COMMUNITIES · BUILT FROM ZERO

People first. Then the system that keeps them together.

Rikki Chandler, who founded the studio, has built two communities from nothing: a beach sports community in Florianópolis that still plays every week, and a UK game city with its own staff of 300. Running them is where we learned what a system for people needs.

01 · NOMAD · FLORIANÓPOLIS · SINCE 2023

A beach sports community, from four people to 900.

Volleyball every Sunday at Arena Beach, football on Wednesdays and pool nights, for the nomads, expats and locals of Florianópolis.

The whole Nomad volleyball group, some fifty people, on the sand at Arena Beach after a Sunday game, holding the two Nomad flags
AFTER A SUNDAY GAME AT ARENA BEACH, NOMAD’S HOME COURT SINCE 2023
A Nomad volleyball game on the beach at Lagoa: a player jumps to spike at the net while others watch, the lagoon behind
LAGOA VOLLEY, A NOMAD GAME ON THE BEACH
  1. 01
    HOW IT STARTED

    Four people at one game of volleyball, in October 2023. Arena Beach became its home court, and Sundays have run there ever since: training at 10:00, the game at 11:00.

  2. 02
    HOW IT RUNS

    The talk lives in a WhatsApp community; the organising lives on nomadfloripa.com: sign-up, Pix payment, the waiting list and fair teams. A trainer coaches the volleyball, and members earn points that pay for a free Sunday.

  3. 03
    RIKKI’S PART

    Founder and organiser, still running every Sunday. The studio built and runs the two sites behind it, and what members say after a game decides what we build next.

900
MEMBERS IN THE WHATSAPP COMMUNITY
165
PEOPLE PLAYED A SUNDAY, 12 JUL – 11 OCT 2026
4
COURTS EVERY SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2026
How the system runs its week: the Nomad case study
02 · KNG ESTATE AND THE GOV · UK, ONLINE · 2025–26

A game city for UK players, from two people to 1,700 online.

KNG Estate was a GTA V roleplay server: one character each in a shared city, live and in real time.

A briefing room in KNG Estate before an operation, The Gov’s operatives gathered round their leaders, in game
KNG ESTATE · A BRIEFING BEFORE AN OPERATION, IN GAME
The Gov’s operatives lined up in formation, in game
THE GOV IN FORMATION · IN GAME
THE CITY TURNS OUT · PLAYERS TOGETHER, IN GAME
  1. 01
    HOW IT STARTED

    Two months playing on UK servers, to learn what players wanted. Then KNG opened, built from zero by Rikki and one partner, and within a month it was the No. 1 server in the UK.

  2. 02
    HOW IT RAN

    A staff of 300, run like a company: admins, moderators and supporters, in teams for tickets, sales, events, anti-cheat, in-game calls and Discord support.

  3. 03
    RIKKI’S PART

    Inside the city, Rikki formed and led The Gov: a shadow faction with its own leaders, briefings and operations that steered the roleplay from behind the scenes. It became a server of its own, GOV Roleplay.

1,700
PLAYERS ONLINE AT PEAK, ON A 2,000-SLOT SERVER
300
STAFF, STARTED BY TWO
26,000
MEMBERS ON THE KNG DISCORD
The store and the AI city brain behind GOV: the case study
03 · WHAT WE LEARNED

What two communities taught the studio.

The beach and the game taught the same three things. Each one now shapes the systems we build.

  1. 01

    Listen before you build.

    KNG opened only after two months playing on UK servers. On Nomad, a member survey wrote the tournament rules.

    NOMAD · NOTES AFTER EACH SUNDAY BECOME THE NEXT RELEASE
  2. 02

    Make the rules fair, and visible.

    People stay when the same rules hold for everyone. On Nomad you add or remove only your own name, a place is yours once it is paid, and if it isn’t, it goes to the next in line.

    NOMAD · ONE LIST · 21 POINTS = A FREE SUNDAY
  3. 03

    Give the routine to the system.

    KNG needed a staff of 300 to keep its city running. On GOV, a purchase arrives with nobody in between; on Nomad, the server reads every open list every five minutes and does what is due.

    NOMAD · A WEEK OF ORGANISING, NOW A SCHEDULE
05 · CONTACT

Two doors. Pick yours.

Whether you are hiring or building, the first step is the same: one conversation with Rikki Chandler.

DOOR 1 · FOR HIRING TEAMSHiring for integration, solutions or implementation?

Rikki connects customers to systems, fixes what breaks and explains it so it sticks.

  • Technical integration and onboarding
  • Solutions and implementation
  • Customer engineering and support
Read the CVThe full story
DOOR 2 · FOR CLIENTSA business that should learn from its own data?

Tell us the one thing that should change. We start from that question and a written test of how we will know.

  • AI systems that run your operations
  • Product search and recommendations
  • Design, film and training for your team
Start a projectSee the work
STUDIO
ArtiFxn Design
FOUNDER
Rikki Chandler
BASED
Florianópolis, Brazil
TIME
UTC−3, working with teams across time zones

Every door leads to the same person.