuff and the whole idea of setting up 1010 was to try and do something new and exciting from the ground up with Funko and let’s see if we can create the next big breakout video game franchise that’s the high level, the blue sky thinking so to say.

Game 1 we basically partnered with NBC Universal because they have lots of studios that have lots of great IP. We’ve got a great relationship with Universal from previous work but they have what we think is the right mix. So everything from Jaws from the 70s and Battlestar Galactica and then you go all the way through up to the modern-day Umbrella Academy, and then you’re pit-stopping at Xena, Warrior Princess, Knight Rider, Back to the Future, you name it. They have kind of something for everyone.

We spent three years growing a studio making a game and we did it without doing any overtime, no crunch which was important when we sat out on the journey, it was like, we’re going to do this.

So they were the ideal partner for game one. Because we thought we needed a bit more of a mix we added Invincible because our physical partners are Skybound, Skybound own Invincible so yeah we’ve worked with Robert Kirkman on that to make sure it’s bang on. We’ve added Walking ***** – the comic version – just a couple of characters.

Yeah, we added Five Nights at Freddy’s because that’s incredibly hot for the younger end of our demographic. And so we’ve got, effectively, that cameo level is a recreation of the original Five Nights game with a twist on it, like our own twist. So it’s a real diverse celebration, as you can imagine. He-Man’s in there because I grew up watching He-Man, it’s my favorite thing on the planet.

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What’s the story behind Funko Fusion?

The sort of tldr version is Freddie Funko is Funko’s mascot character, so he’s in his toy factory, and then out of the depths comes Eddie Funko and he’s basically everything that’s bad in the world or about Funko. He even plays on the fact that people don’t like the *****-eyed toys and stuff, so that’s who he is. He goes through trashing the world, basically. And your job is to make sure everything’s okay. But that’s a nice light-touch story just to make it sit together and make sense.

In terms of the game and the gameplay, it’s basically a third-person action-adventure game. Every character is distilled in Funko form. Every character is kind of unique.

So there’s something in the game that people won’t find until they accidentally find it and once it’s out there.

The controls are the same. Every character is a little bit unique so for example, McCreevy here has got his shotgun, but he’s also got his ***** axe from the movie. The game is a mixture of puzzling and combat.

We learned from doing so much work on games in the past that you’ve got to really think like a fan to be able to deliver easter eggs or crossover moments or things that super fans are going to be like “Oh I wish they did this. I wish they showcased that and featured…”, whatever it might be.

So the main hub, up the top is the toy factory. You can play the main levels in any order, so when you first start you basically get asked ‘Where do you want to start?’. So as a He-Man fan, I’d obviously start there, but you could start in Hot Fuzz or Scott Pilgrim or wherever you want to go. And then this unlocks based on how you’ve played it, it’s going to be different yeah so it’s not a linear experience.

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Can you only use the lore-accurate characters in the levels?

No, so when you first play say Hot Fuzz you’ve got the choice of Nick, Danny or Doris, etc. You can pick any of those and you’ll play it through. [This has since been changed in a recent update, and any character can be used at any time].

The minute that you’ve played it, you can go back and play with any characters. So the first time you have to be accurate for all these reasons.

Well, more to make it make sense because otherwise it’s not necessarily going to be coherent. And superfans are going to want to see what’s Skinner up to, what’s Frank Butterman up to, and so on.

So they’re gonna want that experience and obviously we’ll wanna do the retelling of, you know, finding the armory stuff and tooling up and all that cool stuff. And we’ve also tried to match the styling, so Edgar Wright’s sort of like classic, sort of like fast cuts, we’ve tried to mimic that for Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the *****, but obviously for other stuff like The Thing we’ve tried to match John Carpenter’s cinematography and so on.

Why Funko, and not more LEGO, or something else maybe?

Well, that’s the thing and the way I always look at Funko Pops is it’s almost like a visual expression of who you are. Yeah. So like my office is full of He-Man Pops I’ve got I think about 110. There are still a few I haven’t got but I’m working on it. Then at home, I’ve got Fraggle Rock, The Goonies, Duran Duran, so again that’s why we tried to capture Funko in the game that’s why we use the pop boxes and everything’s kind of themed. The whole idea of this game is it’s a fun recreation, whether it’s Hot Fuzz, or whether it’s Scott Pilgrim.

So we’ve hidden stuff away, pretty much everywhere in the entire game. Yeah, she melted her face off. So again, there are nice touches there. In fact, I can probably show you a quick bit of gore.

The game seems to include a bit of gore, surprisingly?

The gore is very in keeping with the so something like Jurassic World there’s no gore because there isn’t really in those movies, but for something like Jaws you do see Quinn get properly chewed up but it’s all tastefully done because it’s vinyl it’s plastic.

And this is where our story comes in as well, as when Eddie appears, he’s a shapeshifter. So he basically murders people and then takes them over. So he then becomes, obviously, Danny’s dad.

Again, little things like that, little Cornetto moments. The swan plays, obviously, a big part in the movie. So we feature the swan heavily throughout the entire level. We’ve also got the decapitated bodies as well, and because it’s a police movie, we have a mechanic where you basically go around the ****** scenes looking for evidence.

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So do you have specific mechanics for those levels?

So each main level unlocks a mechanic which can then be used together in other levels.

If people want to swap characters, not a problem, but also, if people don’t want to swap characters, they can unlock these cool gadgets and weapons and use those instead. So yeah, so there are grenades, a VHS tape launcher, Sword of the Ancients, and then a load that hasn’t unlocked yet, but basically every IP’s got a special *******.

So there’s like a Book of the ***** **** from The Mummy and some other weird and wacky stuff. There’s a shark **** in Jaws, so then you can ***** exploding sharks.

What keeps you going when developing this sort of thing, after so many years of IP-based development?

We’re fans of this stuff and even if it’s stuff we’re not necessarily aware of we’ve kind of just done our research you know. We watched endless episodes of whatever it might be just trying to get the magic pieces out of whatever it is whether it’s Voltron or whether it’s something more mainstream.

Other than He-Man what’s your favorite IP that’s included in the game?

So other than He-Man because that’s an easy answer. I actually grew up on Battlestar Galactica, whereas a lot of people are Star Wars fans. I actually grew up on Galactica and Cylons, so for me that sort of like, one by one by your command is cool.

And obviously, you know, Starbuck and Apollo and everyone else. And I don’t know if you remember the original, the fake dog Moffat was a chimp in a suit. So it’s like deep-cut ***** and it’s like so-so in the game.

We’ve got Moffat and it’s animated as though it’s a chimp in a suit and it’s just little nods like that. There’s a great cutscene where you’ve got all the Cylons and they’re all watching Knight Rider and so you’ve got Kit and Kit goes ***** ***** and then all the Cylons go ***** ***** and they’re all celebrating like like it’s their hero.

Between myself and John, we pretty much game-directed each of the Lego games so we’ve worked with IP a lot.

I guess not a lot of people like Battlestar, but I kind of grew up on that. So I like that, I like He-Man, and I love Edgar Wright’s stuff, I love Shaun of the *****.

At Comic-**** recently we had a little pop-up where we recreated the Winchester, and so at the back of the Winchester you could play the game and it was just a cool little pop-up in San Diego.

Are you planning on adding new IPs, new characters etc?

So yeah it’s cool, it’s exciting and we’ll probably look to maybe add the extra things here and there post-launch if that’s what people want. At the minute we’ve got a couple of ideas but then once the game’s out we’ll see how people react, what they want, what they don’t want and we’ll kind of move forward from there.

We’re not going to just abandon the game, we’re just going to be supporting it but it’ll all be like ethical if that’s the right word there’s no microtransactions in any of that it’ll all be like really sort of like nicely sort of like pocket money priced DLC people to enjoy.

We’ve got a multiplayer mode that we’re going to be adding to the game, so four-player online multiplayer. It’s a four-player campaign basically.

We’re a little independent studio in Warrington and this is our game our baby we spent three years growing a studio making a game and we did it without doing any overtime, no crunch which was important when we sat out on the journey, it was like, we’re going to do this. And then when we’re actually doing it, it’s hard because you’re all getting that work-life balance.

And so, yeah, we’ve just had to be really careful and really planned about how we do stuff. But it’s nice. It’s a much better way of making games.

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Why should people play Funko Fusion?

With 22 IPs, there is something for everyone. And then by that, you introduce them to the main scene anyway, and it could be a proper role in… For me, that’s the exciting thing, right? some people will play this who don’t know who He-Man is other than the ‘hey hey hey’ meme or appearing in Compare the Market ads.

If that leads them to go and watch either the

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sort of show or go back to the Filmation series that’s great or vice versa, they’ll come to the game for one thing and end up being a fan of something else because we all like stuff but we all like different stuff and we don’t know what we don’t.

Is there anything that you never get asked, you never normally get to share?

So there’s something in the game that people won’t find until they accidentally find it and once it’s out there and people have actually found this character I’ll be able to talk about it but that was I think it was phone call number one in 2021 with myself and Jason at Funko where we both said after He-Man we both said “This has to go in the game”, and it’ll be a WTF moment, but I can’t say any more than that.

It’s one thing that we haven’t announced you know I’ve managed to keep that under wraps, likewise with Mega Man; we managed to keep that under wraps for quite a long time, and then yes the week after launch there’s also something that’s going to be super exciting.

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