Computer gaming studio Azra Games Inc. has fully moved into its new space in a pair of conjoined historic buildings in Old Sacramento.
Azra is mixing old with new, building an immersive computer fantasy battle game with blockchain technology in two historic buildings dating to just after the California gold rush.
“We’re building a world-class gaming experience,” said CEO Mark Otero, an experienced game director who was at the forefront of mobile free-to-play games with the franchise Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. His first company was Sacramento-based KlickNation.
In development since 2022, Azra’s first full game will debut in the third or fourth quarter next year. “It’s a lot of work to build an immersive experience,” Otero said.
Azra has 70 employees, about 25 of whom come into the office regularly. Some others live locally and work semi-remotely, while the company has also been adding veteran gaming professionals from the Bay Area, Southern California, other states and Canada who work fully remotely. The company urges executives and managers to work in Sacramento.
The 7,500 square feet of new office space is modern on the inside, but historic from the outside, as is required in the historic district.
Azra had previously been in a 4,600-square-foot office at 106 K St. in the historic district.
In July, Azra raised more than $32.5 million in a sale of equity as part of a $42.7 million funding round from nine investors, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company isn’t ready to talk about that funding yet, Azra Vice President of Growth Ken Walton said in an email.
It wasn't the first big funding raised by Azra.
In the spring of 2022, Azra raised $15 million led by the gaming groups of Menlo Park-based Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. In February 2023, Andreessen Horowitz led a follow-on $10 million investment.
Azra moved employees into the new office space earlier in the summer, and workers completed finishing details over the past several months.
The work cost about $1.5 million on the two buildings, which are connected on the top floor. About $600,000 of the work was on structural and seismic upgrades to the gold rush-era buildings, said Dave Scurfield, owner of The Scurfield Company, owner and manager of the buildings. The tenant improvements cost about $800,000, he said.
The larger of the two buildings, The Heywood’s Building was built in 1857, and it last had a major renovation in 1978. The smaller neighboring Cornwall building at 1011 and 1013 Second St. was built in 1853 and had additional work in 1856 after the Sacramento riverfront flooded several times. What had been the first floors of the older buildings became basements after the city raised street levels downtown from 10 feet to 20 feet in the 1860s and 1870s.
Otero is a former general manager at game giant Electronic Arts Inc. Before that, Otero started KlickNation, still Sacramento's most successful gaming startup, which he sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA).
Otero has assembled a veteran team of game designers and serial entrepreneurs to create Azra Games' first title, Project Legends.
