<a href="https://bizjournals.com/sacramento/search/results?q=Mark Otero" class="article-content-item">Mark Otero</a>, co-founder of the Sacramento region’s most successful gaming startup just over a decade ago, is starting a new blockchain-based game company based in Sacramento. <br> Azra Games will produce and operate online role-playing games where players can earn tokens as they play. <br> “In traditional video games, you don’t own your own character,” co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer <a href="https://bizjournals.com/sacramento/search/results?q=Sonny Mayugba" class="article-content-item">Sonny Mayugba</a> told the Business Journal. <br> With Azra’s games, players will be able to own their characters as a nonfungible token, Mayugba said. Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are specific units of data stored on a digital ledger, commonly known as a blockchain. <br> Players will also be able to earn Azra currency as they play. <br> Azra hasn’t yet released any games; it is building them now, Mayugba said. The first one will be Arcanas.io, which will be a mass online combat game. <br> Otero started KlickNation in 2009 in Sacramento, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2011/12/01/electronic-arts-buys-KlickNation.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">before selling it</a> three years later to Redwood City gaming giant Electronic Arts Inc. Otero worked as an executive with Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) for another four years. Otero wasn’t available for an interview. <br> KlickNation developed games for social platforms like Facebook, where users could play with their friends. The games were free to play, and users could pay to upgrade. The company made its money from the upgrades. <br> Azra Games will also make money from upgrades, and it will also allow players to buy utility tokens. Or they can earn tokens as they play. <br> The target audience is role-playing game core gamers on the blockchain, Mayugba said, adding that it is a fast-growing sector of gaming. <br> For the past six years, Otero was working on a hedge fund that <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2020/02/03/gaming-veteran-otero-launches-hedge-fund.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">used quantitative analysis</a> to make short-term investments in stock positions. <br> That effort is on hold for the time being as the Azra team builds the new company, Mayugba said. So far, Azra has a handful of employees, and it is hiring. <br> Otero earned a bachelor's degree in computers and graphics and a master's degree in computers and artificial intelligence at California State University Sacramento. He earned an MBA from the Graduate School of Management at University of California Davis. <br>Want to stay ahead of who & what is next? The national Inno newsletter is your definitive first-look at the people, companies & ideas shaping and driving the U.S. innovation economy.<br><br><a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/inno/stories/news/2022/02/08/otero-blockchain-gaming-azra.html">source</a>
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