Quick take:
- Spacebar is a space-themed casual Web3 game.
- Gabby Dizon, CEO of YGG; Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon, and others participated in the round.
- Spacebar will launch in the coming months.
Virtual gaming studio, AO Labs, has raised $4.5 million in a seed round for its first blockchain game, Spacebar. The round was led by Yield Guild Games (YGG), with participation from 70 investors, including some of the biggest names in crypto and GameFi.
Investors who participated in the round included Gabby Dizon, CEO of YGG; Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon; Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin of Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis; and Kyu Lee of South Korean video game company, Com2uS.
The gaming studio was founded by gaming and tech veterans Joony Koo and Christy Choi. Koo was previously the COO of South Korean mobile games company, BiNAREE, Inc., and the Co-Founder and Head of Business Development of South Korean digital asset company, Block Crafters. Choi was the Founding Director of Binance Labs from 2018-2020, and is currently an advisor at YGG.
Speaking to VentureBeat, Koo said: “I think gaming will probably be the piece that actually engages all these different building blocks across crypto. That is why I am extremely bullish about building this game because it could be the gateway to drive mass adoption. It’s not just because the game is fun. It is because while playing the game, you will interact with all the different tools being built in this space.”
AO Labs is on a mission to build a community-driven, open-source blockchain game called Spacebar. It is a space-themed casual game that integrates Web3 tools including a decentralized identification system, DeFi, NFTs, and game guilds. The studio has yet to reveal which blockchain the game will be built on.
Commenting on AO Labs’ decision to raise funds from Web3 founders instead of venture capital firms, Choi told VentureBeat that they “wanted to empower the community and build a game where we built the game with the community,” which was why they went to people that they trust in the Web3 gaming space.
“YGG is excited to back the AO Labs team in their mission to accelerate the ownership economy and composability through games in Web3,” said CEO Gabby Dizon.
Spacebar will be launched next year and the team behind the game includes alumni from Binance, Kakao, Coupang, Com2uS, Disney, and venture-backed startups. The company currently has a team of six people, and hopes to hire aggressively to accelerate the game’s development.
AO Labs is currently working on a prototype of Spacebar, which will change as the game’s launch date approaches. Borrowing ideas from esports and user-generated content, Spacebar will be an arcade-like game with simple leaderboards. Users will be able to sell in-game assets to make money and be involved in the game’s major updates.
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