Azra Games, founded by veteran EA game developer, raises $10 million for NFT-themed Legions & Legends
Mark Otero, founder and CEO of Azra Games, used to work at gaming giant Electronic Arts. Courtesy of Azra Games
Azra Games, which is developing a video game that features non-fungible tokens, announced Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in additional seed funding, bringing the total amount it has netted to $25 million.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which last year unveiled a $600 million fund for gaming investments, led the round, while other investors included NFX, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures and Franklin Templeton. Mark Otero, founder and CEO of Azra, declined to comment on the company’s valuation.
“We believe the unique ownership and financial models Web3 provides will revolutionize how people play online games,” Arianna Simpson, partner at a16z, wrote in a blog post announcing the additional investment in Azra.
Games that include NFTs in gameplay are now a dime a dozen; However, the financial backing of Azra, led by Mark Otero, a former general manager at gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA), signals that video game industry veterans are now weaving Web3 concepts into big-ticket games. Titans like Ubisoft, for example, have already incorporated, or talked about incorporating, NFTs into games they’ve released.
“The playing field in Web3 is still quite small compared to the traditional playing field,” said Mark Otero Fortune. He said it Legions and Legendsthe name of Azra’s upcoming game, was an “opportunity for us to create something with a potentially new business model for a new platform.”
Otero added that NFTs will not be the basis of the gameplay Legions and Legends, which will initially be released on PC and mobile devices, but he and his team plan to include tokens as collectibles in the game. They also released pre-launch cards as NFTs, whose holders get early sneak peeks at concept art, beta access to the game, and other perks.
Otero grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop RPG that influenced future video games of the same genre, and has had a long career as a developer. He originally developed role-playing video games in the warehouse of Mochii Yogurt, a frozen yogurt cafe he owned in Sacremento. He eventually left the yogurt business to start his own game development company, and EA subsequently bought his company with more than 70 employees.
At EA, in addition to leading development on Heroes of Dragon Agehe led the development for and led Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroesa game for mobile devices that has generated over $1 billion in revenue for the gaming giant, according to an EA earnings call in 2021.
After his success at EA, he took a break from the video game industry, but in late 2021 he convinced himself that player-owned assets, such as NFTs, were the next evolution in free-to-play, or games. with no upfront costs for players. Assembling some of his own team from EA, Otero launched Azra.
“Ultimately, we see ourselves as the potential content that brings the next several million users to the Web3 space,” he said Fortune.
Ortero said Azra plans to release the first of Legions and Legends later this year.
