Will Wright's Syntertainment raises $5 million

Will Wright is moving forward with Syntertainment, already raising $5 million for his new startup company.

Ozzie Mejia

September 20, 2013 1:15 PM

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SimCity creator Will Wright has formally moved on to his next venture, co-founding a new startup called Syntertainment. The company is said to be focusing on bringing together entertainment and reality and has already raised $5 million from investors, including ex-EA CEO John Riccitiello, who will serve as a board member.

There are few details on what Syntertainment will entail, aside from this venturing away from Wright's traditional route of game development. He does tell Venture Beat that the company will serve as an "evolution" to Wright's interests. This also falls in line with Wright's earlier statement that his next game would be based in reality.

Wright was previously involved in a couple of other startups, including HiveMind, that haven't quite taken off, due to some legal issues. According to VentureBeat, the company will not use the same ideas as Wright's previous endeavors, but he will bring aboard team members from his last startup, the Stupid Fun Club.

Though Wright isn't ready to reveal what Syntertainment is doing next, he does continue to imply a less traditional path, saying, "The world is changing so fast in these areas. We’ve seen the rise of the app market, indie games. There are still Grand Theft Auto games and things like that around. But the rest of the market is evolving so fast. You now have to have a distribution system to go with your game."

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?