El Segundo-based gaming studio Carbonated Inc. has raised $11 million of series A funding to finance the development and release of its debut game title.
The round was led by game developer and publisher Com2uS Corp. with participation from venture capital firms Blocore, Hollywood Hills-based Goal Venture Partners I LLC, Andreessen Horowitz Capital Management LLC, Bitkraft Ventures Management LLC, Wagmi Ventures and Cypher Capital DDM.
Prior to its most recent round, Carbonated closed an $8.5 million seed funding round in 2020, which also included participation from Andreessen and Bitkraft. Carbonated was founded in 2015 by Travis Boatman, now chief executive of the company, with Kolbe Launchbaugh, Christopher Morf and Lloyd Tullues. Morf is Carbonated’s chief operating officer and Tullues is chief technology officer.
Since its founding, the company has been focusing on research and development for its upcoming first title, called “MadWorld.” The third-person, multiplayer shooter game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features both player-versus-player and player-versus-environment features..
Players of the game will battle for land control in a dystopian setting. Using a combination of open-source mapping tools and Carbonated’s proprietary custom operations technology, called Carbyne, the game’s world is designed around real-life cities and locations. Players are initially dropped into the game’s version of their own real-time location.
The game allows players to optionally engage using blockchain technology with a digital asset-ownership layer powered by a blockchain network called XPLA. South Korea-based Com2uS, which recently moved its North American headquarters from El Segundo to Hollywood, founded the XPLA blockchain network.
