Pocket Worlds has raised $7 million to expand its High Rise mobile massively multiplayer online game. The game is a social sandbox where players can create their own avatars, environments, and fashion.
The game launched in January 2015, and it has grown every month ever since. It now has more than seven million users creating avatars and other things.
While HighRise enables users to express themselves through avatars and create dream worlds and real-time games, the real draw is its social-first focus, the company said. The rapidly growing casual female gaming market has embraced HighRise’s real-time virtual chat and news feed integration.
Over 30% of active users are actively trading items like clothes, resulting in over 50,000 transactions every day. The San Francisco-based Pocket Worlds said it would use the money to accelerate product development to create more social-first mobile games and to scale its team on a global basis.
Bitkraft Ventures led the round, with participation from Everblue Management, GFR Fund, Sweet Capital, BoxGroup, and Pixelberry Studios CEO Oliver Miao.
Pocket Worlds’ mission is to build deep, rich games that are social by design and last for decades. Highrise, the first product in its portfolio, is a rapidly growing sandbox MMO rooted in social engagement. Players can style avatars in many different combinations, giving users ways to express themselves virtually in environments that can be built out of thousands of building blocks.
Anton Bernstein is the cofounder and CEO of Pocket Worlds. He said in a statement that the company has grown its revenues by six times in the past year. The company has 35 employees.
