Seattle and video games go way back.
The Emerald City has been the launching point of many game developers, games and software that has propelled the industry. A brief history of video games in Seattle, as reported by SeattleMet, points to Nintendo’s HQ move to Redmond in 1982 as the start of the city’s gaming boom. Since then, games such as Half-Life, Portal and Pokémon Go have all risen out of the Seattle area.
The area’s influence also extends past the games themselves. Seattle is the headquarters of Steam, the largest PC digital game store, and Twitch, an Amazon-owned live streaming platform that popularized video game streaming. In total, there are about 50 video game companies in Seattle and the surrounding port cities, according to GameSmith.
Now, the city has another game developer to add to its ranks. Newly formed Lost Lake Games announced on Tuesday that it secured $5 million in funding.
Lost Lake Games was co-founded by James Phinney, who’s held several executive roles at various gaming companies and was the lead designer for the popular strategy game StarCraft. According to GeekWire, Lost Lake will be a cross-platform gaming company but little is known about the types of games it will produce.
“Lost Lake is not tied to a single platform or genre but rather to a core belief that empowering talented individuals and fostering a culture of collaboration leads to incredible games,” Phinney told GeekWire. “[Lost Lake is] an independent studio committed to making games that blaze new trails and spark your next adventure.”
Lost Lake’s recent funding round comes from BITKRAFT Ventures, a San Fransico-based VC firm focused on gaming startups. The group was founded in 2017 and in 2020 announced that it had raised $165 million for its fund. Besides funding Lost Lake, the VC firm has funded other game development startups like BeBopBee, which makes mobile puzzle game for kids. BITKRAFT has also recently started funding innovative projects that would bring gaming to the Ethereum blockchain.
The same day Lost Lake announced its new funding, Sony announced that it plans to acquire Seattle-based Bungie for $3.6 billion. And a couple of weeks prior, Microsoft announced that it would be acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.
