Random Games, a new video game startup based in Boulder, announced its public launch Tuesday with a $7.6 million seed raise.
The startup's co-founders, Tony Harman and Wyeth Ridgway, are gaming industry veterans who said they wanted to create a platform that would revolutionize the relationship between gamers and game developers.
Their science fiction video-game franchise, Unioverse, uses blockchain technology to make its assets available to players and other video game developers. Those players and developers can then use Unioverse's characters, artwork and other assets to make their own games, comic books or other merchandise to sell.
“Imagine if Marvel released character art and 3D models and told fans to go make – and profit from – their fan films and comics,” Harman said in a statement. “We have a team of world-class writers, artists and developers building the Unioverse and we are basically giving it away.”
Resolute Ventures and Asymmetric led the funding round. Also participating were IGNIA, 2 Punks Capital, ID345 and Polygon. David Jones, the Scottish video game creator who developed Grand Theft Auto, among other popular games, joined the round as an investor and will serve as an adviser to the startup's founders.
Random Games plans to use the funding to grow its workforce and begin work on its first Unioverse games. It also plans to develop game assets that can be made available for free via the blockchain. It's expected to introduce its first products to the market in 2023.
The company was founded in 2021. Along with its seed raise Tuesday, Random Games launched its website and publicly introduced its in-development platform for the first time.
"A few months ago, I joined Random Games Company Inc. as president, and today I'm thrilled to officially launch the company and announce our seed funding," President Paul Walborsky said in a LinkedIn post. "This is more than a video game startup. We are creating the future of franchise entertainment with the Unioverse."
Walborsky previously founded the synthetic data startup AI. Reverie, which worked with businesses to train their machine-learning algorithms. The company was acquired in October by Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Prior to founding his own startup, Walborsky was a senior vice president at The New York Times.
Harman and Ridgway are based in Boulder and have long histories in the gaming industry. Harman previously ran development and acquisition for Nintendo of America, where he helped launch the games Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. He has since led multiple independent gaming studios, including DMA Design, where Jones produced Grand Theft Auto.
Before Random Games, Ridgway founded Leviathan Games in the late 1990s and ran the company as president and CEO. He led Leviathan as it built games for Disney, Konami, EA, Warner Brothers and Sony and worked on popular franchises, such as Terminator, Star Trek, South Park and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Random Games plans to use non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as part of its strategy to "reinvent the games business," the startup said. NFTs are considered unique assets that are stored in a blockchain and can't be replicated. They can be anything digital, including images and videos, and buying NFTs means purchasers retain ownership of the work.
Players must purchase an NFT character avatar in order to access and play Unioverse games. Because the players will own the avatars outright, they can either keep or sell them.
In addition to creating its own games in the Unioverse franchise, Random Games said it's seeking independent gaming studios to develop more games that could be set in the Unioverse. Third-party developers can use the assets created by Random Games royalty-free to make and sell their own games, the company said.
Joe McCann, founder and CEO of Asymmetric, said the idea had the potential to change the economics of gaming.
“In the Unioverse, blockchain technology is organically and thoughtfully incorporated and will change the name of the game in the entertainment economy," McCann said.
