Bravo Ready raises $ 3 million for the BR1: Infinite Royale NFT game

Bravo Ready has raised $ 3 million to develop BR1: Infinite Royale, an endless Battle Royale game that uses non-fungible tokens (NFT).

The skill-based game uses a “win-to-earn” model, where players wager money to take part in a Battle Royale match and earn tokens for each kill they receive.

The title marries NFT technology and smart contract automation. Investors include Solana Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Shima Capital and Fractal CEO Justin Kan. The funding will be used to accelerate game and software development.

BR1: Infinite Royale is a risk-based shooter, where players pay $ 1 to spawn in the game. They can earn tokens in Solana’s SOL cryptocurrency for every kill they receive.

“When you start betting on your performance in a game, you never get the same level of excitement unless you always have the associated level of financial risk,” said Evan Ryer, CEO of Montreal-based Bravo Ready, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“This is not just a new game – it’s a new way to play. It fundamentally reinvents the financial side of being a player, “said Ryer.” Our mission is to be at the crossroads of great games that people love and a business model that will create value for all stakeholders, whether you are a player, audience member, content creator or gaming investor, the BR1 ecosystem is designed to drive incentives and rewards everything while creating a truly next-level gaming experience. ”

The Montreal company has 18 employees, and it started about two years ago at the beginning of the pandemic. The layer is scattered.

Investor comments

“We at Solana Ventures are very proud to support Bravo Ready and BR1: Infinite Royale, one of the first shooters to go live on Solana,” said Justin Barlow, a senior staffer at Solana Ventures who led the agreement for BR1 and is also advising. to the BR1 team. “BR1 has introduced an action-packed game that redefines the rules of the Battle Royale genre and combines tool-based NFTs with high-quality artwork and graphics. We look forward to supporting the BR1 team in their mission to bring Solana games to the masses. »

“By combining risk-based tokenomics with functional NFT ratings and assets, BR1 redefines what it means to be a blockchain-enabled game and raises much-needed industry standards,” said Yima Gao, a general partner at Shima Capital, in a statement. “We rarely see a team deliver quality product as fast as BR1 and are happy to roll up their sleeves to support the founders and the entire team in the next phase of growth.”

Serge Kassardjian, general partner of 6th Man Ventures, said in a statement: “We are thrilled to support BR1 because gaming and the economy were different from anything we have seen in the play-to-earn ecosystem to date. The community’s passion is incredible “and is just surpassed by the passion of the game’s founders. They are building a new and exciting way to change fighting games, and we could not have been more excited to see this team build and change games to make money.”

How it started

Ryer took an accounting degree, but was not really crazy after that. Instead, he had spent thousands of hours playing. One of his clients hired him to optimize a Bitcoin mine from a cost accounting standpoint.

“At a young age, I got this great opportunity to buy a bunch of graphics cards for pennies on the dollar,” he said. “And I was trying to build a cloud game solution and I had these huge ambitions. And let me tell you, I was eaten alive by people like Google Stadia and Shadow and GeForce Now. I barely got out with the skin on my back.”

He then started a company with his best friend where they automatically tracked a player’s performance in video games and enabled them to bet on the performance with automatic payouts. The social gaming company grew from his basement to the Toronto Stock Exchange, and he sold it to React Gaming.

“It was a hell of an experience,” Ryer said.

He used the funds to start a Web3 gaming company called Bravo Ready.

“This company was based on a real value proposition that was lacking in video games when I was growing up, which was liquidity and demonstrably fair items,” he said.

He grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and RuneScape. But the problem with these games is that there really was no shortage of goods. They were demonstrably not fair, he said. There was no way to record how many copies of a sword there were, and there was no way to get liquidity.

“I hated spending thousands of hours in these games, and I had this character I built or these items, and it was a waste of time,” he said.

How the game works

The company released the alpha version of its game in January, before releasing some NFTs.

The game has no hours or start time or end time. You pay to spawn and you start on the edge of the map. There are up to 300 players on the map. You work towards the center to find better access to weapons, ammunition and equipment. The topography limits the possibility of returning to the edge, and therefore forces a concentration of players in the middle of the map, where the real looting and shooting begins.

When you eliminate another player, you get either their spawn fee or the greater of 10% of the total stack. When you are eliminated, you keep 85% of your income. Then you have to pay to spawn again.

There is no start or end to the game because players can spawn into the game at any time, and the game map is a giant island that supports hundreds of players who spawn on the edges and work their way to the center. Survival-style games place new characters far from other players with little access to items such as weapons, ammunition, consumables or equipment, but towards the center of the island they encounter a higher frequency of players and items.

One of Bravo Ready’s key innovations is a generative character rendering pipeline to produce an infinite number of unique characters. By using a proprietary path for randomization of textures, colors and designs, each mesh in the character model gets its own unique combination sequence. Once these characters are generated, the collection is complete and renders these characters in the game for each NFT owner.

Will players go for it?

It’s not the best shooter, but it’s aimed at hardcore gamers.

Ryer said he has thought a lot about why hardcore gamers seem to be against NFTs and considers them to be scams. He thinks older players will still play video games, but they will look for more excitement – the kind that comes with financial risk. His game is designed for them.

“This is a new type of game, and with it comes the burden of education,” he said. “If I know it exists, based on the value of my speculative time, I will want to commit to financial risk and participate in it. When it comes to the game we build, it is designed for an aging demographic. We understand that we has the burden of bringing in real players. “

Over the next year, Ryer believes that crypto infrastructure builders will deliver ease of use when it comes to wallets and other technical barriers that stop people from playing now.

The NFTs add a different type of tool. The company will sell 10,000 NFTs that allow players to participate in battles. You can rent one of these NFTs and participate in a 10 cent game. There is a fairly low rental fee compared to the $ 1 entrance fee. People with several operators can rent them out to other players, and they get a share of the income. It creates excitement for the game and helps with user acquisition, he said.

“Other players can come and play my game. And you get paid to help them achieve that, Ryer said.

To help the game grow, the company drafted some agreements with gamer guilds in the blockchain gaming area.

“If you’re good at this game, you get paid to play,” Ryer said, noting that this works well for streamers in particular. “Your audience loves that this is a financially risky game.”

Jon Cohen, CTO of Bravo Ready, said in a statement: “In Web3 gaming, the game must always come first and the economic model must support the game. Providing tangible value for the time players spend in video games requires people to want to spend their time on “Playing that game on a daily or weekly basis. Without a fun game that appeals to a wide audience, the most thoughtful economic model will crumble under little demand.”

Ryer emphasized the uniqueness of the game.

“No one has experienced a game like this before,” Ryer said. “And our game has your heart beating on the outside of your chest. You spawn similar to what you are like playing poker on your tail pocket aces immediately. The only difference is that if you lose this hand, you keep 85%. “

The game calculates your earnings and sends them to you immediately. It’s like an old arcade machine spitting out tickets. The map is quite large for the 300 players, and therefore it has a smaller 50-person freemium version that the company will use to acquire users.

The company uses the Solana blockchain as it is more energy efficient and can handle multiple transactions. As for the players, Ryer said that those who play in this room today are not players. They are more like speculators and NFT buyers.

“We have the burden of bringing real players into the room, and we’re excited about it,” Ryer said. . “We are at the border. That’s the way it is right now in Web3 games. “

To play the game, visit