Emergent raises $12.5m for new tech

Emergent Game Technologies has bucked the global economic downturn, managing to secure $12.5 million of new funding.

The company has also simultaneously teased that it’ll be revealing a new product at GDC09 that will enable studios to ‘develop at the speed of light’.

The funding round was lead by a new investor, Hopewell Ventures, with Worldview Technology Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Walker Ventures and Adena Ventures also named.

According to Christine Arrington, senior analyst at Acacia Research Group, middleware is ripe for investment because it aims to reduce risk for developers – something that publishers will want minimised during the global recession.

“As game developers search for options to cut costs and reduce expenses in 2009, more of them will be looking to third-party game middleware companies like Emergent to help cut development time, free up engineering resources and increase efficiency,” said Christine Arrington, senior analyst, Acacia Research Group.

“Demand for middleware that performs these tasks is likely to remain solid through the tough times ahead and then quickly return to strong growth during the next five years.”

Emergent CEO Geoffrey Selzer added: “Though the video game industry is weathering the worldwide liquidity crisis better than most, increased financial pressures are intensifying the many difficulties the industry is facing such as bloated budgets, increased complexity of core technology and changing consumer expectations.

“We very much appreciate our investors’ vision. They see the significant opportunity Emergent has to be of service to developers and publishers alike.”