Storycraft — the AI-powered recreation platform the place gamers create, discover, and share their very own interactive story worlds — has raised a $3 million seed spherical.
The funding for the Montreal-based startup will speed up the worldwide multiplatform launch of Storycraft’s multiplayer cell recreation constructed on Google Cloud, which mixes AI inventive instruments, on-line neighborhood, and social storytelling in by no means earlier than seen methods.
Khosla Ventures led, the spherical, which follows an earlier $2 million pre-seed spherical led by London Enterprise Companions (LVP), and Signalfire.
Storycraft was cofounded by Andy Mauro. He’s a longtime utilized AI innovator behind Nuance’s Nina the world’s first enterprise cell voice assistant, and Automat, the main product advice chatbot (acquired in 2021).
Storycraft creations
With Storycraft, Mauro desires to create the Minecraft of storytelling—a spot the place anybody with a narrative to inform, not simply recreation designers, can flip their concepts into wealthy, playable experiences by working collaboratively with AI.
“Our early players have shown us that creating characters, worlds, and stories with AI is so much more than just a better version of a community crafting game,” stated Mauro, CEO of Storycraft, in an announcement. “It’s actually reigniting a creative spark players thought had gone out. We’ve had people tell us that it’s helped them through writer’s block, that they’ve picked up painting again, and even that they’re taking less anxiety medication as a result of finding a new way to express themselves in Storycraft.”
He added, “Players approach creativity through a lens of fun and low self-judgement when it’s in a game. This results in some uniquely personal, and stunningly novel creations from players. Not only are they building a world, they are able to live the story inside it.”
Storycraft combines:
- AI Worldbuilding Instruments: Gamers use generative AI to create characters, gadgets, buildings, presents, and even sky and lighting results to present every world a singular really feel.
- Social Gameplay: Actual and AI mates can discover and contribute to one another’s worlds and storylines. AI characters ask human gamers to make issues for them, and gamers go to one another’s worlds to gather the required assets making a close to infinite nicely of ongoing inspiration.
- UGC-Pushed Economic system: Gamers earn, commerce, and showcase user-generated content material throughout a shared multiverse. Storycraft is the primary recreation the place actually every thing is created by gamers.
- Emotional Storytelling: Each world is a stage for private, hilarious, heartfelt, or epic narratives. The AI acts as a Muse for the participant to assist them provide you with concepts, but in addition responds to the main points they supply, upping the inventive ante like a real inventive associate.
Storycraft has raised $3 million.
“AI enables anyone to be both a consumer and a creator,” stated Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, in an announcement. “Storycraft introduces a new kind of social gameplay, where players can build their own characters and interact with them in their own digital worlds.”
Since launching its open alpha, Storycraft has already seen gamers make 1000’s of worlds and lots of of 1000’s of AI-generated characters, buildings and objects. Many gamers have already spent lots of of hours crafting a number of worlds throughout a variety of genres, together with cozy, fantasy, post-apocalyptic, horror, romance, sci-fi and plenty of others. Fascinatingly, the overwhelming majority of worlds are distinctive creations, not primarily based on pre-existing IP.
The seed funding will assist crew enlargement, product growth and preparation for the sport’s public beta launch later this 12 months.
