Roboto Games: Combining Genshin Impact and Minecraft—Ambitious or Baseless?
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Roboto Games: Combining Genshin Impact and Minecraft—Ambitious or Baseless?
The lifecycle of games and UGC platforms has always been a difficult issue to avoid.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: aya, TechFlow
The crypto market never lacks debates around blockchain gaming.
Recently, a16z invested in yet another Web3 game studio—one that's developing a blockchain game touted as combining "Genshin Impact" and "Minecraft." Now, let's take a closer look at how this team convinced top-tier investors to open their wallets even during a bear market.
Project, Team Background, and Funding
Roboto Games is based in California and operates as a "work-from-home-friendly" game studio currently developing a Web3 MMO titled "Foragers & Fighters." The company describes the game as "a fusion of Genshin Impact and Minecraft", emphasizing that it will beprimarily driven by user-generated content (UGC).
Beyond these claims, there is little detailed public information about the game in development.
However, the team behind such bold claims is far from ordinary.
The two founders of Roboto Games—Curt Bererton and Mathilde Pignol—both graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. During the social internet era, they founded Zipzapplay, creating social games for Facebook.
At Zipzapplay, the co-founders developed one of Facebook’s top 20 social games and built a UGC platform hosting over 200,000 games. Later, Zipzapplay was acquired by PopCap—the developer of "Plants vs. Zombies"—and the 17-member team joined EA along with PopCap in 2011, taking charge of managing PopCap’s San Francisco studio.
Leveraging their strong experience from the internet era, Roboto Games quickly won over investors and secured funding. Just recently, the official Twitter announced a $15 million funding round led by a16z, with participation from Ancient8, Animoca Brands, Gumi Cryptos Capital, Harrison Metal Capital, Makers Fund, Merit Circle, Transcend, and several individual investors. Previously, Roboto had raised a $4.5 million seed round in 2019 led by Harrison Metal Capital.
The lifespan of games and UGC platforms has always been a persistent challenge—when these platforms cease to be profitable or face other issues, they are often shut down abruptly. (Blizzard: ?)
Roboto Games’ vision is for players to eventually self-host their own servers, using blockchain technology for long-term data storage. This design ensures players can continue playing their favorite games even if the official servers go offline. Additionally, the team is building a mod platform that empowers players to truly "own and revitalize" the games they love.
Project Analysis
A significant reason Roboto Games succeeded in fundraising lies in their early success riding the Facebook wave during the millennial internet boom, capitalizing on the rise of social gaming. However, the development logic between Web2 and Web3 games differs greatly. Simply making bold claims won't resolve the current challenges facing blockchain gaming. Is the idea of combining "Genshin Impact" and "Minecraft" an ambitious leap forward or just wishful thinking? Only time will tell.
Project Links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobotoGames
Website: https://robotogames.com/
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