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Tribo has raised $1.17 million for a new game studio that makes multiplayer games using Web3 technology.
The team is working on a casual, free-to-play multiplayer game to be revealed at a later date.
The Helsinki (and virtual) company will create games that create player-owned economies powered by digital collectibles using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The money came from Play Ventures, Sisu Game Ventures and Joakim Achrén, CEO Miko Kuusisto said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“Multiplayer is where Web3 excels,” said Kuusisto. “We have experience with deep collection systems and deep economies and can do them well from Web2. Now we can take those games to the next level with Web3.”
Kuusisto has been thinking about player-owned economies ever since he put thousands of hours into World of Warcraft and finally wanted to sell his account. There was no Activision Blizzard supported option to do this.
The five founders together have 60 years of experience building mobile games. They worked on games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies and Nonstop Knight.
“For us, the Web3 capability is less about the technology and more about new design capabilities and the general expectation that there is a better way. Players are already demanding more from their games,” said Kuusisto.
He added: “With free-to-play games, we’ve had 15 years of labels on how to do these things. And now we want to create something new that wasn’t possible in the virtual world. That requires a rethink of how metagame systems and economy. Our goal is multiplayer for the mainstream.”
He believes that digital ownership and open economies are important building blocks for Tribo to pioneer new gaming experiences. The games designed from the ground up to best support sustainable community-owned worlds will be the ones that succeed, he said. His intent is to create something new that players should see in Web3 equations, or in the first wave of Web3 games.
“Gaming audiences will migrate to player-owned economies and new kinds of experiences built around them in the coming years,” Kuusisto said.
To celebrate today’s announcement, Tribo is kicking off its core community by launching a free NFT collection called Flameys for its community. It releases 2,000 unique avatars that give the owners perks and a VIP role in the Tribo community. Flameys can be claimed at www.tribogames.com. These owners are later rewarded with airdrops, admission lists, early access to games, and VIP status.
Kuusisto is in the process of launching his third game, the previous one was Kopla Games. The company founders have worked at companies such as Rovio, King, Wooga, PopCap, Flaregames and more. The team consists of seven people in total. Over time, Kuusisto said he hopes to grow the team to 20 to 30 people.
The NFT Price Crash
In recent months, the crypto market collapsed again and NFT prices collapsed. As a result, Kuusisto said the company will be more cautious about spending. Kuusisto said his conviction remains strong, but the company will be more cautious.
“The crypto market has changed. The financing market has changed. We will scrap our plans,” he said. “But our belief about the Web3 space is strong and hasn’t changed. We knew there would be another crypto winter market. It was inevitable. It doesn’t matter to us. On in the long run, it is inevitable that these changes are coming.”
Meanwhile, Kuusisto believes big companies will hold back on their plans to launch blockchain games because they face an innovator’s dilemma, worrying about Web3 games cannibalizing their Web2 games. They are more concerned with consolidation in Web2 than launching Web3 games.
“That leaves the audience in the middle, or what people call the mid-core games, and the main mass of players playing mobile games, as well as the target audience for us,” he said. “The company’s entire mission is to pioneer Web3 multiplayer games for the masses.”
Kuusisto believes that multiplayer games become more appealing with your own resources at stake. It’s like playing real money poker with more at stake.
The Innovator’s Dilemma
Ultimately, the problem is that the existing franchises are losing steam in the market and players want to move on to something new. The trick is to have something ready when that happens. Meanwhile, startups like Tribo want to work on those next-generation products from scratch and be ready when the market switches to something new, Kuusisto said.
“This is how market cycles and disruptions happen,” he said. “We are talking about well-known scripts. I feel excited as an entrepreneur in a space that no one conceived. For us, small companies have the opportunity to become the big companies of the future.”
At the same time, authorities around the world are setting rules for crypto and blockchain technologies. Tribo will see how that plays out, and Kuusisto said it’s nice not to be first in line when those regulators make their statements about the companies pioneering the space. That way, the company can observe what regulators decide about the first companies and learn from it.
“A lot of the early companies are copying what has been done, but a lot of the early models are not durable and not focused on quality,” he said. “You should really start thinking outside the box with Web3. The whole space moves super fast. Many of the ideas we had six months ago are now in the trash. It’s like we’re speedrunning. It feels like we’re going faster than with free-to-play games.”
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