Web3 gaming company Heroic Story has raised $6 million in a seed round led by Upfront Ventures with participation from Multicoin Capital and Polygon Technology. The round brings Heroic Story’s total financing to $7.4 million.
Other investors in the round included a16z Games Fund One founding investor Jonathan Lai, Team Liquid chief executive Steve Arhancet and Quantstamp chief executive Richard Ma, alongside Miramax head of film Wolfgang Hammer and screenwriters Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo.
Founded in 2019 at the Y Combinator accelerator, Marina del Rey-based Heroic Story reimagines tabletop role-playing games for online multiplayer versions using Web3 technology. Heroic Story’s first game, released in 2021, was called Legends of Fortunata. In the game writers could collaboratively create stories for characters in a shared world then mint, or publish, them as non-fungible tokens.
“The intersection of storytelling and technology has been the theme of my career, from my early years as a top online poker pro and entrepreneur, to designing and directing one of the first adventure games for consumer VR,” Jay Rosenkrantz, co-founder and chief executive of the company, said in an interview with technology website Venture Beat. “At Y Combinator, Scott and I doubled down on solving problems for storytellers, the world’s most undervalued talent, and after spending the last year and a half exploring Web3, we truly believe smart contract-powered platforms will transform gaming, storytelling, and community building.”
According to the company, the funds from the raise will be used to hire talent and develop the game to scale to more players, as well as marketing the title.
Heroic Story starts its journey at a time of significant growth within the crypto-gaming industry. According to data analyst company Supra Oracles, the industry generated an estimated $321 million in revenue in 2020, and last year’s total revenue was likely more than $1 billion.
