Goldman Sachs and Tencent-backed game maker Voodoo has announced in the next twelve months it will invest $200 million in studios that develop blockchain games.
French-based game maker Voodoo has helped studios to produce over 100+ games with over 5 billion downloads. Their success stories include Helix Jump, Snake Vs Block, and Paper.io. Their combined monthly active users now exceed 300 million.
Mobile Gaming Mogul Goes Blockchain
Voodoo has turned its attention to blockchain and founder Alex Yazdi is quoted as saying “Blockchain will especially disrupt gaming, as players are already used to buying digital assets“.
The company intends on using the 200 million to fund startup gaming studios and to create another 20 internal studios within the existing company.
Concepts and Beta to Rapid Deployment
While details aren’t publicly available the company has an existing business model which would likely expand into blockchain-based games.
Currently, Voodoo accepts concepts from developers around the globe, who send in a beta of their game. The team at Voodoo, if they approve, then proceed with rapid development and coaching of the game studio to bring the game to market quickly.
Voodoo generally publish free title but monetize in-app purchases. The obvious synergy for Voodoo with blockchain is the sale and usage of in-game NFT assets.
Keep it Simple
Voodoo’s approach will bring something that’s been missing from a lot of blockchain games. That’s a low barrier to entry with a keep-it-simple approach.
There are five core elements to Voodoo games which are:
- snackable – the gameplay is short and rewarding in each session
- intuitive – easy to pick up and just play
- Youtubable – they make good videos to stream
- forgiving – making it easy to continue the gameplay without “you died – restart” style play.
- gameplay first – fun comes first, impressive graphics are nice to have.
Voodoo already has a successful platform of game development and moving into the blockchain space has similarities to the origins of Gala Games. Gala founder, Eric Schiermeyer, previous co-founder of Zynga games, also came from a successful career in game development. Gala Games also partners with game studios to offer them access to an existing successful platform to launch their games.
For more information visit their website.
What is Voodoo Games?
Voodoo is a French video game developer known for funding and acquiring game studios. The company is based in Paris, with international offices. It was founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. Voodoo games termed their games “hyper-casual” and apply a keep it simple approach. The core concept is the ability to pick up the game, play and put it down whenever you have a spare moment to do so.
The game maker platform has more than 5 billion downloads and exceeds an active user base of 300 million.
