Andreessen Horowitz debuts $600 million game fund with an eye on web3

gamedeveloper.com:

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has spent the last decade funding tech startups ranging from Airbnb to Soylent, is debuting a new $600 million fund for investing in the video game industry.

The fund (named "Games Fund One") will be split between three types of companies: game studios, companies developing player-targeted apps like Discord or Twitch, and companies creating tools and services for game developers. Discord cofounder Jason Citron, Riot Games cofounder Marc Merrill, and Blizzard entertainment cofounder Mike Morhaime are among the industry veterans participating in the fund.

This isn't Andreessen Horowitz's debut in the game industry. The investment firm's portfolio already includes companies like Riot Games, CCP, and Epic Games, and newer companies like Sandbox VR and Bonfire Studios are also benefactors of the firm's finances.

So what's driving interest in this fund? Games partner James Gwertzman, who most recently sold PlayFab to Microsoft in 2018, told us that the company's focus is on live service games. With increased player interested in games like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Minecraft, Andreessen Horowitz apparently is beginning to think of these games as something that resembles social networks, and scale like consumer technology companies.

Gwertzman advised us that developers interested in seeking money from Games Fund One should not only be thinking about live service games, but also about the world of user-generated content. There's also interest in games where "the community is encouraged to participate and help create" using that user-generated content.

As one example, he pointed to game developer Singularity 6 as being a developer that's started to build community