Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd, the Hong Kong-based venture and gaming capital company, said it plans to acquire Darewise Entertainment, currently developing an online role-playing metaverse-like blockchain video game.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Darewise Entertainment is a European computer game studio founded by veterans of the AAA gaming industry.
In the video gaming industry, AAA Games signifies high-budget, high-profile games that are typically produced and distributed by large, well-known publishers.
With this deal, Animoca Brands shows its commitment to acquire high-quality games that can demonstrate how blockchain games can combine well with AAA content.
Darewise is currently developing a high-quality blockchain massively multiplayer online (MMO) game called Life Beyond, in which numerous people can participate simultaneously. It is also called MMORPG (which stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing game.)
"Bringing on board Darewise Entertainment is incredibly exciting. Its game Life Beyond is an MMORPG of great beauty and scale that will be a strong addition to the open metaverse. Benjamin and Samuel have built a world-class team that is creating a play-and-earn game universe that is intricate, sophisticated, and deeply engaging," said Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu.
The deal comes just days after Animoca Brands bought racing game developer Eden Games.
The Darewise team was established in 2015 and is currently working with London start-up Improbable to develop Life Beyond using its SpatialOS technology.
A company that specialises in what it terms are 'social online games', Darewise's Life Beyond is a MMO that's less focused on destruction and more on creativity and what it terms is a 'positive social framework.'
There is a great deal of emphasis placed on creating an inclusive, super positive experience within the Darewise organisation.
Deal designed to accelerate game development
Darewise has several popular AAA games titles to its credit like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Dying Light 2, Black & White, Tom Clancy's The Division, and the Fable series.
The Paris-based company Darewise was founded by former Ubisoft employees — Ubisoft game director Benjamin Charbit and Ubisoft and Crytek tech lead Samuel Kahn — and will continue to be operated by both stalwarts after Animoca Brands acquires the company.
"We are incredibly proud to join Animoca Brands and add our AAA games experience to the company that has been so instrumental in the development of Web3 gaming. Since late 2017, we've firmly believed that virtual existence will become at least as important as the physical one. Over time it became obvious that we're a Web3 company at our core and that blockchain offers the means to achieve our vision," said Benjamin Charbit, chief executive of Darewise Entertainment.
"It took visionary entrepreneurs like Yat to leap ahead and build such an impressive ecosystem, paving the way for everyone else. As we watched Animoca Brands set out the blueprint of the open metaverse with projects like The Sandbox, REVV, and Phantom Galaxies, we knew that we would benefit enormously from its Web3 expertise and network."
Darewise closed its seed funding in 2020 with €3 million. Previously, the games developer raised US$1 million, bringing its fundraising to over €4 million.
Serena, a European venture capital firm, led the round, as did venture capital major Lakestar.
By collaborating with Darewise Entertainment, Animoca Brands is enabling planned growth, accelerating game development, and combining expert AAA videogame development with blockchain integration, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and play-and-earn capabilities.
Animoca Brands will assist Darewise Entertainment to fast-track development and publishing in the Web3 space.
Life Beyond
Darewise Entertainment is currently developing its first game, Life Beyond. In this fast-paced and ever-evolving persistent MMO game, players will create and foster a new society based on social behaviors and technology in an alien world known as Dolos.
As a free-to-play (F2P) game, Life Beyond will have a low entry barrier; a series of free drops of the NFTs required to play the game will be announced soon. The game will initially be available on PC.
Life Beyond will pioneer the emerging genre of the play-and-earn MMO by incorporating Web3 and blockchain technologies. Its guiding principles include the true ownership of digital assets, a player-driven social economy within the game, and decentralised governance.
As the game's unique token becomes available, user governance will be enabled by gameplay-based tools, and then upgraded to a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).
The game experience of Life Beyond will revolve around the three main pillars of Pioneering, Settling, and Politics.
Pioneering will enable players to explore the mysteries of the landscape and engage in combat, and users can also collect resources and ancient tech as well as cleanse ancient ruins in order to conquer regions.
Settling will enable players to transform conquered regions into lands, build housing and provide leisure and economic activities for the populace, in order to support a new civilisation of pioneers.
Politics will help players define and enact the rules of society. Players can choose whether to pursue personal wealth and control of the neighbourhood or develop a more democratic organisation by holding elections, imposing taxes and regulating the economy. Players can convince other towns to follow the same model or fight against them to impose supremacy.
Life Beyond aims to empower players to make decisions both on an individual level via their own play choices as well as collectively by making critical decisions on the future direction of the game. The society of Life Beyond will evolve according to the choices, user-generated creations and behaviors of its players.