A Cambridge startup has raised $6 million—a large round by gaming startup standards—to usher in a zombie takeover on your iPad.
Mobile and desktop game maker Proletariat on Tuesday announced closing a $6 million Series A round from prominent investors including Oculus backer Spark Capital and Riot Games backer FirstMark Capital.
Considering the challenging business model for mobile and desktop games—a low price and a (hopefully) high number of users—raising millions in funding sets up some pretty high expectations. Specifically, such startups are faced with having to produce major hit games to make the investment come out a success. And that is a tall order in the notoriously hard-to-predict gaming world.
But the team at Proletariat believes it has its first hit-game contender—a novel take on the zombie genre, World Zombination—and says the game is almost ready for prime time.
The massively multiplayer game allows players to pick whether they want to be on the human (Survivors) side or zombie (Infected) side in a global-scale battle.
“You can play both sides, and so in a way we are making two completely different games," CEO Seth Sivak told me in a recent interview. "The gameplay is different, the story is different [depending on the side]. There is a ton of stuff for players to play.”
Proletariat said the plan is to release World Zombination in “early 2015” on iOS and Android, with a release on additional platforms later in the year. A specific release date isn’t being disclosed. The game has been in the works for about 20 months.
In a blog post planned for Tuesday, Sivak wrote that he views the new funding “as both freedom and security, for the entire Proletariat team.” From the post:
First and foremost, it gives us a chance to ensure World Zombination is a great game. It means we can choose to launch World Zombination when we feel it is finished and ready (trust me, it will be coming soon). We are also planning to use the money to invest more into our pursuit of building an awesome community of players around Proletriat’s games and then of course, continuing to make more games.
Boston-based Spark led the $6 million round, with Spark’s Nabeel Hyatt heading up the deal. Along with Spark and New York-based FirstMark, the funding also includes Atlas Venture of Cambridge.
Proletariat had previously raised a $2.5 million seed round in 2013.
Proletariat—founded by alums of Conduit/Zynga Boston—is based out of the Harmonix office in Cambridge, and includes developers formerly from companies including Harmonix, Turbine and Disney.
Game images via Proletariat. Photo of Seth Sivak by Kyle Alspach for BostInno.
