Turnt Gaming raises $4.3M for skill-based blockchain fighting game
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Turnt Gaming has raised $4.3 million to build a fighting game that uses the blockchain and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
The money will help the company accelerate the building of Taunt Battleworld, a skill-based fighting game simulator that features boxing icon Floyd Mayweather and mixed martial arts (MMA) legend Cris Cyborg.
Polygon’s gaming NFT arm, Polygon Studios, led the round, and other participants included blockchain investors AU21 Capital, GenBlock Capital, and Shima Capital.
“We’re bringing traditional video game experience to like the blockchain world,” said Jeff Liboon, founder of Turnt Gaming, in an interview with GamesBeat. “The reaction has been really good.”
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That is, it’s been good considering hardcore fans have been railing against NFT games, which use the transparency and security of the digital ledger of blockchain to authenticate unique digital items. But rather than pitch its games at hardcore gamers, Turnt Gaming is targeting the crypto-savvy fans who don’t mind experimenting.
Liboon’s audience isn’t the NFT haters among hardcore gamers. Rather, it’s the people who already accept and like playing around with cyrptocurrencies.
“That’s where we’re starting,” he said. “If you take a look at our graphics, it’s not the latest version of Mortal Kombat on the PS5. But it’s also not just a 2D fighter. It lands squarely in the middle.”
As for the resistance that NFTs ran into from hardcore gamers, he said, “It’s an interesting question. I think the current desire to talk about this is similar to the resistance to free-to-play games. There was huge resistance to ad-based games,
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