We Just Closed €1.9m in Series A

We’re excited to announce that we have closed a € 1.9 million (roughly $ 2.5 million) in Series A from a truly great set of investors, namely Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital.

The single biggest reason we went with Index, LVP and Initial Capital was since they believed in our vision of creating a whole new category of games that will take the industry into a new direction just as passionately as we do. Already in the first meeting that we ever took with them they felt the same excitement about what we are doing as we have always felt in building Shadow Cities. We are excited to welcome Ben Holmes of Index Ventures, David Gardner of LVP and Petteri Koponen of Lifeline Ventures to our Board. You guys rock!

This will be on top of the Seed round we raised from Lifeline Ventures, Ilkka Paananen and Mikko Kodisoja in late 2010.

We Are Hiring!

We are growing! We are looking to hire experienced game developers to our team in Helsinki. We are also looking to hire an experienced System Administrator as well as a Community Manager to the US. To apply and see more, visit here.

Your city is a game

During the first Alpha test round that I played in Helsinki sometime late July 2010 I first experienced how a location aware game that is build on entire city neighborhoods results in very different experience than a game build on specific venues. Not only that, but also how bringing something magical extra on top of the familiar city can result in much more than I would ever think my city could be.

It was around 8pm in the evening when I got a text message from Tina: “If you want to save our cause, greens are assaulting the center! We need a trap there, stat!”. I immediately logged in to Shadow Cities to see if I could jump to the center through a Beacon. It seemed like this was not an option. There was no Beacons close enough the center that I could come in rescue and stop whatever the orange team was planning. What made the issue more urgent was that since it was the last day of the game and whoever had more Energy harvested at the end of the day won the whole Round.

I closed the application and sat there for a few seconds and then grabbed my bike and texted Tina back while rushing out with my bike:“Where should i resurface and attack? Am on my bike. You are my eyes. Guide and we’ll surprise attack”. Tina told me the most intense battle was fought at the east end of Esplanadi. I rode there and stopped my bike in front of restaurant Vespa on Eteläesplanadi. Just before I logged-in to surface right in the middle of the battle. I called Mikko to agree on a quick strategy. Mikko was coding at his home in Töölö and didn’t know that the Orange team had attacked the center. We agreed that I should above all else plant a Beacon there so he and others could jump to the center as I would surely get slaughtered quickly after I surface and ran out of Mana. This way we would have a channel to the center. This is exactly what happened, but Ursus had planted so many traps that I didn’t get the chance to plant our Beacon on the first try before I was out of Mana again. It started to rain slowly and I knew I could not leave the Esplanadia area before I had secured a Beacon for our team there, so I figured I might as well go to Vespa and get a beer while waiting for my Mana to build up. There I sat sipping my beer and eagerly staring at my phone in the corner table. After some intense 20 minutes I finally got the Beacon planted and quite successfully also fought back pushing the Greens back with the help of Mikko and Tina. I believe this was a crucial battle that defined the outcome of the round. We won and I could have not been happier. The next day I retold the story several times, laughed, went to possible different scenarios and couldn’t help but wonder where Ursus, the orange team player that hold Esplanadi, had been hiding. Our guess was that he must have been dining in one of the restaurants in the area.

It’s safe to say that this experience was very different from what I would have had with any of the current games out there. By focusing on an area instead of a specific venue the city as a whole came to life when you could strategize and plan your play based on where you lived, how fast you could make your way to other neighborhoods, where your allies lived, worked or commuted around on a normal day. Further, even the normally really boring routes and neighborhoods became interesting when they radiated something new and interesting. The normal daily behavior and commute was a great platform for game play. Soon the game play started to take cues from the locations and the emerging relationships around these locations by mixing the real and unreal. This was city I hadn’t know before, but it clearly rocked!

Multiplayer game immersion

When you experience something in a group, the members of the group are bound to each other by the experience. What does the former sentence bring to mind? Nothing too felonious I hope. I can’t help thinking of a week two summers ago at a friends summerhouse. After that week, in addition to the new absurd nicknames, everybody knew that the ham in hamburgers must be marinated with whiskey, that the reed is the best place for an ambush when trying to command a rowboat and that golf should not be played with empty soda cans. When we meet the merriment of this notorious voyage is still lively examined.

So, why am I blabbering about senseless holiday merrymaking when I should be talking about multiplayer games? Well, truth to be told, it’s the same group experience. Maybe a notch nerdier, but nonetheless.

When emerging into the imaginary realm of computer games one can rise above ones mundane existence and transform into something extraordinary. This “extraordinary” is magnified if one can bring ones friends, real people, into the same imaginary realm. I have been a dedicated Quaker (no, not the religious kind), played both Counter- and Terrorist, done reconnaissance as a Ghost, met Diablo and had fire-showers in the World of Warcraft. You often indulge into adrenalin filled conversations after a tight game: “I was just about to discharge the bomb when you got me from inside the air vent!” or “You just townported and left me there with a hundred gargoyles!!”. These multiplayer experiences sometimes form into legends and years later you may find yourself still discussing a particular outcome of a game and the “ifs” that lead to victory (or often in my case, to loss).

It is very easy to be submerged into these virtual wolds and the experience can be exhilarating to the utmost. However, the virtual game world is still a separate place, a place with limitations. It lacks realism and familiarity. You can not “Feel your surroundings!” (as a certain Obi-Wan used to say). The immersion is not complete. Well, you might ask me, how would you make the immersion complete Mr? I answer that it will not be complete until your hooked up to the Matrix. But int the meanwhile we can make it more complete. Instead of looking at the virtual world from the real world, bring the the virtual world to the real world. I am not suggesting you should begin LARP:ing, rather you should try Location Based MMOs. The game discussion might start like this:

“When I took the tram to work today, minding my busyness trying to catch some decent gremlin spirits on the way, I got attacked by Shadow Mages! Do you hear me, ATTACKED BY SHADOW MAGES! In a neighborhood controlled be the Architects! I have never seen aggressive Shadow Mages this deep before, it means the barrier to the north has weakened. Anyway, I was lucky to be near your place. Had to suck all your Dominators dry (sorry about that) to get ahead and send them packing.”

When you experience the game in real places and your own familiar surroundings, you connect to the game in a much stronger fashion and it suddenly becomes very immersive. Trust me, I’ve tried it.