Sacramento-based Azra Games, a startup blockchain-based company that is producing online role-playing games where players earn tokens as they play, is ramping up quickly.
The company is still in stealth mode. But on social media including LinkedIn, company executives have posted repeatedly that they have built a team of 15 and are hiring to double that.
The company is led by CEO Mark Otero, co-founder of the Sacramento region’s most successful gaming startup just over a decade ago, KlickNation.
With Azra’s games, players will be able to get their characters as a non-fungible token, which they own. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are specific units of data stored on a digital ledger, commonly known as a blockchain.
Otero started KlickNation in 2009 in Sacramento, before selling it three years later to Redwood City gaming giant Electronic Arts Inc. Otero worked as an executive with Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) for another four years.
Otero wasn’t available for an interview.
Other employees at Azra include local entrepreneur Sonny Mayugba, who is Azra’s chief operating officer, and Ken Walton, a co-founder of KlickNation, according to LinkedIn.
Azra is currently hiring for positions that include economist, artist/illustrator, product manager, animator, full stack Web3 engineer and several technical artist positions, according to the company’s post on LinkedIn. Some of the positions are listed as on-site, and a handful of them are listed as remote working.
Full stack engineers are able to work both on front-end webpages as well as the server side. Web3 is dealing with blockchain technology.
Players will also be able to earn Azra currency as they play.
Azra hasn’t yet released any games. It is currently building Arcanas.io, which is now just a holding page on its own website.
KlickNation developed games for social platforms like Facebook, where users could play with their friends. The games were free to play, and users could pay to upgrade. The company made its money from the upgrades.
Otero earned his degrees from both sides of the Yolo Causeway. He has a bachelor's degree in computers and graphics and a master's degree in computers and artificial intelligence from California State University Sacramento. He earned an MBA from the Graduate School of Management at University of California Davis.
