Meteor Entertainment raises $10M

Extracted 27FEB2012 from http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/27/meteor-entertainment-raises-10m-to-fund-haw...

The large amount of funding for a studio that has only one unpublished game in the works is a big bet, but one that the backers are making with a great deal of confidence. The investors include Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital, the same investors who backed the highly successful Riot Games, maker of League of Legends, a downloadable web game that was so popular that China’s Tencent bought Riot for more than $400 million last year. At the time, Riot had just a million users, but the company was valuable because of its fast growth — it has more than 35 million downloads now and four million to five million daily active users — and the hardcore gamers were willing to spend real money for virtual goods in the free-to-play title. The investors call the sector the “core free-to-play market.”

... Hawken is scheduled to launch on Dec. 12, or 12/12/12. The title drew a lot of attention last year because the team posted cool game play videos on YouTube that collectively garnered more than 1.9 million views. Khang Le, chief executive of Adhesive Games, told us in an interview that the game is akin to Call of Duty multiplayer combat, but for mechs.

...As for the state of gaming, Lasky said, “This is the most chaotic period in the game industry I can remember, and chaos is good for investors and startups. This year, I don’t think there will be a galvanizing event like Zynga’s initial public offering. But there will be a series of small events that will look significant in retrospect. Social and mobile games are clearly lower risks. But if you find an extraordinary game like Hawken, you can build a defensible competitive position.”