Azra Games Inc. is looking for artists to help develop characters, scenes and equipment for its upcoming Legions & Legends science fiction fantasy role-playing computer game, which will feature collectible and tradable characters.
A 2022 startup, Azra has more than 40 employees now, seven of whom are full-time artists.
"Our game Legions & Legends is expansive in scope and being developed at a rapid pace, so our artists have been working overtime trying to keep up with its demand for new concepts and characters," said Ken Walton, vice president of growth with Azra, which is based in Old Sacramento. "We're trying to expand our capacity by recruiting some freelance talent."
The call for artists has been blasted out on multiple channels of social media, featuring no less than Azra CEO Mark Otero.
Otero co-founded KlickNation, still Sacramento's most successful gaming company. He grew that studio from two people to more than 70 in 18 months before KlickNation was acquired by game giant Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq: EA) in 2011. Otero then went on to be general manager of Electronic Arts' Capital Games studio, which launched Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. That game generated more than $1 billion in revenue and had more than 100 million downloads.
Otero says on social media that Azra is looking for freelance and contract artists as well as artists who can generate art with artificial intelligence. The company probably needs about five artists.
The call for artists via various social media channels was meant to reach out to artists globally to help, Walton said. If they end up being local, that's good too, he said, because then they can work in the office.
For a collaborative project like a game, it helps to be in the same room, Walton said. "It's an underrated way to work now, but it helps collaboration."
Some Azra artists are working on characters, which is important in Azra's case because its characters are also collectibles that players own.
"We're developing characters of various sizes and species," Walton said.
Other artists are working on the game's internal environmental art, which is literally creating the universe within the game. And some artists are developing items like tools, weapons, war machines and equipment in the game.
In May last year, Azra raised $15 million in an investment round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
In September, Azra released it first characters, Genesis Explorers, which are in-game digital assets. The characters have some utility, and you can explore the game with them, but it is only a small slice of what will be a much larger gaming universe. The first mint of characters were also non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are scarce or unique digital assets whose ownership is tracked on a digital ledger, commonly known as a blockchain. They can be kept, traded and sold.
Azra was selected last year to be in the second cohort of local companies to go through the Growth Factory accelerator in Rocklin.
