Croquet Corporation announced Tuesday it raised a $2.7 million seed round to introduce its Live Collaboration tool for AR game and app development.
Croquet’s platform makes multiplayer game development easier by allowing users to collaborate in one shared environment. This is made possible by its synchronization system that takes care of the extra step of writing separate code or deploying a server.
The Los Angeles-based startup says this platform was created to foster a “new generation of shared, interactive and collaborative experiences.”
“Live collaboration is the key to a next generation of applications and games,” CEO and founder David A. Smith said in a statement. “Croquet will unleash a wave of innovation that will define massive new markets as the 5G and augmented reality markets go mainstream around the world.”
Croquet’s platform isn’t just for multiplayer game development, though. Smith says it can be used to enable shared productivity and even 3D visualizations for a range of areas, including video editing, presentation and brainstorming software and social networks.
Smith has more than 30 years of experience in this space, developing real-time 3D products for games and enterprises including Wearality, Virtus, Red Storm Entertainment and Gensym.
Croquet’s team of developers originally came together as part of Y Combinator Research’s Human Advancement Research Community with Alan Kay, who is widely regarded as the father of the personal computer. Kay also sits on Croquet’s advisory board.
