Nushi the Electric Blue Cybercat’s Meteoric Rise to TikTok Stardom

The Challenge: Moving from the Virtual to the Physical

Xsolla, a global videogame commerce company, has historically served the B2B market of game developers, providing payment services for countless popular games such as Fortnite and Roblox. With the advent of Web3 technologies and the metaverse, Xsolla had the opportunity to engage a consumer audience for the first time with a novel suite of business-to-consumer offerings, represented by two mascots: Babka – a wily grandmother – and her charismatic and playful pet cat Nushi. In addition, we were charged with keeping a certain amount of mystery and intrigue around Babka and Nushi given the pre-launch status of the consumer-facing products.

With plans to have Nushi make their premiere appearance alongside a full body Babka mascot performer at the 2023 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, we needed a way to physically incarnate Nushi from their life as an Unreal Engine character. Beyond this “live” appearance, the team had the remit to make Nushi a virtual influencer in their own right on social media and across virtual worlds.

The Spark

I was walking down the street when our creative director Ishan called me up from LA. He’d just been to GamesCom in Cologne and had seen the state of the art for a B2B gaming industry event and he was excited. He was like,

“We’re gonna turn one of those quadruped robots into a cat!”

We both saw the unique opportunity to converge multiple cutting edge technologies – robotics, AI, live streaming – into the ultimate robotic mascot. And the timing was just right, with new prosumer quadrupeds entering the market, democratizing access to the tech.

Luckily I knew just who to call…

Assembling the Creature Crew

During my time living in the Portland, Oregon creative community, I was embedded in the animation scene. The home of LAIKA and Bent Image Lab, Portland’s 3D artists, VFX artists, animators, and motion designers were constantly in the mix. When the Nushi project commenced, it took me just a couple phone calls, and I’d connected with Hollywood creature artist, master fabricator, and costume designer Salvatore J. Salamone.

Salamone’s previous credits include work with Lady Gaga, The Dark Crystal, and The Grinch, to name but a few. Working from 3D models built by the team’s Associate Creative Director Pierce Myers and 3D Designer Shuruq Tramontini, Salamone’s modeling process became a 3D-printed extension of the virtual production pipeline, where Tramontini had already been working on rigging Nushi for Unreal Engine and Xsolla’s proprietary metaverse product, Metasites.

After several weeks of building and testing, Nushi was ready for their debut as a public figure. Equipped with a camera in one eye socket, Nushi would not only be the subject of the team’s content plan, they would be able to create content as well.

Building the Event Team

In order to execute our ambitious content plan for GDC I reached out to my west coast agency network and hired a copywriter, associate creative director, junior and senior video editors. Additional booth staffing was provided by executive producer Scott Levkoff, rounding out our team with mascot performers, hosts, content creators and photographers.

The Debut

Nushi’s soft launch on Twitter, Tiktok and on the streets of San Francisco demonstrated just how provocative a blue robotic cyber cat could be. Our team of content marketers produced a rich array of social content, fanned the flames of online engagement, and responded in kind to memetic associations that Nushi picked up along the way. Supported by a modest, targeted media spend, engagement rates were impressive. UGC indicated people tended to either fall in love with, or love to hate on, Nushi, with fans comparing the cat’s hypnotic eyes to the gaze of the late great Eartha Kitt and haters claiming they’d be ready to steal a car just to run Nushi over, not gonna lie. The “Do the Noosh” video series went viral, with over 30 million plays on Tiktok alone.

Babka and Nushi appeared in the Moscone center lobby and rolled out the red carpet for developers, supported by a front and back house team of 30. Live video from Nushi’s eye camera, filtered through custom AI-enhanced image transformers created by the team’s AI Artist Watson Hartsoe, fed both a local video monitor rig on site as well as a live stream. Live music and scoring was provided by acclaimed composer and musician, Gabe Noel, while Sacremento Kings dancers pranced alongside Nushi and the audience. Even Esfand TV stopped by to stream Nushi on Twitch for a spell!

Takeaways

Ultimately, folding to both internal organizational pressures and external market forces, Babka and Nushi were sunset by Xsolla during the summer of 2023’s massive tech layoffs. But Babka and Nushi’s legend lives on. Their debut exemplified creative innovation at its finest, merging robotics, entertainment, and audience engagement in a seamless blend.

Nushi’s success underscored the team's adaptability, vision, and commitment to pushing technological and creative boundaries. The world witnessed not just the birth of the first fully furred robotic mascot, but the rise of a social media phenomenon.

Nushi-Bot Credits

Creative Director: Ishan Shapiro
Creative Producer: Gabriel Shalom
Creature Artist: Salvatore J. Salamone
Associate Creative Director: Pierce Myers
3D Artist: Shuruq Tramontini
Design Director: Anadin Attar
Lorekeeper: Noah Crowe
AI Artist: Watson Hartsoe
Worldbuilder: Rachel Joy Victor
Marketing Manager: Michael Petralia
Video Editor: Megan May Daalder
Associate Creative Producer: Haley Who