UPDATED: Ohai Gets Funding for MMO

Last fall, Ohai received an undisclosed amount of funding, rumored to be in the $6 million range, from August Capital and Rustic Canyon Partners, reports TechCrunch.  The company is keeping mum otherwise, but is hiring artists and developers of all levels.

The company does have a strong background: Scott Hartsman, VP Production, previously  led development on projects like Everquest II and Everquest. Don Neufeld, VP Engineering, shipped 15 products as Technical Director at Sony Online Entertainment. Blake Commagere, CTO, co-founded Mogad and was a senior engineer at Plaxo.  Susan Wu, CEO, was previously a partner at Charles River Ventures and invested in Twitter, Metaplace, and, most recently, Conduit.

Wu is also a big proponent of the virtual goods model, suggesting a likely direction for Ohai to go in.'

“There are very few teams that have shipped multiple MMOs across different generations of products. We are very fortunate to have Scott, Don and the team they brought over from Sony," The company noted in an emailed statement. "There is a significant amount of learning that comes from having gone through dozens of MMO launches that we are applying to our products. Also, while at Sony, our team was involved in the design and implementation of their virtual goods platform."

UPDATE: Wu confirms that Ohai is indeed a a virtual goods focused business with its primary revenue source coming from virtual goods.

Also, Wu notes that "casual" may not be the best way to describe what Ohai is up to.

"'Casual" is a misleading term.  If you notice, we don't use the word casual to describe what we are building, but we do use  the word 'accessible,'" she explained via email. "What does accessible mean? Raph [Koster, Metaplace Co-Founder and President,] likes to call it 'zero barrier entry' gaming.  We believe in that philosophy as well. That being said, we're building games that really leverage the strength of the core team.  So, the part of our team that comes from SOE has extensive experience in understanding how to build gaming systems with persistent state worlds where there is an ongoing investment in your character's development.  The part of our team that comes from social networking roots understands viral mechanics, how to leverage the social graph, myriad distribution channels.  I don't see a lot of people doing exactly what we have in mind, if any.  If you know of any, please let me know!"

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