Makers Fund

Short dramas (短剧 duan ju) are taking the world by storm. As one of the first Western investors to become excited and place bets into the space, we at Makers Fund have been getting plenty of inquiries. Here are some tidbits of insights we've uncovered. If you are interested in short drama as investors or builders, please do reach out! At first glance, the format might seem odd: 60-90 second episodes of fast-paced, dramatic, often cliche but highly addictive content, running 50-100 episodes per series. But it serves well the shorter attention spans of today’s mobile-native audiences, and since its breakout in China in 2021, US in 2022, and now hitting around $100M monthly run rate, it’s finally grabbing the attention of Western funds and strategics. Chinese teams are leading the charge so far. They translated and dubbed their vast existing Chinese content libraries to cold start the platform, and use proven narratives in China to produce higher quality, more popular local shows. The narratives have universal appeal to human nature - just have swap the self-made billionaire boss for a werewolf when you cross over to the US. The top players are also sophisticated in user acquisition and live ops informed by data. Every day they look at ROI per show and per cohort and adjust their UA strategy and future content strategy. This is not unlike what people do for casual or mid-core games. Competition is fierce and companies are reinvesting all their profits into growth and more, so maximizing value from the same marketing dollar is essential. Despite all of the traction, the industry is still in its early days. In China, short dramas started off as low-quality, female-oriented romance shows. Over time, the genre has diversified into historical and social commentaries, fantasies, comedies, sci-fi, and more. Today, short drama viewership has eclipsed traditional TV/OTT long-form series, and top-tier directors and actors are jumping on board. It is not unimaginable that the rest of the world follows the same journey, and we might one day all watch content from a "Netflix of short drama" in the West soon. And even though there are already early leaders, there are still so many ways to innovate in the field - across new genres, formats, production methods (AI), geography niches and many more - making it all the more exciting space to build and invest in. Our short drama portfolio companies are actively seeking talented producers and directors in the US and Japan. If you’re interested, let’s connect!

A year ago, we set out to build Human Computer: a game studio creating experiences across multiple platforms, all within a shared universe. We had a vision, passion, and a prototype that showed what could be possible. Today, I'm thrilled to announce that Human Computer has secured funding from Makers Fund to accelerate our journey! This partnership will help us build the world-class team needed to bring our ambitious vision to life. We're creating games that maintain their unique identity while existing together in a cohesive universe—each standing on its own merit, but collectively forming something greater. We're chasing that Saturday morning feeling—the wonder, playfulness, and joy of being fully immersed in worlds filled with unforgettable characters and stories. It's still early days, but we're moving fast. We're drawing on our experience building beloved products to create something at the intersection of gaming, technology, and storytelling—a new kind of studio for a new cultural moment. Want to see what we're building? Learn more and follow our journey here: https://lnkd.in/gVydqwfs Thanks to our incredible team, our partners at Makers Fund, and everyone who's believed in us. We can't wait to share more with you. Stay tuned! #GameDevelopment #HumanComputer #MakersFund

Big news, we’re making Forge’s community building tools available to all game developers, for free! Since launching in October 2023, Forge has been pioneering innovative tools to help games build engaged, thriving communities. Now, we’re putting these powerful tools directly into your hands. With Forge Direct, you can create fully customizable, interactive community hubs and pages hosted right on your own domain. No more static websites—Forge Direct helps you drive real player engagement, grow your audience, and boost monetization on your terms. Why Forge Direct? • Fully Customizable: Easily build a dynamic community HQ that can complement or even replace your static website—without writing a single line of code. Oh, and it’s all hosted on your own domain. • Reward Your Fans: Your players already want to support your game—Forge Direct helps you close that loop, allowing you to directly incentivize and reward fans for promoting and playing. • Deeper Insights: Get detailed analytics on player behavior that you won’t find anywhere else to optimize your marketing and monetization strategies. 🚀 Announcing Web Shop Integrations 🚀 Alongside today’s update, we’re introducing new features for our game developer partners, including Xsolla-powered webshop integrations. Now, you can sell in-game items directly to players, avoiding the platform tax from Steam, iOS, and Android. Plus, direct player purchases can be rewarded with Loyalty Points, driving even more engagement. To date, our 75+ game partners have driven over 25 million quests completed on Forge. Learn more or sign up now and start building your own Forge Direct page—for free—at build.forge.gg

It's my pleasure to publicly welcome Beyond's new partners and investors! We (https://beyondos.ai/) have just secured a $20M Seed+Credit financing package to make real-life experiences more playable and engaging with beyondOS. This is a pivotal step in realizing our creator-centric vision of helping people begin, belong & become. be. When my co-founder Ben Dickenson and I started the company, it was clear that with AI there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create what was previously impossible. An opportunity that sits at the intersection of AI and entertainment, where AI can go beyond its glorious utility to spark genuine emotion and wonder in people. Partnering with top-tier VCs, Makers Fund, Atinum Investment and Play Ventures strengthens our position to launch and scale multiple AI entertainment services powered by beyondOS. Our first, Decor Society offers playable experiences centered around creating in a design and decor context, making it fun and easy to begin, belong & become. We are a global team that welcomes exceptional people to go Beyond with us regardless where they’re coming from → Check out https://lnkd.in/d2hukinQ to see our open positions and how to apply. Currently, we have two incredibly productive studio labs and on-going operations in Australia and EU 🇦🇺 🇪🇺, where our global team & talent strategy has helped us hire incredibly talented people from pretty much all around the world 🇦🇺 🇫🇮 🇮🇳 🇺🇸 🇳🇬 🇵🇱 🇪🇬 🇩🇪 Our global approach is super important to us, because we believe that it leads to unique perspectives, bigger innovations and greater successes. We are honored to have the support of our partners and peers and we're especially grateful for our investors: Henric Suuronen, Harri Manninen, Ilkka Teppo, Michael Cheung, SANG-HO PARK, Antti Hattara, Chris Lee, John Salter, Pekka Puolakka, Chaithanya Kamath With this investment, the time has come to make be. a reality. Thank you for your trust in us, it means everything.

It's finally time to share Cloudheim, Noodle Cat's first game after ~2.5 years of development! I'm deeply proud of the team - it took incredible art, design, and engineering achievements to make it possible. It's great every time we run a playtest and see audiences of all types smile, laugh, gasp, and exclaim in excitement at the crazy things they can do in our physics-based, pinball-like multiplayer melee combat.

Big congrats to Alex S. and the Voldex team on their milestone acquisition and fundraise. Impressive execution and a new chapter in their journey. Couldn't be more excited to see what's next. Onward and upward! 🚀🎉 #gaming #videogaming #UGC #roblox

🚀 Exciting news! 🚀 We’ve officially closed our acquisition of Brookhaven, the most visited game on Roblox, and completed our capital raise! Huge thank you to the Voldex team for the hard work and dedication that made this possible. We’re also grateful to Wolfpaq for entrusting us to be the new home for Brookhaven—we’re excited for the journey ahead! A special thank you to our early backers/board Ryann Lai, Andrew Chen, and David Brillembourg for your guidance and support throughout this process. We’re thrilled to be in business with The Raine Group, who led our equity round, and are grateful for the support of Makers Fund, Qatar Investment Authority, MIT Investment Management Company, TIRTA Ventures, and Lalotte Ventures who participated. Looking forward to working with Shamrock Capital, which led our debt financing, with participation from Ares Management Corporation Credit Funds and Cadma Capital Partners. A sincere thank you to those involved, including: Dara Leung, John Salter, Todd Rosoff, Kevin Chung, Blake Cellar, Abheek Ghatak, Gianluca Sonda, Ryann Lai, Lia Zhang, Jay Chi, Michael Cheung, Derrick L., Hansen Tan, Saif Al-Midhadi, Marcus Yang, Navneeth Harikumar, Ben Feder, Sergio A. Escobar, Gregory Walfish, Paul Wharshavsky, Aaron Wizenfeld, Patrick Russo, Jason Sklar, Noah Gains, Leslie Schotz, Hélène Bussières, Bradley Krack Excited for what's ahead! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eX9bjydq

Join the UNREAL community in Iceland for an evening hosted by the illustrious Ari Arnbjörnsson at the CCP Games offices on Feb 12th

Congratulations, Xterio, for hitting number #1 on Dappradar’s top blockchain games! Xterio’s AI experience, Befriend, is the number one game (>1m daily actives), while Age of Dino, its mobile strategy game, is in the top five (>400k daily actives). These are impressive milestones toward achieving Xterio’s vision of creating best-in-class games that improve the player experience with uniquely web3 and AI-enabled functionality. Xterio is emblematic of Maker’s optimism for the year ahead in crypto games. The team draws on decades of experience from top gaming companies—Michael Tong was COO of NetEase and CSO of Funplus, and Jeremy Horn was the EVP of Business and Operation at Jam City—and blends it with the vision and dynamism to understand and adapt to a new and rapidly changing crypto market. It is an invaluable combination that stood out to us at Makers immediately upon discussing Xterio with Michael and Jeremy. Age of Dino, Xterio’s flagship strategy game, was built by a team from Funplus, the leading developer of SLG games. It delivers a high-quality and intense SLG experience with a rich economy of ownable digital assets. The game is early in its lifecycle but has already reached >400k DAU and profitability. It is a must-play for any SLG fans or crypto-curious gamers. Xterio is also one of the earliest teams in crypto we know to have started exploring ways to blend AI into crypto games. After years of building technology, it is rewarding to see BeFriend, an on-chain experience where users interact with AI agents in playful scenarios, reach millions of users in early access. This product and many other games in Xterio’s upcoming pipeline utilize emotionally intelligent AI agent agents, developed in partnership with Rika AI. We are excited to see Xterio build on its momentum in 2025. In addition to scaling Age of Dino and fully launching Beriend, Xterio has several new titles in development: Palio, a simulation game with NPCs powered by on-chain AI agents; Overworld, a cross-platform action RPG; Braves, a competitive mobile strategy game; Shadow City, an intense FPS; and Black Dawn, a mobile JRPG. Watch out for more announcements!