October 2023
Alline Akintore
We are delighted to share that Oregon Venture Fund co-led a $3.5M seed round in Wicked Saints Studios, alongside existing investor Riot Games. With our investment, OVF venture partner Thomas Gewecke, former chief digital officer at Warner Bros., joins the board. As OVF’s first investment in a gaming company, this speaks to the quality of the founders and the team, the market opportunity for interactive story games, and our conviction in the mission of Wicked Saints to power good in the world and to open up gaming to an increasingly diverse gaming audience.
The mobile gaming category has experienced explosive growth over the past two decades since the release of the Appstore in 2008. Within that expanding market, the interactive story games (ISG) segment is growing 9% annually, with a stronghold in Eastern Europe and Asia, and dominated by the genre of romantic stories.
The Wicked Saints founders recognized a white space opportunity for a new kind of game – broadly speaking, but particularly in this ISG category – targeting Gen Z players in Western markets, primarily in the US. Gen Z-ers spend over 50% of their waking hours on their smartphones – 30% of that on gaming – and are more mission-driven than generations preceding them. Wicked Saints’ flagship game, World Reborn, is fun and engaging, but also mission-oriented with a novel approach to play and monetization, in which the game is powered by sponsored in-real-life actions.
Jess Murrey, CEO and co-founder of Wicked Saints, is an Emmy-nominated storyteller with experience working with the young activists she is building World Reborn for – first at a regional television network where she run youth programs, and then at Search for Common Ground. Alicia Clifton, COO and co-founder, met Jess at Search for Common Ground and has spent the last few years working on behavioral science at the University of Pennsylvania. The two recognized an opportunity to continue their work with young activists through mobile gaming.
During diligence we were impressed with Jess and Alicia. While our thesis for investing in Wicked Saints is underpinned by our faith in these two co-founders, that is not all:
Wicked Saints boasts a world-class team that brings experience in technology (including core tech architecture, infrastructure, and data analytics) and game economy design from top-tier games including Pokémon Go, Angry Birds, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and The Walking Dead, among others.
With only pre-seed funding, Wicked Saints had run a successful pilot of their flagship game with incredible D1-D7 metrics and strong positive signals from their target audience.
We appreciated the team’s focus and clarity on execution and what they needed to do to stand out on crowded mobile platforms. Their out-of-the-box approach to power games by actions in the real world is differentiated.
Not only will this fuel positive impact from players, but Wicked Saints’ team has also thought through a unique monetization strategy built on top of this in-real-life play, supported by partnerships and sponsorships for in-game missions.
From our perspective, this could create a sustainable advantage for player acquisition and retention – given the reach that strategic partnerships can offer, as well as the positive feedback from earning and advancing through each new level of the game.
Lastly, when they strike a chord, games can catch on really fast.
As Jess recently told TechCrunch, “American teens care very deeply about the planet, equality, and mental health, but the problems often feel so big it’s paralyzing. We wanted to activate them to take whatever the world throws at them, and the best way to do that was with games.” OVF is humbled by the opportunity to partner with Jess and her team on this mission.
Wicked Saints’ press release here and the TechCrunch story here.