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Bossa founders Henrique Olifiers and Imre Jele were involved in
the development of RuneScape, a so-called massively multiplayer
online game (MMOG) with more than 250 million user accounts set
up since its launch in 2001.
Atomico, established by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, will
have two seats on the Bossa board filled by co-founder and
partner Mattias Ljungman and Atomico-affiliated games
entrepreneur Alexis Bonte will join Bossa's board.
Worlds Adrift features pirates tasked with building an airship,
recruiting crew and taking control of skies dotted with floating
islands.
It is set to be the first game on general release to be built on
the SpatialOS platform of Improbable, a British firm which in
May raised $502 million in a funding round led by Japan's
SoftBank Group Corp, valuing it at over $1 billion.
Improbable uses cloud-based computing to digitally simulate
real-world locations for use in games and product design.
Bossa said the $10 million Series A investment will be joined by
its original investor, London Venture Partners, which
specializes in early-stage funding for new games.
It said it will use the funds to recruit staff to develop
artificial intelligence, user-generated content and
community-based gaming.
Massively multiplayer online games are likely to account for a
large chunk of the $29.4 billion that market researcher NewZoo
expects to be spent on PC games this year, out of $108.9 billion
for the entire games market.
(Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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