For your typical up-and-coming tech startup, $3 million isn’t exactly a massive round in an age when fundings in the nine digits are almost commonplace. But in the games industry it’s a different story: The notoriously hard-to-predict gaming market make development studios an especially risky bet for investors.
That’s what makes a new $3.2 million round for Framingham’s Disruptor Beam so notable—it's actually a sizable amount of money for an independent gaming company.
Disruptor Beam has gained a following in recent years as the developer of “Game of Thrones Ascent” and is now gearing up to release “Star Trek Timelines.” For the company, focusing on pop-culture-related games that stay true to the original stories appears to be a savvy move.
"Because of how well Jon and his team have treated the stories and the characters in a game environment, he’s been able to secure additional license deals."
Both games have required major licensing deals with heavy-hitting intellectual property owners behind "Game of Thrones"/"A Song of Ice and Fire" and "Star Trek," of course. And for local investor CommonAngels, those deals have done much to provide assurances, said senior managing director Maia Heymann. “These are properties with rich story-lines and huge audiences, and having a hungry-for-more-content audience is compelling to us from an investment perspective,” she said in an email.
Disruptor Beam founder Jon Radoff and his team have been “brilliant at building compelling, immersive gaming experiences that remain authentic to the story lines,” Heymann said, and “because of how well Jon and his team have treated the stories and the characters in a game environment, he’s been able to secure additional license deals to other huge properties. It’s a ‘success breeds success’ story.”
CommonAngels has backed Disruptor Beam in both the new and prior funding rounds.
Beyond ‘Star Trek Timelines’
Along with funding the forthcoming Star Trek game, the $3.2 million Series A round will also help the company to secure additional licenses and bring “some of the most beloved genres in popular culture in the queue for future development.”
That’s not it for the company’s near-term ambitions, either—Disruptor Beam plans to use some of the funding to build new software that will let players connect socially across the company’s different games.
That software could eventually be extended to games outside the Disruptor Beam universe as well, “sort of like the Steam for mobile/social games,” a spokeswoman said (though that “is going to take time,” she said).
Funding
Among the new investors in the company’s Series A round were GrandBanks Capital and Midverse Studios. Along with CommonAngels, other returning investors included Romulus Capital and Harmonix founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. The round is mainly new equity, along with some conversion of existing debt.
Disruptor Beam employs 40 and has now raised more than $5 million since its founding in 2010. Other investors in the company have included Google Ventures.
