StoryCo and ‘Halo’ Showrunner Launch Blockchain-Based Story “Disco Ball”

• Blockchain-based creative platform StoryCo launches a new immersive storytelling concept.
• People who sign up for a StoryPass (an NFT) can collect digital art and have creative control over “The Disco Ball”.
• StoryCo just raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by VC firms Collab + Currency and Patron.

StoryCo, the blockchain-based creative platform from brothers Justin and JP Alanis, formerly known as Story DAO, is launching a new immersive storytelling concept – “The Disco Ball”, called a “first-of-its-kind interactive narrative that unfolds across StoryCo’s site, social media and real-world interactions.”

Kyle Killen, the original showrunner of Paramount+’s “Halo” series (adapted from the Xbox game) and creator of Fox’s “Lone Star,” is the lead writer — or “story architect” in StoryCo parlance — on the project.

The experience, which was published on Thursday, is set against a glittering backdrop in space, as illustrated by artistic brother duo Shelby and Sandy. Contestants solve puzzles along the way as protagonist “Captain Alma Cooke and her team of astronauts on the International Space Station … are thrown into an existential journey to save the multiverse,” StoryCo said.

Like other Web3 storytelling projects, “The Disco Ball” is looking to build a community, and potential participants are asked to sign up for a free StoryPass (read: NFT) that will allow them to collect digital art from the project. At the end of “Disco Ball”, NFT holders will “take control of the infinitely expanding Disco Ball universe.”

These community members will not only have control over creative decisions, but over each project’s coffers, Justin Alanis said, which includes NFT sales, IP licensing revenue and royalties. Half of all net income from projects such as “Disco Ball” will then be shared between the treasury members after the story writers and creators have been compensated.

The “real-world interactions” available to StoryPass holders are being kept under wraps for now, but Alanis said story clues are in “both physical and digital spaces that allow attendees to interact with and help” the characters.

The Alanis brothers are part of a new wave of storytellers wants to create direct relationships between creators and fans using blockchain, although they want to use more layman-friendly terminology when doing so. (Hence the term “StoryPass” instead of “NFT.”)

“The goal there is to show how amazing this new technology can be to incubate this intellectual property, and then gradually merge all of this Web3 technology to show how additional incentives, rewards and access ownership models can be an accelerator for our underlying product market fit with the creators that we have on the platform,” Justin Alanis told Insider.

Alanises’ vision attracts Hollywood traditionalists like Killen, who is also known for creating the ABC series “Mind Games,” starring Christian Slater, and NBC’s “Awake,” starring Jason Isaacs.

The company has “created a path for an entirely new form of storytelling, allowing for a creative freedom that previously did not exist,” Killen said in a statement. “I’ve long been looking for a way to immerse audiences deeper into the story by making them a part of both the story and the creative process, and the technologies made available by StoryCo now make that possible.”

StoryCo also just raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by two VC firms — crypto-focused Collab + Currency and Patron, which are focused on “supporting founders building toward an interactive, multi-player internet,” according to its website.

Among the round’s other participants are Floodgate Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Sfermion and Flamingo DAO, plus angel investors Lloyd Braun, Sabrina Hahn, Packy McCormick and GMoney, as well as other executives from talent agencies WME and UTA.

“Despite Hollywood and the entertainment industry growing into such a massive business around original IP in recent years, the creative talent that helps imagine and bring these stories to life are often overlooked and excluded from the value they contribute to create,” Patron general partner Jason Yeh said in a statement. “We believe that better models will emerge that help new creative talent capture and share the value around these IPs.”