Watch Club is creating short video games and creating a social network around them

Henry Soong is trying to create a vertical microdrama series that doesn’t suck. That makes it Watch Club a very special initiator within this multi-billion dollar manufacturing industry about programs that systematically destroy things, what to do and how to use malicious methods to spend a lot of money within a program.

“Ninety percent of these stories are, ‘I’m a poor girl!'” There’s a market for this, and we shouldn’t laugh at this, but I think this could be a lot bigger than just playing a love game for the AI ​​neighborhood.”

Soo’s comments are a bit controversial, but not wrong. Competitor ReelShort generated $1.2 billion in in-app purchases last year, while DramaBox generated $276 million. The advantage, he said, is that it’s so milquetoast that it can be created using AI-generated content.

What would be the benefit of a microdrama program that produces shows that are really good and worth talking about?

Soong is trying to answer this question with Watch Club, a program that contains microdrama stories created by SAG and WGA actors and writers (leading programs like DramaBox and ReelShort do not use the collaboration technology).

Soong, a former Meta product manager who describes himself as a “fantasy,” thinks that what makes TV so special is the community around it. Drawing on his experience working in social media, he also wants to differentiate Watch Club from existing apps by embedding a social network within it.

“I think you can create a fun business if you take what makes TV so fun,” he said, pointing to “Rivalry on Fire” as an example of what he’s talking about. “You watch it, and then you just want to gossip about it with your three best friends, or see what 100,000 queer, other girls or gay people on the Internet are saying.”

Right now, people are chatting about “Severance” ideas on Reddit, or doing “Stranger Things” at the end of Tumblr. Before Twitter existed cesspool then X, you have to work hard to avoid “Lotus” or “White Lotus” spoilers. Soong sees the possibility of having an exhibition and theaters in one place.

How will the program make money? Like many startups, which are funded, it’s an open question for now, until it becomes clear how users are using the app. The answer may be advertising, but the idea itself was interesting enough to protect GV-supported crops. Watch Club has also received checks from people like Patreon founder and CEO Jack Conte, as well as current and former executives of Hulu, HBO Max, and Meta. Upside Ventures, a company run by top UK YouTubers the Sidementhey also participated.

Soong has no background in film, that’s why he brought it Devon Albert-Stone as the initiator. He said he plans to hire WGA writers to produce a slate of 10 shows.

“We work with very talented people when they have a few months to work on projects that may not cost a lot of money because we give them the opportunity to do things that Amazon will not allow them to do quickly and quickly that sounds more interesting than the companies watching television,” said Soong.

He added: “I am very good at knowing how to monetize businesses that seem impossible to monetize.”

At Meta, his goal from 2016 to 2019 was to figure out how to make money in China, a country where no one can use Meta’s products. By 2019, Mr. Soong said, Meta generated $5 billion a year in advertising sales for Chinese companies seeking to advertise to people outside the country.

Selling Chinese commercials may not be as glamorous as film and TV, but this job gave him more insight into the business model behind microdrama programs, which have grown in popularity in China at the end of the last decade.

“The time I left Meta (in 2019) is when Chinese drama programs started spending all this money to buy ads on Instagram to get Americans and Germans to download ReelShort and DramaBox,” he said. “I know the playbook for this business. I know it’s expensive and very expensive, and I think you can build a better business if you don’t rely 100% on getting paid users.”

Watch Club will have the first opportunity to test its concept when it releases its first show, “Return Offer,” which it plans to distribute on its program and daily sessions. On Tuesday, the company shared the first trailer for the show — which centers around a group of techies in San Francisco competing to make a comeback.

“My goal is to make sure that our high-quality stories can reproduce what they expect from television, and part of doing that is building a welcoming, creative environment with talented artists, where people are excited, even if they have a small budget, to create something amazing,” said Soong.