The founder of Bungie, Alex Seropian, won’t have to worry about getting funding for his latest project.
The mobile games studio Industrial Toys has managed to raise $5 million through a round of funding led by Accel Partners. These are the same partners who have funded in other successful mobile game makers, including Supercell and Playfish, among others.
As a result, this financing will help the team launch its debut title, Midnight Star, sometime this summer through a beta.
“Today’s tablets are just as good, if not better gaming platforms than the consoles we built games for in our past,” said Seropian. “However, there isn’t a ton of great content for people like us. We want to change that by building immersive games for the mobile and tablet-enabled core gamer.”
He continued, “Developing ‘core’ content for tablet isn’t about porting over something from the Xbox or PlayStation. It’s about understanding touch and gesture-based controls and how users interact with their device. We want to build an experience that spans multiple engagement points throughout the day. Since these devices are always with you, providing different levels of involvement, we’re designing our games to do the same.”
“Accel has been investing in gaming businesses for many years. As we’ve seen, each new platform shift yields a crop of large, independent gaming companies. The shift to mobile and tablets is no different, but has largely targeted the casual or mid-core gamer. The opportunity to ‘activate’ core gamers is even bigger — the content just hasn’t been there. Alex and team are developing for the gamers who’ve largely been underserved in this push to mobile,” added Vas Natarajan, with Accel Partners.
Source: GamesIndustry International
