Monklie began in mobile games and mobile apps, and kept going — into the devices themselves, into the worlds inside them, and into the shops and streets where the rest of life happens. We are building toward a future that looks the way science fiction promised it would, and we think it arrives as ordinary things: a device on a nightstand, a world worth returning to, a song that follows you around for a summer, a parcel at the door the next morning.
In practice, that means committing to four things at once:
- Foundational research world models, real-time rendering, image and avatar models built around people — the technology our worlds and our stories are made of.
- Entertainment hardware a device designed around play — well-built, easy to start, and priced to be an easy yes.
- Worlds and music interactive experiences we produce with the studios who build them, released continuously, and artists whose work lives inside them and out in the world.
- Software a desktop application for running a team of software agents: a visual, card-based way to direct many of them at once.
- Commerce, online and on the street trusted brands in everyday electronics and personal care, clothing of our own and from labels we help start, and our own shops and couriers to bring it to you.
They belong together, because each one makes the others better. What follows is a closer look at each.
If nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away. If things change radically in the next decade, then the future is nearly at hand.
The Technology Underneath
Some of what we want to make doesn't exist yet, so we build the technology for it ourselves. We train world models that generate places — somewhere that has never existed, rendered live as you move through it. And we build performers who can carry the warmth of film or the freedom of animation, depending on what a scene asks for.
We also train image models around the hardest subject there is: people. Faces, bodies, fabric, and the way a garment actually falls on someone. It is the difference between a picture of a jacket and a picture of a person wearing one.
A Device Made For Play
Our hardware is a small machine for entertainment: something you leave out rather than put away, that belongs in a room with books and plants in it, and that looks like it was made for the place it sits.
Making it ourselves means the things that run on it can be exactly what we intend. The worlds, the stories and the music are built for that screen and that shape, and they arrive the way they were meant to.
A device is also a habit. We would rather make something you turn to in the evening than something that follows you everywhere, and that changes what we put on it, and what we leave off.
Worlds, Stories And Music
The worlds we produce are places you step into rather than levels you complete — places with weather, streets, people and a sense that something is happening whether or not you showed up. They arrive the way a season does, a little at a time, so there is always a reason to come back.
Music runs through all of it. Our artists write, record and perform, and their work reaches beyond the worlds it started in — on your headphones on the way to school, and on a stage in front of an audience that came to see them.
And there is our app: somewhere to watch, browse, listen and lose twenty minutes without regretting it, made with the same care as everything else we put our name on.
Software For The Agent Era
Software is starting to work on its own — running long tasks, making changes, coming back with results. What has been missing is somewhere to run it all from.
So we built one: a desktop application for running a team of software agents, visual and card-based, where every piece of work is something you can see, follow and pick up at a glance. Hand out real work, put a dozen of them on it, and keep hold of all of it.
Shopping, Online And On The Street
Alongside all of it there is a shop: trusted brands in everyday electronics and personal care, chosen carefully and kept at fair prices. We would rather be the easy choice than the expensive one.
A clothing label of our own sits beside it, and a marketplace where other people can start theirs. New labels get real fabric and real production, with the suppliers, manufacturing, logistics and delivery handled for them. They bring the idea and the audience. Starting a clothing brand should take taste, not a warehouse.
Our Stores
Then there is the street. Our own shops are deliberately simple, built around kiosks instead of queues — some compact pickup points, some larger and properly stocked — and they deliver locally by cargo bike, in our colours. The app will always tell you where the nearest one is.
What's Next
All of it points the same way: the future that films promised us, arriving as ordinary, well-made things you can afford — a device on a nightstand, a world to disappear into, a song stuck in your head, a parcel at the door in the morning.
We are building slowly enough to get it right and quickly enough to matter, and we intend to still be doing it in fifty years.