SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dorian, an interactive platform that helps writers deliver diverse, interactive storytelling, announced today that it has raised $3.25 million in a seed funding round. The round is led by March Gaming, with participation from VGames, Konvoy Ventures, London Venture Partners, the talent management company Night Media, Michael Chow, a backer and co-creator of the Emmy-Award winning Twitch series Artificial, and Andover Ventures.
Dorian is a smart, no-code platform that allows writers to turn fiction into interactive visual games and generate revenue from their content. The platform has been in closed alpha for several months. The latest round will allow the company to launch the platform to the public later this year. Dorian was created by an experienced team that has come from game-as-a-service and social companies such as Nexon, Pixelberry, Telltale, G5, and Snapchat.
“The decentralization of creation has accelerated during the pandemic; the fastest growing apps this year, including Roblox, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube, are all UGC-driven,” said Julia Palatovska, CEO of Dorian. “Users are shifting their attention and support from content to individual creators behind that content. Dorian is in a great position to help fiction writers create engaging interactive experiences and build direct relationships with their audiences.”
Dorian’s first application is mobile, however its cloud-based engine will allow the company to expand to other emerging platforms and interfaces in the future. Writers can fully customize their characters and instantly see the results of their work without any coding or art skills. Writers who want to build their recognizable brand can upload their own cover art. They can also collaborate with each other in the engine in real-time and share feedback before their content goes live to followers.
In tests with about 50,000 players, Dorian has found that writers taking its data-driven suggestions improved monetization by 70 percent only after one or two iterations. Superfans already spend up to $10 per episode. These early numbers indicate that writers will have a much better monetization potential on Dorian than other outlets, where monetization either does not exist or is often limited to subscriptions that bundle multiple authors together.
"Dorian’s success in creating an interactive platform that values storytelling while prioritizing monetization for its writers is a game-changer,” said Gregory Milken, Managing Partner, March Capital Partners. “Julia and her team are creating a community that is primed to capture the attention of today’s influential but underrepresented content creators."
In other exciting news, John Howell, former VP of Global Partnerships at Twitch, joins the Dorian board as an independent director. Howell states, “Writers are the largest creator base in the world, and for too long there's been a gap in their ability to engage with their fans with frequency while simultaneously helping them to monetize their work. Dorian helps connect writers with existing fans and new fans while providing tools that allow them to monetize and improve their skillset. Dorian strikes me as a massive opportunity to serve a passionate group of creators and I’m excited to join them on this journey."
Dorian is now accepting new writers to its invite-only beta through applications on its website. Writers who join closed beta will keep the ownership of their content, get a head start with the content creation prior to the launch, and receive proceeds from the revenue share split that will be announced later this year.
“We see talent everywhere,” continued Palatovska. “Some of our most popular stories were written by creators with zero experience in games. The potential is there for those writers who are genuinely excited about reaching the next generation of readers who expect content to be interactive.”
ABOUT DORIAN:
Dorian is a smart, no-code platform that allows professional and amateur writers to turn their stories into games, play with friends and earn revenue. Dorian’s creation and discovery tools are designed to help diverse creators get heard through their stories. Dorian is now accepting new writers to its invite-only beta through applications on http://www.dorian.live.
