Blockchain gaming company Azra Games has received $15 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round will help fund Azra's first game, a science fiction/fantasy collectible and mass combat role-playing game code-named Project Arcanas.
A16z invested in Sacramento-based Azra Games through its crypto fund and its new $600 million game fund announced yesterday. Azra was founded by entrepreneurs Sonny Mayugba (who serves as COO) and Travis Boudreaux, along with veteran game designer and Electronic Arts alum Mark Otero (who serves as CEO).
"CEO Mark Otero is an experienced game director who was at the forefront of mobile free-to-play games with the hit franchise Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes," said a16z General Partner Jonathan Lai in the press release. "We look forward to working with Mark and the Azra team as they apply their expertise to Web3 games to develop new types of gameplay and economic design."
Capital Plans
Other participants in the seed funding included NFX, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures and Franklin Templeton. Azra will continue to expand its 24-person team with a focus on game product and development and brand building, Mayugba said in an interview with CoinDesk.
"We have a pretty big innovation budget," Otero said in an interview with CoinDesk. "And what I mean by that is we really want to rethink all the assumptions about what it means to be a collectible plus combat RPG game," he continued. "That takes time ... [and] a lot of smart people breaking away from existing, established conventions and inventing new things. And, of course, that comes with a cost."
Project Arcanas
Project Arcanas is a fantasy battle arena game in which players compete for wealth and power. Participants can collect non-fungible token-based (NFT) collectibles and build legions for battles and rewards.
"As a kid, I spent countless hours role-playing with all my different toys," Otero said in the press release. "At Azra, we're creating a game that rekindles that joy and reignites the adult imagination with the ultimate in collectible fantasy, combined with the ultimate in fast-paced mix-and-match combat that's easily accessible yet highly strategic."
Azra prototyped the game over four months with a focus on creating a visually appealing, fun game that is also accessible to players.
"We thought a lot about the economy. We've looked at all the games that are out there, and honestly, we're not satisfied with what we see," Otera explains. "We're starting from a point where the first thing we really ... going to focus on collecting and the value of what you can collect in the world."
Roadmap
Azra has announced that users will be able to collect NFT profile images, called Play Forever Passes (PFPs), which will essentially act as game passes as the team builds out the Project Arcanas universe. The company will release the first PFPs with gameplay functionality - called Genesis Explorers - in the coming months. By the end of the year, Azra plans to release teaser footage of the collectible animal combat experience for the game.
There are plans for more games within the brand, which Azra sees as parts of an entire ecosystem rather than mini-games.
Says Otero, "We have a very long-term view of the innovations we're building and the brand we're building. And we're really thinking about the additional games that can leverage the innovations of our first brand."