After hearing about Overture, a new program Maestro Media announced as a way to use its infrastructure to publish games from other studios, we interviewed CEO Javon Frazier, and learned about their new program, recent deals for games featuring Lord of the Rings and DC’s JLA, among others, and news on upcoming releases.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ICv2: The impetus for this interview was Maestro’s announcement of your new Overture program. What that said was that creators could bring Maestro a project, and you can co-publish, you can partner to develop it and take it to market, or acquire the title and bring it to a wider audience. How is this different from what you were doing before or from what other publishers do?
Javon Frazier: Look, everything we’ve been doing we’ve created. We work with over 40 different licenses. We concept and create bespoke concepts around those licenses. But we realize that there’s a lot of great games out there that we did not create. Those creators need access to our licensing or commercialization or manufacturing strategy and execution, and we wanted to open it up to other potential great games.
We recently just did a deal with a company, D20 Culture, for the Justice League Unlimited RPG [with co-writer Mark Waid] and their Lord of the Rings game [Lord of the Rings: Foes of Middle-earth]. We didn’t make those games by any means; D20 made those amazing games with amazing licenses, and we’re just a distributor on those games. It’s awesome.
We also did a deal with Ghost Blitz (see “’Ghost Blitz’”), which is a game that we’re distributing.
We did Half Truth with Nighthawk Interactive (see “Maestro and Nighthawk Team Up”). That is a game that was made by Richard Garfield and Ken Jennings. Ken Jennings is the current host of Jeopardy. Richard Garfield, no explanation needed.
Those games are created by all these amazing creators, and we’re able to help, whether it’s distribution, co-publishing, commercialization, in order to bring those games to market. That’s an exciting new chapter for our business. We’ve been executing these deals, and we put a name to it.
How would you describe the Maestro line? You seem to have some games that are more hobby-focused. Binding of Isaac, for example, we would call a hobby game. Then you obviously have some mass-focused titles, especially your Disney licenses, which might be a younger, more family-type product. How do you describe your line in terms of who the target market is?
It’s more that we make the right game for the brand and the audience. Yes, Binding of Isaac has done extremely well for us in hobby because of the audience and the type of brand. With Disney and now Clash of Clans, we’re starting to see more mass interest because those are mass-market brands.
For us, it’s more so what’s the right game and the right platform of distribution for the actual brand, and what’s that right product-market fit? I wouldn’t classify us as hobby games or mass games. I do think we’re starting to get a lot more heat and excitement in the mass market.
One set of licenses we were excited to hear about and wanted to get an update on the status are the Oni Press comics licenses (see “Maestro to Produce Games Based on Oni Press Comics”). What’s the status of those games?
We’re working on what’s the thing that we bring to market; we’ve talked about a bunch of different things. Is it a board game, or what format that we work on? We’re getting close on that.
Comics are so close and near and dear to my heart. I wanted to do it the right way, and we’ve had some really good conversations with them and some good ideas cooking up that I cannot announce yet, but know that we’re working on it really hard. We announced the partnership a couple of years ago at Comic-Con, and we’re being very thoughtful about what we bring to the marketplace.
27 maybe?
Maybe ’27. Look at you, man. You’re driving on me. [laughs]
Kickstarter has played a role in a lot of your games. How would you describe the role of Kickstarter in your product pipeline?
It’s how we started the business, and it’s still very important to us. We’ve got two Kickstarter launches this year. We’ve got Clash Royale, which is a sequel to Clash of Clans (see “’Clash of Clans’”), and obviously, Clash Royale is a massive game. We’re working on the launch.
We’re also working on the launch of Sky Arena Tactics, which is a card game that is designed by Richard Garfield, another Richard Garfield game with the Sky Arena mobile games (see “’Sky Arena’”). We’re very excited about that. Those are two Kickstarters we got, and we’ve got a number of Kickstarters launching for next year.
We totally see the viability and the importance of the platform to really drive fandom, and we plan on launching a number of Kickstarters (unannounced) for next year on top of the ones I just announced for this year. It’s still something that’s important for us. It’s a way for us to really connect with our fans.
A big part of our audience is hobby game retailers. How would you describe the role of that channel in your strategy?
Significant. We’re always thinking about hobby. For me, the hobby market is the most vocal, the most passionate. We’re very focused on supporting the market.
If you look at Clash of Clans as an example, we have the hobby SKU in addition to the Target SKU because those are two different buyers. We want to make sure that we continue to service the hobby market with titles that make sense for the market. It’s obviously very important to us.
It also allows us to do things that wouldn’t work in the mass market or direct-to-consumer. Obviously, the hobby purchaser wants a lot more. They want more miniatures, things like that. We’ve been able to service that as well, which gives us another creative avenue to service a customer that’s been very vital to our business.
Obviously, like you said, we had a very successful Kickstarter with Binding of Isaac in 2021, but we’ve been selling that game since then. From one SKU to 150 SKUs, a lot of them really driven by the hobby market.
A big part of entrepreneurship is financing. How did you finance the launch of Maestro, and how are you financing this growth?
We’ve been profitable since day one. We launched an investment round and did a friends-and-family SAFE note in 2024. We overfunded on that in 2024, and between that and our own growth we’ve been able to continue to scale the business.
What do you see as your key releases for the hobby channel for the rest of ’26, and the first part of ’27?
We’re very excited about Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Also, Sky Arena is going to be really fun with Richard Garfield, I’m very, very bullish about our REWIND line (see “’Disney Afternoon Rewind Collection’”). It comes in this VHS-like format. We launched with six of these with Disney, Gargoyles, DuckTales, Goof Troop, TaleSpin. Chip ‘n Dale and Darkwing Duck, which was announced yesterday through Disney as a new TV show (see “’Darkwing Duck’”). I came home every day to watch the Disney Afternoon; it’s exciting to launch games around properties that were so integral to my childhood.
The future of REWIND is it’s a platform. We launched with Disney Afternoon, but we’ll be launching with a number of other titles in the future, so very excited about that. It’s not our own IP, but it’s a platform that we built with the team from Grimoire Garage, which are amazing designs. We did an announcement about that yesterday with Jordan Weisman and Nathan Weisman and that team to be able to scale across multiple properties (see “Maestro and Grimoire Garage”). I’m really excited about that.
Is REWIND Q1?
Yeah, REWIND is Q1. We did a Kickstarter last year, and we’re delivering the Kickstarter. I did talk about all the shipping fees and all that stuff that was part of it. [laughs] We’re delivering the Kickstarter to the fans. Then we’ll be launching in retail, and there’ll be a lot more REWINDs to come, I’m sure.
Anything else you want to say to our audience?
What I’d like to convey is how thankful I am to be in this space. Really, our cadence is for the fans, by the fans. I’ve been a whole other fanboy my entire life of these properties. I feel like I’m able to live my dreams, work on the Disney Afternoon, work on Clash of Clans, work with an amazing creator that I was just texting with.
I’ve been very fortunate. For me, I’m thankful for everyone that’s allowed me along the way to be in this space, and I got to work with amazing creators, designers, and companies in order to give back.
Source: ICv2
