We need more game creators!
Why I decided to build Soba
As a kid in the 80s and 90s, I was fortunate enough to have access to a PC and I can recall the excitement of playing games like Civilisation, Wing Commander, and X-COM. And when I learned to program, the first thing I wanted to build were games. Programming was difficult and I was never good at it, but I remember the pride when I saw my first game (3D Tetris with way too difficult controls) come alive.
I found a way to express my creativity beyond what any other art form allowed me to. Being able to express myself through building games unlocked a new side of me and has majorly contributed to my personal growth.
Once I grew up, games became my career. I started my first mobile games studio, and later also invested in other games.
What started as a fascination with virtual worlds built by others, has led me to build worlds and experiences myself for others to enjoy.
There are over 3 billion people playing games but only a small fraction is able to do what I’ve done — build games.
Why?
- Leading game creation tools are limited to PCs and are not available on the most widespread computing platform — mobile.
- Those tools are unnecessarily complex, requiring you to know how to write code.
Additionally, many UGC (user-generated content) game platforms make their owners rich but leave little for the people making those games.
What this means is that a lot of potential creators globally are being left out.
They might be from an emerging country where not a lot of people have a powerful PC, or maybe they’re someone who’s more interested in building worlds, story, and characters but doesn’t know how to program and thus is unable to make their creations come alive. This is a huge loss in terms of human creativity.
In the future, the time we spend in games and other digital experiences will increase. It would be sad if this future world has a tiny fraction of creators and most of us are only consumers.
What excites me the most though is seeing how others express their creativity. There is nothing more beautiful than pure self-expression, and what better way than through game building.
That is why we decided to build Soba!
Soba is a gaming platform where anyone can both play and make games.
It’s very important to my team and me that more people have access to a platform that allows them to easily build games, that’s why Soba has been created to function multi-platform but will have a focus on mobile.
We also created a simple yet powerful no-code tool, so people can create games without needing to know how to program.
Additionally, we’re building on Web3 to reward our creators, align incentives, and give support to those building 3rd party assets.
We want to create a sustainable ecosystem that is directed toward long-term value over short-term profits. We don’t think rewarding users monetarily for ‘just’ playing (ie play to earn) is an appropriate way of doing that and can lead to misalignment.
Instead, we’re building a “create-to-earn” ecosystem where most of the rewards will go to the people creating most of the value — game creators.
I am excited to announce that we’ve raised $13.6 million seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and FTX Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Point Nine Capital, and TQ Ventures.
We’re dedicated to making it easier for people to build amazing games and this milestone brings us closer to realising that mission!
Thanks for sticking with me until the end. Hope you enjoyed the article.👏
If you want to learn more about Soba and get access to the game head over here!
Also, join our community on Discord 🔆
