A seamless user experience, regardless of channel or device, is one of the main pillars of a usable omnichannel experience. The same is true for gaming. Presently, incongruent and inconsistent experiences across devices often give some players advantages while creating differences in engagement rates among others. Elodie Games is a gaming studio that firmly believes that building truly synchronous experiences across any platform will lead to deeper social gaming experiences. The company, founded last year by two Riot Games executives that had worked on League of Legends, is in the process of developing its debut title, which is currently in pre-Alpha. The company has not disclosed more on the specifics but will use this latest funding to expand the team and complete the game.
LA TechWatch caught up with Elodie Games CEO and Cofounder David Banks to learn more about the company’s mission, strategic plans, differentiators, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $37.5M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Series A for $32.5M led by the teams at Galaxy Interactive and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with Sam Englebardt and Jon Li joining our board. The round also included investment from Brian Cho of Patron and Chris Ovitz of Electric Ant.
Tell us about your product or service.
We are a video game developer based in Los Angeles, CA. Our games will deliver on three core pillars: deep co-op gameplay, endlessly engaging experiences, and seamless cross-play across PC, mobile, and console. We aspire to bring friends closer together through play, anytime, anywhere. We are currently in development on our first game.
What inspired the start of Elodie Games?
Christina Norman and I cofounded Elodie Games based on our belief that games are intrinsically social and that playing with friends is the best path to enjoyable and memorable gaming experiences. Frustrated by the slow industry progress in this area from established studios, we formed Elodie to apply our shared learnings from developing League of Legends towards building the ultimate game to play with your friends, on every major platform, worldwide.
How is it different?
At Elodie, we’re building our team, our company, and our development practices around creating games that look and feel great on every platform while offering a seamless cross-platform multiplayer experience. We call this true cross-play. This is the experience we’re going to focus on delivering, and we’re going to do it better than anyone else. We’re further focusing our efforts on the games that will benefit the most from true-cross play: social games with deep co-op and endlessly engagement potential. We express all of this through our mission – we bring friends closer together through play, anytime, anywhere. That’s what makes us different.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
In 2020, more than 2.7 billion gamers worldwide spent nearly $160 billion, and this is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2023. While mobile is the predominant global platform, every platform is growing, as is cross-platform spending and cross-platform play. We’ve also seen that, regardless of platform, players prefer games that are highly social and offer the possibility of unlimited engagement. By creating games focused on serving these needs, while offering true cross-play as a differentiating feature, we will be well positioned to compete in this market, while being less dependent on success on any specific platform.
What’s your business model?
We are not ready to dive into our business model. We are keeping all game-related details under wrap for now.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business??
Although our HQ is in Los Angeles, CA, most of our team currently works remotely. We didn’t set out to build a remote studio, but we started our company in 2019 and (like everyone else) quickly had to deal with the reality of COVID-19. We have adopted a remote-first hybrid work model that is the core of how Elodie works. This approach allows developers to choose between purely remote, partially, or full-time onsite. We believe this model is the future of work for our industry.
What was the funding process like?
We ran our entire process remotely (basically via video conference). Honestly, it cut out a lot of the traditional travel and onsite presentations which turned out to be advantageous for us as we met with far more investors in a shorter period. We were humbled by how quickly and by how many investors stepped forward to support us. In the end, we were fortunate to find investors who were as excited by the opportunity as we are.
We ran our entire process remotely (basically via video conference). Honestly, it cut out a lot of the traditional travel and onsite presentations which turned out to be advantageous for us as we met with far more investors in a shorter period. We were humbled by how quickly and by how many investors stepped forward to support us. In the end, we were fortunate to find investors who were as excited by the opportunity as we are.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
I think one of the biggest challenges for our investors was just timing. Like other business sectors, VCs were also trying to navigate the pandemic and its effects on deal flow and their traditional decision-making process. Everyone was in somewhat uncharted waters. However, we were very fortunate to have had pre-existing connections with key folks in the industry which allowed everyone to move with more confidence. In our presentations, we were able to show clearly defined goals and a business strategy, an understanding of where we believe the gaming industry is headed, and how we plan to be a part of its forward progression. The most important thing is, the pandemic showed everyone that gamers want better and deeper social co-op gaming experiences, and we hope that is exactly what we are creating.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
There are several key factors but here are a few that made us attractive to investors.
- The team.
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- We had quickly assembled a small team of exceptional developers who have worked on some of the best games of recent years.
- The vision
- Our desire to create a meaningful co-operative experience for gamers in a genre that is much in need of rejuvenation resonated deeply with investors who understand the current gaming landscape.
- The traction
- Our team used 2020 to build a core slice of gameplay quickly that effectively explored the fundamental elements of our game thesis. The results of our efforts were well received by investors and helped them better imagine the depth and breadth of our game vision.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan to use the investment to sustainably accelerate development by growing our team and advancing the development of our debut game. We look forward to connecting with players to help grow our core community and invite them to help us evolve the game.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
We don’t think about fundraising as a seasonal event or something you only consider when you’re in dire need of capital. Our approach has been to consider it as more of an ongoing process. We spend time nurturing relations with investors and strategic partners throughout the year. This gives us the opportunity to refine and practice our pitch in a more informal setting, talk in broad strokes about project and company progress, and get to learn more about folks in the investor community. When it was finally time to enter our formal fundraising process, we were extremely comfortable with both our pitch and our audience.
We don’t think about fundraising as a seasonal event or something you only consider when you’re in dire need of capital. Our approach has been to consider it as more of an ongoing process. We spend time nurturing relations with investors and strategic partners throughout the year. This gives us the opportunity to refine and practice our pitch in a more informal setting, talk in broad strokes about project and company progress, and get to learn more about folks in the investor community. When it was finally time to enter our formal fundraising process, we were extremely comfortable with both our pitch and our audience.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We will continue developing our first game, but we aren’t ready to share more than that at this time.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Does playing an MMO with friends count as an outdoor activity?
