Quick take:
- Azra Games has announced a $10 million funding round led by A16z Crypto.
- The fundraising brings the total amount raised for the seed round to $25 million.
- The company is building an NFT game based on the Legions and Legends NFT collection.
Azra Games has completed a $10 million extended seed funding round led by A16z Crypto. The additional funding brings the total raised for the seed round to $25 million, Azra Games said on Tuesday.
The fundraising also attracted participation from web3 VCs including NFX, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, and leading global fund manager Franklin Templeton.
Azra Games was founded by CEO Mark Otero a former general manager at global gaming giant Electronic Arts. Speaking to Fortune, Otero expressed his optimism about web3 gaming citing its relatively nascent stage compared to traditional gaming.
“Legions & Legends is an opportunity for us to create something with a potentially new business model for a new platform,” he said.
On the other hand, writing in a blog post about her company’s additional investment in Azra Games, A16z Crypto’s Arianna Simpson said: “We believe that the unique ownership and economic models Web3 provides will revolutionize how people play online games.”
Although traditional gamers continue to resist the temptation to be drawn into blockchain gaming, leading video game developers and publishers led by the likes of Ubisoft, Square Enix and Jam City have all pivoted to web3 gaming.
Although one of the widely adopted concepts of building NFT games involves using non-fungible tokens as playable characters, Otera said Legions & Legends will take a different approach.
Although the game will incorporate tokens as in-game collectibles, NFTs won’t be the foundation of the gameplay, Fortune reported. The game will initially be offered via PC and mobile devices. Last year, Azra Games released The Hopeful NFT collection, which holders can use as passes to gain pre-launch access to the concept art and try out the beta version, among other benefits.
Azra Games is positioned to become a gateway for the mass adoption of web3 games. “Ultimately, we see ourselves as the potential content that onboards the next several million users to the Web3 space,” Otero told Fortune.
Lauding Otero’s and other gaming vets involved in building Azra Games, Simpson added: “Over the last nine months, we’ve seen Mark Otero and the seasoned games team he’s assembled execute in a world-class way. The team, which has been working together for years on RPG games such as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes to deliver the ultimate power fantasy to millions of players, has come back together again to build exciting RPG gaming experiences.”
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