History Channel Filmmaker Dirk Gibson on Spreading Wealth and Unity Through Treasure Game$

I’m using my experience and successes to hopefully have a big impact before I’m done on this earth, which is twofold. Let’s spread wealth and create a platform that can leverage good in the world. Let’s also provide something positive in a time when things are divisive.

I had the pleasure to interview Dirk Gibson, Creator of Treasure Game$.

In addition to being a television producer and filmmaker, Dirk Gibson has built and operated successful companies in the fields of adventure, travel, healthcare, real estate, risk management and entertainment. His expertise includes behavioral health, motivational psychology, leadership consulting, business systems, industry safety, wilderness outfitting, and entertainment content creation and production. His life work inspired a Pulitzer prize in journalism and two television series. Dirk is an example of a person that
relentlessly pursues his entrepreneurial visions and personal passions.

Treasure Game$ is a Delaware registered company, founded by Dirk Gibson who masterminded the proof of concept and together with a team of innovative developers built and launched the platform on Jan 1, 2024. Media Farm Studios manages public relations and media engagement. Treasure Game$ provides live action tech-driven real life treasure hunting games and entertainment. Driving the action is innovative custom technology, which sends our players on exciting adventures searching for actual treasure hidden in the real world, worth life-changing money and prizes.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with our readers a little about your childhood backstory?

By way of a pretty rough teenage years, I ended up in psychology. You end up going through your wild times, and then I ended up counseling in psychology. The reason I live in Great Falls, Montana, is because I was brought here to build a psychiatric program for adolescents. That was 30 years ago, so I’ve been here a while. I came here because they had the largest hospital in Montana, and they wanted me to build this program for kids. And so I did it. That led to me being a system leader for 12 hospitals and 30,000 employees. I was working across all the hospitals, universities, and subsidiaries that this system owned. So at a very young age, I was dealing with a lot of employees and a big corporate system.

That led to consulting work, which I was doing on Mondays for Native American tribes and the Department of Corrections. There’s a lot of information about me out there about behavioral health and healthcare, but what I really wanted to be was an outfitter. I wanted to own an outfitting business in the wilderness because I grew up guiding in the summers. I would guide people into the largest wilderness in the United States, in Idaho. I wanted to buy one of those companies, but I didn’t have the money. So, all that work in healthcare, consulting, and working seven days a week was to try to buy one of those companies, which I did. On my 40th birthday, I bought that company. It wasn’t the same because when I was young, I didn’t have a wife and kids. When it was a dream, and when I bought it, I had a wife and four daughters. Whoops. So then I ran it for about 12 years, but about three years in, I realized it wasn’t great being away from my family.

I achieved that dream, checked it off, but I needed to do something where I could be home more, and I didn’t want to work like I did in healthcare. For some reason, I ended up deciding I was going to start a television production company. You’re talking to a guy who, when he has a thought, a vision, he cannot not do it. So I’m a true entrepreneur in the sense that I’m compelled to fulfill my vision. I don’t stop no matter how long it takes. It could take me decades. I will still do it. I was in the wilderness when I decided, and said, “I’m going to start making TV shows.” Who decides that? I mean, I was never in the business. I’d never seen a script or anything. I just was a guy in a baseball cap. Anyways, I did, and it’s been successful. I’ve had shows on the air every year since I started, which is over 10 years now, so I’ve been successful. That then led to Treasure Game$.

How did your background with the History Channel influence the development of the hybrid content for Treasure Game$?

My first show was on truTV back when they were just coming on. There have been so many changes in the entertainment business. The landscape has been forever changing. There wasn’t even Netflix, not right away. No one believed that streaming was going to make it. They were just buying up licensed libraries. So everything in the entertainment business is constantly shifting. For years, it was three channels, and it was four channels when Fox joined. But I’ve been around. I got a lot of experience with cable when cable came, and with broadcast, and then streaming.

When I thought of Treasure Game$, I knew that it couldn’t be done in a traditional production way because you can’t control when people find treasure. You can’t have cameras there. So that kind of made me think, I’ll build my own platform, and I’ll just use social media to get people to come to the platform. But once they’re on the platform, I want to do something different.

One of the things that’s different about Treasure Game$ — and almost everything is very different about it, it’s certainly a category-defining company — there’s the games, and then there’s the entertainment. The entertainment is provided somewhat by me and my people in-house, but a lot of it is by the treasure hunters. We’re very honest with people. If you’re going to upload to our platform, we want to own it and do what we want with it.

We haven’t really gotten to do much of it yet because we’re so busy building it. But once there’s more content in there, and we have more staff that can help with editing, my plan is to take the treasure hunters’ content and add production value to it. So all of a sudden, you have this montage of really cool moments going on, whether they’re funny, serious, dramatic, or action. And these people would see their self-shot footage repurposed into something highly entertaining. I think they will enjoy that. I think the world will enjoy that. So that’s part of what’s happening.

I’m moving away from the traditional. TikTok doesn’t own people’s content. YouTube doesn’t own it. We do. And so we have the right to do that. We’re not going to do anything that would make anyone upset. That’s against the whole platform. But we are certainly going to take some liberties with, “well, this would be really funny,” or “this would be really cool.” So that hybrid content is going to be pretty exciting, not just for the viewers, but for the people who submitted it.

Can you walk us through the creative process behind turning players’ treasure hunting footage into engaging content for the Watch section?

We’re currently incentivizing them because we haven’t had much time to do so yet. We’re providing context; for instance, we ask if they would choose wishes or a million dollars. We’re initiating their participation gradually. One example is a jingle contest for a wish lamp. Our focus is on igniting creativity first, then rewarding the winners. Thousands of dollars in prizes have already been awarded due to submissions. Another aspect is the absence of comments. Participants must invest time in creating either a video or uploading an image to contribute, fostering thoughtfulness.

Initially, the approach involves curating content in a creative manner. Subsequently, we collaborate with producers and creative individuals who think unconventionally, particularly those more immersed in social media culture. It’s akin to the process of selecting surprising moments on TikTok and tasking a team to creatively transform them into highly entertaining content.

Our current creative process revolves around acquiring more content from treasure hunters, as many are still unfamiliar with it. Spreading awareness is crucial, and I’ve already witnessed significant engagement. For instance, today, someone posted a parody song resembling Aerosmith, perhaps while he was on his way to work, potentially as a firefighter. Imagining different versions of this, such as one in Chicago, on a farm, in New York, and in Texas, and then combining them with special effects, is the direction I’m aiming for.

What inspired you to combine real-world treasure hunting with advanced technology, and how do you see this innovation changing the gaming industry?

I didn’t realize I was building a technology company. Like most true entrepreneurs, you’re doing one thing and then you stumble across something else. That’s true innovation when you don’t know.

In my head, I wanted to build a better model to spread wealth. There are a lot of flaws in the current models, so I wanted to make a better process to get the money to more people and then have fun doing it. Be positive and have that adventure. So in my mind, I was building these games. The first one was wish lamps. I’m like, okay, I’m going to have this lamp. They’re going to have to find the lamps, going to pay homage to Aladdin and 1,001 Arabian Nights, and they’ll get three wishes in real life. I was driven by that.

What I didn’t understand was the technology that it was going to take to build that. So, fortunately or unfortunately, depends on what day you ask me, the last 5 years, I’ve been educated in technology more than I wanted to know. I belong to a lot of third-party services: full-stack, back-end, front-end, GitHub, you name it. There was no way for these developers to develop it without meeting with me twice a week for the last 2 years. To this day, I still have meetings with them weekly because I’m still innovating. They had to pick my brain. I want them to put a pin on their phone and decide if they’re within 100 miles and have a range go out and be green or red. And that’s what I would do. And then they would have to go figure out how to do it. I’d say, I want this many clues per day per region, and I want this kind of difficulty algorithm and this kind of proximity algorithm. So I was just saying stuff, and these poor tech team people that I hired were like, “Boy, he doesn’t hold back. He just says whatever he wants.” And it’s true. I’ve spent over a couple of million dollars building the platform, and it still has a lot of work left. It’s got so many bugs to fix, but I built it from scratch. There’s third-party services like AWS, but the innovations in there are all the big stuff. I have patents pending on it all. So I became a technologist.

It’s heavy on technology. People don’t understand. You can play it on your laptop and your computer. You don’t have to play it on your phone, but it helps to have one because at some point, you got to get up and go out in the real world, and you’re going to need it. Solving clues, solving the poem, buying hints or advantage clues, and checking things out. But then 25–30% is out there hunting in the real world, which the phone helps and technology helps, but at some point, you got to use treasure hunting skills. So the technology will only take you so far. And no AI is going to help you. You got to get out, treasure hunt, do a map and a grid, and just do the work.

But speaking of AI, when I was building this, AI wasn’t free. It wasn’t readily available. Right before I launched it, it came out and it changed everything because we knew that they were just going to type the clues in. So we had to pivot. And we had to put all our clues against the chatbot and make sure that they were confused. So that has made a big difference in our process because how do you build an AI that’s smarter than AI? I’m heavily relying on human beings. Most of them live in this house: my wife and daughter, and my business partner and his daughter. But we have to outsmart the AI, and we have to type everything into it because imagine how fast you could win. So that’s been a challenge.

What challenges did you and your team face during the development of the Treasure Game$ platform, and how did you overcome them?

The technology took way longer than I thought because I was building it from scratch and I didn’t want people to know what I was building. I was doing it with a small company that wasn’t on the coast, trying to protect the idea. And then that probably set me back a little bit. That was a big challenge. Every bit has been me incrementally allowing people to know what I’m doing. So imagine two years, no one knew except my wife and kids in this house.

In the third year, my business partner knew because I needed to raise money. And then another business partner. And then, at three and a half years, the tech team gets hired in a small town. I should mention I hired an IP attorney, Charles. Charles is great. He started protecting my ideas, the patents, and the trademarks. So, it’s been this almost six-year journey of exponentially getting ready. And then I had to get some sort of organic marketing because all the money’s come from me and my three partners, so we’re still funding it.

It wasn’t like I could go hire this huge marketing team and do this big push. I really had to just use my producing background, create my own content, do it low budget, and try to do an organic release. That was difficult because it didn’t really work well. I mean, we tried to do a campaign, but without spending money, it’s hard for people to know about you, and we just needed to save the money for the game itself, the technology, and for the winners. You know, we just paid out $1.2 million the other day. We still don’t have a lot of money to do that. That’s what I keep telling the players: be patient. There’s like six of us, and we’re paying for this ourselves. I didn’t even have customer support. I answered all the questions myself for two or three months. What founder does that? Just sits there in the morning and the evening answering every problem there is.

I still have issues with tech. I still have issues communicating this to the players and the treasure hunters. It’s getting better as far as people knowing it’s real because of the winners, but still, I think people have a hard time accepting that something so good without any catch would come into the world. The world is pretty negative right now. And this is truly positive. It’s been hard because I don’t like being in front of the camera. That’s why I’m a producer. And I wanted to be an avatar. That’s what I designed and built. When people started saying it wasn’t legit and it was a scam, I couldn’t take that. I knew what was best for the company was for me to come forward and look people in the eye and say, “No, you’re wrong. You have no facts. I’m real. This is real. I’ve spent a lot of money, time, and passion putting this together, and you have no right to sit out there and say it’s a scam when you don’t know anything. It’s not.”

So that was a challenge. It’s getting better with all these articles coming out and people meeting the winners. You can go talk to the winners all you want, and they’ll tell you their own story. We have a game going right now, and someone’s going to win it pretty soon. And then there will be another one, and another one. The biggest challenge I’m facing right now is funding and getting the word out on this technology. I think those three factors, plus customer support, are always an issue.

In what ways do you envision Treasure Game$ expanding globally, and how will the platform accommodate new games and regions?

If you knew what I originally wanted to do, you would think I’m crazy. I originally wanted to have more regions, and I was trying to get corporate sponsors to pay for it from the get-go. I met with a lot of them, the big names out there, big corporations, and they, having met me, were like, “I wouldn’t bet against this guy.” Number two, they would say, “What he’s trying to do is big, and we kind of need proof.” So instead of launching with 50 regions, which is what I would have loved to do — one per state — I pulled back and said, I will just do 10, and we’ll just prove the concept and then we’ll get everyone on board.

I still am not at the point, subscriber-wise, that I can launch 10 regions at once, and I’m not at the point, subscriber-wise, where I can bring in the sponsors yet. But eventually, not that far from now, because it’s starting to get a lot of flywheel traction, I’m going to get to the point where I could open more regions simultaneously. We’re already about to have 3 at once here. And then somewhere in there is going to be critical mass, and at that critical mass, we may be able to go to those corporate sponsors. I’m going to say, I want all these regions open all the time.

And number two, I want the next game to come out, which has nothing to do with wish lamps, that has even more treasures and more regions. So if the sponsors start funding, I’m talking about the wealthiest corporations in the world, then the subscriber number fee can stay down where it’s really reasonable for them. But we still want them to have some skin in the game. We want them not to take it for granted. We want them to contribute to the investment impact program. So they still need to help make the world better that they live in. So we’re not going to go to 0, but we certainly are going to raise it up. We’ll expand nationwide and, at the same time, globally. My plan is there are 4 countries that I would like us to operate in, and partner with those countries that meet a certain criteria. I’m going to license the IP and then just we’ll provide supervision and consulting as they want.

We’ll give them our technology, we’ll show them what we’ve learned, we’ll guide them. But the reason I want to do that is I want it to spread fast. And so the best way to do that is to just license it to appropriate entities in those countries. And the reason I want to spread fast is because I want to spread wealth around the world. I’m getting messages all the time from other countries, from people, not the governments, asking, “When are you coming to South Africa? When are you coming to Norway? When are you coming to Australia and Canada?” Japan hit us up the other day.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

There have been different stages of my life where I’ve consistently done that. When I was in healthcare, helping people get off drugs and alcohol and dealing with mental health, I designed a lot of programs, curriculums, and cultural initiatives for Native American tribes and university teaching. Exponentially, the people I trained went out to help a lot of others. I received feedback on how hundreds or thousands of people were helped by things I was fortunate enough to be able to see and do with my gifts. So, I was successful in helping people there.

When I was an outfitter, some of the greatest cards and notes were about how I impacted people’s lives by taking their families into the wilderness, allowing them to get away from the rat race, and letting fathers bond with their kids and mothers find peace. I have heartwarming stories about how a week in the wilderness changed lives.

When I entered the entertainment business, I quickly realized that there wasn’t a very good risk safety program, especially in unscripted TV and movies. I started a company and ended up selling it, but I was able to help shape safety in that industry. Some of the things I helped design were adopted by big insurance companies that insure movies and keep people safe.

In my television business, some of the shows I’ve done have had a positive impact on the world. For example, there was a show called My Dream Car that was on for three seasons, where adult kids would go out and buy their parents their first car, find it, and give it back to them. It brought a lot of good into the world, and many people expressed their love for the positivity of the show on social media.

All of these experiences led me to start Treasure Game$, which I see as the biggest thing I’ve ever done. I’m using my experience and successes to hopefully have a big impact before I’m done on this earth, which is twofold. Let’s spread wealth and create a platform that can leverage good in the world. Let’s also provide something positive in a time when things are divisive.

Already, I’m seeing success because people are thanking us left and right. They’re telling us they love the vision. They’re happy there’s no negativity about it. I’m not done yet; I’m just getting started. But hopefully, by the time I am done, I will have helped a lot of people. I’m truly trying to create a path that I don’t see in today’s world for like-minded people who want a safe, secure, healthy world. Treasure Game$ is just the first step.

How can our readers our readers find out about Treasure Games$?

They can visit https://www.treasuregames.fun or on TikTok and Instagram @treasuregames.fun

Thank you for your time and expertise, Dirk. We wish you continued success.