Growing up, I spent countless hours playing games with my friends on the couch or around the table with our makeshift LAN setup. Most of those were cooperative (co-op) games where we teamed up against common foes. The sense of camaraderie you build, especially in comical moments of screw-ups or extraordinary turnarounds with a hair of health left, remain vivid memories. As the internet sped up and we moved around the country for school and work, we continued our game nights with online co-op sessions, strategizing and yelling at each other over TeamSpeak then Discord, while sharing details of our lives. Playing co-op games was and still is how we hang out and catch up. We were not alone, I strongly believe multiplayer games are meaningful social experiences and becoming increasingly so for more people. You read about the highlights of players meeting in World of Warcraft and getting married, live music festivals in games like Second Life (BBC Radio 1) and Minecraft (Coalchella), and the latest incarnation with EDM DJ Marshmellow doing a 10 minute set in Fortnite as a “stop” on his real world tour, complete with flyers, promotions and gradual reveal of the in-game virtual venue being built days leading up to the concert (shoutout to portfolio company TheWaveVR that’s been running synced live and PC+VR concerts, including the latest official music video collaboration between Japanese virtual YouTuber Kazuna AI and Dutch DJ W&W). Those are milestone, newsworthy events, but more importantly small versions of these interactions happen every day amongst hundreds of millions of players around the world.

Marshmello concert in Fortnite In parallel, the distribution of games is rapidly shifting. What started as boxed retail sales went online, then turned into virtual stores dominated by the likes of Steam, Apple and Google, and is now evolving into even more accessible subscription services with growing libraries of content and the looming promise of cloud streaming. From incumbent Microsoft Game Pass plus xCloud, Sony Playstation Now and EA Origin Premier to new / upcoming Discord Nitro, Epic Game Store, Google Project Stream and the rumored Amazon service, the stage is set for a massive race of more accessibility across devices, competitive pricing, and of course more games and exclusives from AAA to indie studios. No matter how it shakes out I believe it’ll be an incredible boon for gamers, much like how Spotify/Apple Music and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon have been for music and TV/ movies.

Similarly it’s an incredible time to be building a new gaming company. History has shown that each time technology meaningfully improves to enable more accessible games for more players, lasting gaming companies were cemented. There were Activision Blizzard and EA creating serial IP franchises during the retail box era, Valve pioneering the Steam online store, Supercell and King scaling free to play games on iOS and Google Play stores, and Minecraft, Roblox and Epic Games building social games that massively activated younger and more casual player bases. Right now the pace of technology improvements is faster than ever in core game engines, networking stacks and AI systems for game play and content creation. Whoever succeeds have the chance to build a once in a generation, lasting company.

Along those lines I cannot think of a better founding team than Chet Faliszek and Kimberly Voll to take on this opportunity. They are industry veterans that have helped build games reaching hundreds of millions of players topping billions in revenue, games that have pioneered more cooperative, social game design and player experiences. I’m super excited to lead a $5 million round into their brand new company Stray Bombay in Seattle, along with fellow LA resident and gaming pioneer Riot Games. I have known Chet for a few years from his time at Valve on game design and developer relations, thanks to portfolio CEO Todd Hooper at VREAL, whose board we serve on together. Chet led on hit co-op shooter series Left 4 Dead (tens of millions of copies sold and still going strong as a top 50 Steam game by concurrent players, 10 years later) and worked on many other top, enduring games from Portal 2 to CS:GO. Kim has a PhD in Computer Science and is a teacher and designer of AI and complex player behavior systems in games. She helped revamp League of Legend’s player interaction and reward systems to encourage healthier, more cooperative interactions. Inspired by that experience she co-founded the Fair Play Alliance, a group of 100+ gaming companies sharing and promoting best practices for fair play and healthy communities in online games. Together Chet and Kim are on a mission to create co-op games that tailor gameplay to you and your team’s unique style and experience. A type of game where players can have fun whether they’re regular pros or coming back after 6 months hiatus, where team work is truly cooperative and each person contributes, and where every session feels new but not randomly generated. Thanks Chet and Kim for having me on this journey, I cannot wait to jump in with my friends.

Check out Chet and Kim’s blog post and interview for a deeper dive on their vision for both game design and team building. They’re hiring senior developers, designers and artists, if interested please email careers@straybombay.com.