Carbonated Games

About Carbonated Games

Carbonated Inc., doing business as Carbonated Games, is a venture-funded, independent game development studio established in 2015. The company was founded by a team of seasoned professionals from the gaming industry, including CEO Travis Boatman and CTO Lloyd Tulles, who have collective experience from major companies like Zynga, Electronic Arts, Blizzard, and Sony. Boatman's extensive background includes serving as SVP of Mobile at both Zynga and Electronic Arts, where he was instrumental in the success of top-grossing mobile titles. The founders' motivation was to create hardcore competitive gaming experiences for mobile platforms, targeting a growing demographic of adult gamers with busy lives who miss traditional PC and console gaming.

The studio operates in the mobile gaming market, focusing on creating player-versus-player (PvP) games. Carbonated has secured significant funding, including an $8.5 million seed round in 2020 led by Andreessen Horowitz, Golden Ventures, and Bitkraft Ventures, followed by an $11 million Series A round in 2024 led by South Korean game publisher Com2uS. The company's business model is centered on free-to-play games with in-app purchases and, more recently, the integration of Web3 technologies, such as NFTs and a potential on-chain cryptocurrency called "Rounds."

Carbonated's flagship project is 'MadWorld,' a third-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. The game features both cooperative player-versus-environment (PVE) and clan-based player-versus-player (PVP) modes. A key feature is its strategic territory control system, built upon a map of over 250,000 tokenized land plots that correspond to real-world locations, which players can own as NFTs. This system allows landowners to earn resources and tributes from other players. To power this dynamic experience, the company developed its own proprietary live-ops platform, 'Carbyne,' which uses AI to tailor gameplay and can be updated without downtime. 'MadWorld' is being built using the open-source O3DE game engine for iOS and Android devices.