I am thrilled to share that Omni Creator Products has raised a $4.3 million seed round to empower every player to become an active participant in the creation of games. The round was led by Upfront Ventures, with additional investments from Everblue Management, Paul Meegan (former president of Epic Games and LucasArts), Eden Chen (co-founder of Pragma Platform), Phineas Barnes (former partner at First Round Capital), and other angel investors in the game and tech industry.
Nick Atamas and I founded OCP to live out our childhood dream. We vividly remember falling in love with games. Before long, we wanted to tell our own stories within those game worlds. We did not want to build something new from scratch; we wanted to use the games we loved as a canvas on which to tell our own stories and express our own ideas. This creative desire is universal to players. Players want not only to consume games, but to be active participants in the creation of games.
Existing attempts to make creation accessible focus on merely simplifying the component tools of professional game development suites. This approach keeps creation inaccessible by forcing creators to work on a blank canvas and follow the same creative processes as professional game developers. Professional creative processes are built for large teams of seasoned developers; they stifle creativity and extinguish the players’ natural creative spark.
OCP’s mission is to empower every player to fulfill this universal desire by giving players a canvas to create on and a process that matches their natural creative drive. We are building a world for players to enjoy, but we’re not stopping there. We are giving every player the same toolbox we used to build that world. That toolbox is carefully crafted to present players a clean palette of meaningful choices to make creation accessible, intuitive, and magical. The result is a game that players can enjoy as is, seamlessly modify to express their imagination, or use as a springboard to build an entirely new game. Of course, we’ll support all major platforms to empower as many creators as possible.
“Some of my favorite games growing up like StarCraft: Brood War and Halo had vibrant modding communities of fellow players using the bundled editor to create new levels, maps, and even whole new games,” said Kevin Zhang, partner at Upfront Ventures. “I was never design-savvy enough to make anything interesting, but with OCP’s product, players can pause a game and switch seamlessly into editing, remixing, and back to playing.”
Nick, my brother and co-founder, has long straddled the line between building games and building tools, giving him a unique view into both game development and empowering others to engage in game development. An early employee and 12-year veteran of Epic Games, Nick was the first person to contribute code to Unreal Engine 4: designing and implementing the user experience for the UE4 Editor. He also worked on Fortnite, Gears of War 2 and 3, Robo Recall, and Paragon. Complimenting Nick’s technical expertise, I’ve spent the past four and a half years at Epic supporting creators. While heading up strategy and operations for Unreal Engine, I led the integration of creator tools like Quixel into Epic’s offerings and created Epic MegaGrants. Before that, I ran all legal aspects of Unreal Engine licensing. We’ve been joined at OCP by an amazing team with decades of industry experience, combining veterans of Epic Games, id Software, Proletariat, Zynga, and ArenaNet.
“Developers have worked for decades to make games a medium where players participate in the process of creation,” said Paul Meegan. “Many games have gotten parts of it right, but generally as an afterthought – with the results being either too simplistic and underpowered, or too close to developer tools and therefore difficult to use. Nick and Mike have set out to solve this problem from first principles. They are two of the most talented people I know, and have deep experience with the entire value chain necessary to finally unlock games as a creative medium.”
We’ve seen glimpses of the impact that unleashing player creativity can have. Many of the most popular games today, from Fortnite Battle Royale to League of Legends, have their origins in player creations. Empowering every player to become a creator will revolutionize the game industry.
The OCP team is rapidly growing. We’re fully remote and international. You can follow our journey at ocp.gg, and if you’d like to join us, please reach out at contact [at] ocp.gg.