- The venture plans to build 10,000-hour games that get better when you play with others.
- Theorycraft plans to launch various games that focus solely on the player and his experiences with the game.
The studio is led by a team of six people that is based in Seattle and Los Angeles. They are developing player-vs-player (PvP) games that are competitive. NetEase from China has led the round. It includes other investors like NEA, Bitkraft Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, Sisu Game Ventures. It also included a small group of strategic angel investors.
Triple-A Team:
The leaders have been a part of Riot Games, Bungie, Blizzard, and Valve Software. They helped develop games like League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Valiant, and Team Fortress 2. Joe Tung, the CEO and Founder of TheoryCraft games formed multiple-genre billion-dollar franchises when he was formerly executive vice president of League of Legends. He also served as an executive producer on Destiny and Halo.
“We want to make deep, 10,000-hour games that are better when you play with your friends. We want to make games that are worthy of being theory crafted by players,” says Tung.
Michael Evans, who has been a former tech lead for Valorant, Overwatch, and Halo, is a chief technical officer at Theorycraft. Michael Tipul who has been a former creative director at Bungie is a chief creative officer with Theorycraft. Moby Frank is the art director and Areeb Pirani is the Chief operating officer with Theorycraft.
“When you think about the founding team, we’ve worked on some of the biggest games and intellectual properties in the world,” Tung said. “But building something from scratch is the last frontier. There is always the unscratched itch in the back of your mind, about what you would do if you could go from zero to one.”
The right time to begin:
The time is ripe to begin working on a game studio since there are increased investors and game-focused venture funds comparatively. Tung says that he is aware of 16 different game studios in Los Angeles with the former teams of Riot Games. Tung says that the team preferred NetEase since it was open to “go big” with the team and offer the team the resources.
“They have been true to their word,” Tung said. “When you’re playing the long game, when you’re going for a 1,000-hour game, that’s the only thing that matters, right? Will the players come back to it?”
Future plans:
TheoryCraft Games wants to develop games that are player-centric and give every player a chance to connect, compete and feel delighted by the stories. The venture wants to meet players where they are regardless of what platform they use to play games, their location, or the amount of money they can spend.
Tung claims that the industry needs various game studios that can serve the players. He does not want to launch a sequel of the game every now and then. Yet, he was glad to see RiotGames branch out and launch new games. The team has a prototype that they showed to the streamers and others from outside the company.
“We’re building it out in the open and getting lots of feedback,” Tung said. Tung wants the team to have 30-40 members when the game launches in the market.
“I’m coming from a background of 600-person teams,” Tung said. “We spent a lot of time talking to companies with different models. The team spent time talking to the Supercell team, and we were really inspired by the fact they can make their products with 12 people on a team. We think it’s really exciting that there are clear benefits to keeping the core dev team as small as possible.”
The team is planning to derive certain capabilities from partners outside of the company. Tung believes that Disney will focus next on the gaming domain. “We think there are limitless growth and possibility for a company that just wants to serve players better,” Tung said.
