Trailblazers raises $8.2M for Eternal Dragons blockchain game

Trailblazer Games has raised $8.2 million to develop a fantasy blockchain game and universe dubbed Eternal Dragons.

Singapore-based Trailblazer Games wants to focus on making a high-quality game using web 3 principles and technologies.

Makers Fund led the round with participation from Play Ventures, Fabric Ventures, and a roster of prominent industry leaders in gaming and blockchain. Trailblazer is building games natively for blockchain, but it said it wants to put fun at the core of truly scalable economies. Eternal Dragons is a “multi-chapter epic” about the long-lost Eternal Dragons.

The founders are Bertrand Lamarque, Andreas Risberg, and Alex Ariasing. They’re serial entrepreneurs and veteran gaming industry leaders from the likes of King, EA, and Microsoft. They have experience in building large-scale and sustainable free-to-play economies.

They said they are united by a shared p assion for creating engaging and entertaining gaming experiences. Trailblazer has since added talent with experience from working with Sorare, Wooga, Snowprint, and other high-profile studios to its team.

“We are on a mission to make games more fun and meaningful for our community by designing and producing high-quality games that natively embrace Web3 principles and technology,” said Arias, CEO of Trailblazers, in a statement. “Through raising this round with our partners, we can put more investments towards building our first franchise and the technology stack needed to deliver a seamless player and blockchain investor experience. This way, our players can become entrepreneurs in a new world full of opportunity — to play and prosper.”

The team worked on titles such as SimCity and Candy Crush Saga and it also built platforms and tools for growth and engagement powered by data and AI, as well as extensive blockchain development.

“We are innovating on user acquisition, engagement, and retention with our growth platform that leverages data, blockchain, and AI to make the experience smooth for both crypto- and non-crypto-aware users,” said CTO Lamarque, in a statement. “Through extending the NFT-protocol we’re creating a deeper connection with players by letting them own a part of the game, whose evolution is stored as an immutable record.”

The road map contains four chapters that are to be developed over the next couple of years, with the first two being a dragon breeding game and an auto chess battler. The dragon NFTs will also be useful in later chapters of this epic story. Alongside developing these games, Trailblazer is creating a platform that will power a new global economy where guilds can efficiently access capital, trade assets, and acquire talent.

Risberg, chief product officer, said in a statement, “In order to achieve our daring goals, we are laser-focused on creating fun gameplay with mass market potential, packaged in an exciting fantasy universe of dragons and magic where anything is possible and the players write the actual history – both inside and outside the game world. We call this blockchain-powered immutable player record the Eternal Book.”

Trailblazer’s mission is to design and build games that fairly distribute the value created between community, developers, and investors, creating real-life value through true ownership of assets and a distributed revenue share.

Andrew Willson, who leads web 3 gaming investments at Makers Fund said in a statement, “Makers Fund is privileged to partner with Alex, Andreas, and Bertrand. They are an exceptional founding team of experienced leaders from the gaming industry with a deep and nuanced perspective on the potential of web 3 for games. I am inspired by their approach leveraging Web3 technology and economics to create fun games that can reach a mass audience and enrich the lives of their players.”

The list of angel investors includes Aleksander Larsen, Chris Lee, Oliver Löffler, Santiago Santos, Itamar Lesuisse, and Sagi Shorrer, all successful entrepreneurs in web 2, web 3, and gaming.

Trailblazer’s team is fully distributed and remote. The funds will be used to extend their partnerships and hire more talent to expand their team as they execute on Trailblazer’s ambitious roadmap and develop Eternal Dragons.