Two guys from online video game operator K2 Network Inc. of Irvine have teamed up to start their own online game company.
Jeff Lujan and Bob Drobish are cofounders of the venture, True Games Interactive. Lujan is chief publishing officer. Drobish is chief operating officer.
The small company operates out of offices at Santa Ana’s Digital Media Center, which rents space to startups and gives them room to grow.
Lujan and Drobish worked together at K2 Network. There’s no bad blood with their former employer, according to Drobish, who was vice president of operations at K2. Lujan was vice president of global publishing.
“Both of us left K2 independently but very much enjoyed working together and the complementary aspects of our skills,” Drobish said. “There was a great dovetail of our backgrounds.”
Both “were really committed and fascinated by the space and talked about how we would do it ourselves if we could do it from scratch,” Drobish said.
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True Games: set to release first game this summer |
Drobish and Lujan have years of experience publishing and running what are called “massive multiplayer online games,” where thousands of players face off over the Internet.
Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc. dominates online games with its blockbuster fantasy game series “World of Warcraft.”
The company recently said it hit a milestone of having 10 million subscribers paying to play the game online.
True Games Interactive’s titles are set to be built around a business model called “free-to-play micro transactions.”
“You can play the game for free online, but typically there are items along the way you can purchase,” Drobish said.
Items for purchase,such as weapons or access to other areas in the game,give players an edge over rivals. Others are just for fun, such as being able to customize the look of your online character.
The micro transaction model is biggest in Asia, where K2 has done extensive business licensing games from developers there, Drobish said.
True Interactive Games won’t do any game development,it’ll tap developers to come up with games or license them.
The founders’ expertise is in doing the back-end work to run an online gaming site,managing payments and providing customer service to players.
“There’s a real opportunity there for quality innovative games and player experiences,” Drobish said. “There’s also a real need for the skill sets that an online game requires that a traditional video game doesn’t. You don’t have all the operational and publishing components.”
True Games is looking to explore new types of games that could work online, Drobish said.
“We are not looking to build the next ‘World of Warcraft,'” Drobish said. “But there are lots of other game genres besides hardcore role-playing games out there.”
The company is in talks with investors and hopes to close an initial round of venture funding by the end of the first quarter.
Drobish declined so say how much True Games Interactive was after.
“The response that we have gotten has been overwhelming and very encouraging,” Drobish said.
True Games Interactive is set to release its first game in June.
Quest Buys the Rest
Aliso Viejo’s Quest Software Inc., a maker of business software, has made another acquisition.
Quest bought all of Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based Vizioncore Inc., a maker of disaster recovery and other software for data storage networks, for undisclosed terms.
Quest was an initial investor in Vizioncore when it got its start in 2002 and later bought a controlling interest back in 2005.
In June it upped its stake a bit more. Last month it bought the rest of the company.
The move adds to Quest’s lineup of virtualization software, which helps create a “virtual” structure of data storage networks.
Virtualization is a big trend among companies that sell electronics and software that go into such networks. It’s tech speak for the ability to “virtually” combine servers and other data storage computers into what appears to be a single source. It helps companies sort, store and manage huge amounts of data in a smaller space. It also cuts down on the energy requirements of operating big storage rooms full of servers.
Quest broadened its virtualization product portfolio in 2007 with the acquisitions of Suwanee, Ga.-based Invirtus Inc. and Reston, Va.-based Provision Networks Inc.
