Popularium secures $2m seed funding for next game by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield

Co-founder and former Xbox Live manager Arka Ray tells us debut game Chaos Agents will “push the boundaries of innovation of game design and economics”

Games startup Popularium has closed its seed round of funding to the tune of $2 million.

The studio was founded by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, former Hearthstone and World of Warcraft developer Jon Bankard and ex-Xbox Live manager Arka Ray.

Popularium is currently working on its debut title Chaos Agents, which it describes as an ‘autobattler royale,’ combining the ‘last person standing’ rules with the auto-battling gameplay concept of titles such as Dota Auto-Chess and Vampire Survivors.

“The funding will help us develop, market and launch the Chaos Agents public alpha in the summer,” Ray told GamesIndustry.biz. “So far, we have been building with a core team of game developers, this funding will help us expand the team to bring in more support for managing our growing community.

“It will also help support development efforts for the key remaining features that the community is asking for before the Alpha launch, and help launch the first pre-release competitive tournaments for Chaos Agents.”

Chaos Agents sees players train up their own superhero and pit its against dozens of other players’ characters in a battle royale. Each chaos agent is completely unique to their player. The game is targeting a 2025 release.

Investors in the seed funding round include Palm Drive Capital, The Data Economics Company (a previous employer of Ray), Eden Chen via the A16Z Scout Fund, Reverb Ventures and Dave Nemetz, Pareto, Exit Capital, The Society of Entertainment, Bustle Digital Group’s Bryan Goldberg, Gearbox’s Dan Black, ex-NFL footballer Dhani Jones, and Ori and the Blind Forest executive producer Avi Ben-Menahem.

“Nearly 50% of the $2 million seed round financing for Popularium has come investors who grew up playing Magic and other games from Popularium’s founders,” Ray tells us. “Investors have reached out over social media, LinkedIn to express support for Popularium and Richard.

“Fans of Magic and Richard’s games intuitively understand what’s ‘cool’ about Richard’s vision – they have now enabled that vision through their investment dollars.”

He goes on to explain that Chaos Agents is just the first step in Popularium’s long-term vision, a studio set up to “develop games that push the boundaries of innovation of game design and economics, while creating experiences that gamers embrace and engage with for years.”

Despite the reference to economics in this vision, and the fact each Chaos Agent is unique to each player, Popularium has assured that its games do not involve blockchain technology.

“The Popularium team shares some common beliefs that lead our game design and development philosophy,” Ray says. “Games should be fun and built in concert with the community – players know what they like and will tell you. They should let players express their own play-style and personality, and players should feel rewarded for their time spent playing, through gameplay as well as through lasting rewards that are the result of time spent.

“Players should be excited to buy new things for games, an example being the enthusiasm around Magic: The Gathering releases, and not feel unhappy or forced to spend money. They should also be able to play with anyone, anywhere, from any device – gameplay experiences should not be limited.”

Popularium is keeping its cards close to its chest at the moment in terms of how this long-term vision will play out, but Ray says the studio is focused on “creating a series of games, along with a custom-built cloud gaming engine, that can be played from any device against anyone else,” with Chaos Agents being the first of these titles.

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