Azra Games, which develops video games that incorporate non-fungible tokens, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in additional seed funding, bringing the total amount to $25 million.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which last year opened a $600 million fund for gaming investment, led the round, while other investors included NFX, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, and Franklin Templeton. Mark Otero, Azra’s founder and CEO, declined to comment on the company’s valuation.
“We believe that the unique ownership and economic model Web3 provides will revolutionize how people play online games,” Arianna Simpson, partner at a16z, wrote in a blog post announcing the additional investment in Azra.
Games that incorporate NFTs into their gameplay are now a dime a dozen; However, the financial support for Azra, led by Mark Otero, a former general manager at gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA), signals that veterans of the video game industry are now turning the Web3 concept into a big-ticket game. Titans like Ubisoft, for example, have integrated, or are talking about integrating, NFT into their already released games.
“The gaming space in Web3 is still quite small compared to the traditional gaming space,” said Mark Otero fortune. He said that Legion & Legendthe name of the upcoming Azra game, is “an opportunity for us to create a potentially new business model for a new platform.”
Otero added that NFTs will not be the basis of the gameplay Legion & Legend, which will initially launch on PC and mobile devices, but he and his team plan to include the tokens as collectibles in the game. They are also releasing pre-launch passes as NFTs, where owners get an early look at concept art, beta access to the game, and other benefits.
Otero grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop role-playing game that influenced video games in the same genre, and had a career as a developer. He originally developed the role-playing video game in the stockroom of Mochii Yogurt, a frozen yogurt cafe he owns in Sacremento. Eventually, he left the yogurt business to start his own game development company, and EA later acquired the company with more than 70 employees.
In EA, in addition to leading development in Heroes of the Dragon Agewho lead development for and manage Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroesgames for mobile devices generated more than $1 billion for the gaming giant, according to EA’s earnings call in 2021.
After his success at EA, he took a break from the video game business, but at the end of 2021, he believes that player-owned assets, like NFTs, are the next evolution in games or free games. with no upfront cost to players. Gathering some of his own team from EA, Otero launched Azra.
“Ultimately, we see ourselves as the potential content that will bring the next few million users into the Web3 space,” he said. fortune.
Ortero said that Azra plans to publish the first of Legion & Legend later this year.
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