Online videogame developer raises capital for new game

12 December 2006 12:11 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Online gamers will be pleased to hear there's another online game in development by a company led by some of the people who helped to design “World of Warcraft”.

Red 5 Studios has raised around $18.5 million in venture capital from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures.

The chief executive of Red 5, Mark Kern, is the former team leader on “World of Warcraft”. He told Reuters that the studio will produce games for game operators and distributors, in a similar way that Pixar Animation Studios did in the movie world. The company's strategy is to focus on content.

Red 5 is currently working on a massively multiplayer online game, or MMORPG, for a South Korean company, Webzen, who will distribute it.

MMORPGs are big business these days thanks to the growth in high-speed home internet connectivity. They're wildly popular in Asia, and are growing steadily in the US and Europe.

World of Warcraft, created by Blizzard Entertaiment, has around 6.5 million subscribers worldwide, and one of the investors of Benchmark said of online gaming, “Major media companies are paying attention in a major way”.

Full tags

Gaming, PC games, MMORPG, Nintendo, Patents