Earlier this year, Trion World Network, Inc. announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard to develop the technology infrastructure for a dynamic, multi-platform content delivery system. Now, the broadband games and entertainment publisher and developer announced it has raised hefty dollars in investments from some very big players. Time Warner, GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity, and Bertelsmann AG's BDMI all pitched in their vote of confidence-- to the tune of 30 million dollars.
The latest round of funding, led by Rustic Canyon Partners, is an additional boost to a previous fundraising effort in an undisclosed amount supported by DCM and Trinity Ventures, who also joined in this time.
Worlds in Motion spoke to Trion CEO Lars Buttler about Trion's ambitious vision. "Imagine Amazon, or Google, or Yahoo in large-scale gameworlds," he said. "And the platform also allows you to tap into the same experience from any connected device. We're taking the game experience out of the client and putting it into a sophisticated infrastructure."
Buttler's ideas on the evolution of media delivery might explain why heavyweight broadcasting companies are taking notice of Trion's work. "A dynamic platform allows you to build constantly," Buttler explained. "If traditional games are made like movies, you launch and keep your fingers crossed—we built it more like TV shows. It’s a very fundamental shift in the risk and reward profile."
So what's next? "We have built this technology, and now we are building channels," says Buttler. "Every channel is a large-scale gameworld. Some of the channels we built completely in-house, and others, we just publish what third parties have built. It's the classic Electronic Arts or Activision model applied to a completely different experience."
Buttler should know-- he's the former Global VP of Online at EA. And he's not the only member of the team to come from a game industry background-- other EA professionals came along, and NCSoft former lead architect Robert "Jay" Lee joined up to apply his 20 years experience in large-scale game design. Also on board is game designer Jon Van Caneghem, known for Might & Magic. Buttler says the highly experienced team helped inspire investor confidence. "It's a group of people that in this quality and this diversity nobody else has ever brought together," he says. "If we hadn’t this team people wouldn’t have believed we could pull it off, and whoever we show it to 'gets it' right away."
Even so-- 30 million dollars? "As a publisher and developer, we really have to do a lot," Buttler explains. "We build the tech base, we build content, we co-develop with other parties and we also publish-- that means you go to the consumer any way possible on a global scale. Whenever a market is so disruptive and new, you can't stick to only one piece of the value chain."
"We're creating a whole package with a 20-year vision from the beginning to the end of the chain," Buttler adds.
How will it work? "Every channel is accessible across a number of devices," Buttler says. "And that's web, PC client-- that's even mobile phones. But the point is, it will not be the same experience. It will tap into the same gameworld, but it will be tailored to the capabilities of the device. On a mobile phone you wouldn’t want to play a large scale game, but you want to be in touch with your game—alerts, info, et cetera."
Buttler says the product on the very first channel-- what he likens to a television pilot-- is already built, will be announced by the end of this year, and available to the consumer by next year. He's hesitant to provide too many early details, but allows that, "at its core, it will be a large-scale game. But it will be a large-scale game that has a tremendous amount of elements of social networks, and it will be a game that will evolve almost like a TV show evolves."
Looking over recent developments in connected entertainment, Buttler says that both social networks trying to be more game-like and games trying to incorporate elements of social networking are a step in the right direction. "But all of them have downsides, or are missing certain elements. But they are the first ones, so it’s logical. What we try to do is just take the next step. And we won't be perfect either—but if you build it dynamically, you can learn from the users, and change, and continue moving forward."
"We're all gamers and entertainment junkies at the core," Buttler stresses. "First and foremost, what people love is great entertainment—great games. That’s what we are passionate about-- at end of the day, what is the greatest experience that you can get now where users are all connected to each other? The most powerful, most fun, challenging [experience] that you can give people?"
Hit the jump for the press release.
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