RALEIGH – Video game startup Lightforge Games, armed with $5 million raised in equity financing from 10 investors in December, and equipped with team of game developers, seeks to change how role-playing games (RPGs) are played.
The team, led by CEO Matt Schembari, who is the former director of user interface for Epic Games, is working on what it called in a statement “a new cross-platform social video game where players have the power to create worlds.”
The company was co-founded by gaming industry veterans Schembari, Dan Hertzka, Nathan Fairbanks, Glenn Rane, and Marc Hutcheson, and now includes six additional developers.
“We all love highly social, creative games, and we particularly love games where players drive the narrative,” said Schembari in a statement. “We are looking to combine elements from Minecraft or Roblox with tabletop RPGs to form a new way to play roleplaying games.”
Collectively, the company’s employees have worked on and shipped games such as Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Hearthstone, the StarCraft 2 trilogy, Overwatch, and Elder Scrolls Online.
“We want to blur the line between creator and player, bringing people together to weave endless tales they won’t soon forget,” reads the company website.
That’s in line with one of the company values: “Tell Your Story.”
The company believes that storytelling ought to be a group experience, that storytelling this way is a core aspect of what it means to be human and to be living in community with others.
“For thousands of years, humans told stories as a group experience. This oral tradition allowed everyone to simultaneously play the role of creator and listener,” the company published in one of its first blog posts. “With the advent of modern media, the magic of cooperative creation faded.”
Their first game will seek to change the trajectory of modernization, and put storytelling back in the hands of its users, through immersive and emergent gameplay that involves improvisational stories and experiences.
$5M in bank, video game startup led by Epic Games vets ramps up in Raleigh
The company’s first fundraising round included investments from Galaxy Interactive, NetEase Games, Dreamhaven, Maveron, 1UP Ventures, and angel investors, it noted in a statement.
“Lightforge is creating a game in a new space that has a ton of potential,” said Dreamhaven CEO Mike Morhaime.
The fully-remote company is already scaling for its growth, and is hiring a lead animator, a lead 3d character artist, and a community manager, as well as accepting open applications for other roles.
