Fractal

Who?

Founded by Justin Kan from Twitch, Robin Chan from Zynga, and Dan Borstelmann from Google, building great gaming products and successful companies in our DNA. To date, Fractal’s raised $35 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Multicoin, and more.

What?

Fractal empowers game developers like you to acquire highly engaged players on both web and desktop.

Fractal is focusing on making games easily discoverable, while motivating players with compelling experiences that make them want to stick around.

It’s important to note that Fractal is a completely free distribution channel and all their APIs sits on top of your existing infrastructure - so there’s no heavy lifting on your side.

There are 3 layers to Fractal - Distribution, Authentication, and Engagement.

Fractal gives you access to a pool of high value gamers who just want to have fun. Fractal has two main distribution channels for you:

• Fractal Web - their web-based gaming platform

• Fractal Desktop - their desktop launcher for PC and Mac, with seamless sign in and auto updates

Integrating Fractal authentication makes it easy for Fractal Account players to immediately enjoy your game. To provide Fractal's community with the best experience possible, Fractal require any game being featured on their home page to integrate authentication. Doing so also comes with a Fractal Verified badge.

Here are two types of Fractal authentication:

• Light - Identify Fractal Account users

• Full - Read content inside Fractal Accounts

And three kinds of integrations to choose from:

• seamless sign in - Automatically logs players into your game

• Account linking - Links Fractal Accounts to your existing account system

• Sign in with Fractal - Requires users to manually log in to their Fractal Account

Retention is Fractal's number one priority. Think of Fractal like a ‘digital arcade’ - where players come for the great games, but stay for the fun experiences. To motivate users to play your game, Fractal offers multiple touchpoints:

• Game Nights - 100-300 players will play your game simultaneously with the Fractal team on Discord. Best for early stage games looking for feedback

• Tournaments - 2000-6000 players will compete for a prize pool over the course of a week or a month

• F Points - Players complete missions to rack up F Points which they can cash out for real life prizes

• Quests - Players complete missions in exchange for valuable in-game items

When?

Established in 2021 in San Francisco, Fractal is a privately held company that is a distribution channel where you can discover the best new games, play them instantly, join events and tournaments, earn rewards, and cash them out for prizes.

Where?

Fractal Launcher is a desktop application that allows players to download and play games from Fractal. It is available for both Windows and MacOS. The launcher handles the game installation and automatic incremental updates. Optionally, you can distribute your binary privately to your team members or a limited number of players to test your game before publishing it to the public with Fractal's access codes feature.

Web-based games are also listed on the Fractal launcher. In that case, the launcher will open the game in a default browser window.

How?

Fractal Studio has two main sections: Studio Settings and Game Settings. Both are completely self-serve, letting you list your game on Fractal's catalog and manage your game features during development and after release.

In your studio page, you can find the following tabs in the menu:

• Games - Manage the games that you have created. You can create new games, edit existing games, and delete games registered on Fractal.

• Team - Invite your team members to your studio and work together. You can also manage your team members' roles and permissions.

• Resources - Useful resources for your game development, such as links to the reference, documentation, and support.

Game Settings

To see the game settings select a game from the Games tab. You can find the following tabs in the menu:

• Details - Edit your game details, such as name, description, and icon in the Fractal's game catalog.

• Integrations - Generate API keys for your game. You can use these API keys to integrate your game with Fractal.

• Launcher - Manage your game builds and updates. You can create new builds, edit existing ones or create invite codes for testing.

• Reviews - Preview reviews from the Fractal team. This will help you debug the issues if the game is not listed on Fractal yet.

Why?

The seed of Fractal came out of a brainstorming session between Justin Kan and his cofounders, David Wurtz (Fractal CEO) and Robin Chan. They were all fixated on crypto and looking for opportunities to build. David was excited about NFTs, and the ways that value would evolve as NFTs continued to gain utility. To Kan, the obvious next step was gaming: "as a gamer, I’d already been spending real money on digital assets for years. Putting them on a blockchain to certify real ownership was clearly going to happen."

And that was the start of Fractal: a marketplace for gamers to discover, buy and sell gaming NFTs. Taking a page out of their playbook from when they launched Twitch, it was decided that Fractal would focus on being the best friend to blockchain gaming studios. "If we could help those game studios be successful, then we would be successful."