Azra Games, founded by veteran EA game developer, raises $10 million for NFT-style Legions & Legends
Azra Games, which is developing a video game that includes non-fungible tokens, announced Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in additional seed funding, bringing the total to $25 million.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), who unveiled a $600 million gaming investment fund last year, 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 his company’s valuation.
“We believe the unique ownership and economic models offered by Web3 will revolutionize the way people play online games,” wrote Arianna Simpson, partner at a16z, in a blog post highlighting the additional investment in Azra announced.
Games that integrate NFTs into gameplay are now a dime a dozen; However, the financial backing for Azra, led by Mark Otero, a former general manager of gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA), signals that video game industry veterans are now weaving Web3 concepts into big-ticket games. Titans like Ubisoft, for example, have already incorporated or talked about NFTs in games they publish.
“The gaming space within Web3 is still quite small compared to the traditional gaming space,” said Mark Otero wealth. He said that Legions & Legendsthe name of Azra’s upcoming game, was an “opportunity for us to create something with a potentially new business model for a new platform”.
Otero added that NFTs will not be the foundation of gameplay Legions & Legends, which will be released on PC and mobile first, but he and his team plan to include the tokens as in-game collectibles. They also released pre-launch passes as NFTs, giving holders early glimpses of concept art, beta access to the game, and other perks.
Otero grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop role-playing game that influenced future video games of the same genre, and has had a storied career as a developer. He initially developed role-playing video games in the storage room of Mochii Yogurt, a frozen yogurt cafe he owned in Sacremento. Eventually he left the yogurt business to start his own game development company and EA then acquired his company with more than 70 employees.
At EA, in addition to senior development Heroes of Dragon Agefor which he directed and directed development Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroesa mobile game that generated over $1 billion in revenue for the gaming giant in 2021, according to an EA earnings call.
He took a break from the video game business after his success at EA, but in late 2021 he convinced himself that player-owned assets like NFTs were the next evolution of free-to-play games or games with no upfront cost to players. Otero assembled part of his own team from EA and launched Azra.
“Ultimately, we see ourselves as the potential content that will engage the next several million users in the Web3 space,” he said wealth.
Ortero said Azra plans to release the first of Legions & Legends later this year.
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