Howard Marks' Gamzee raises $1m seed funding

Start-up developer Gamzee has secured $1 million in seed funding, with the new studio founded by ex-Activision executive and Acclaim Games owner Howard Marks announcing that it will create cross-platform games on the HTML5 format.

Gamzee's investors include Bristol Investment Fund (whose Paul Kessler will join Gamzee's board), former Liberty Digital CEO Jarl Mohn, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz, and Greycroft partner Paul Bricault. According to Marks the funding was obtained "in a short time".

Speaking to VentureBeat Marks commented, "We believe that we’re on the forefront of the next big explosion in games - one where you can play social games with your Facebook friends on any device with a Web connection. And apparently, we’re not alone in that belief."

Gamzee has not announced any titles as yet but its first is described by Marks as a, "new twist on a classic social gaming genre." The game will be previewed for the first time at the Casual Connect in Seattle in July.

The game is then expected to launch on October, by which time Marks predicts Facebook will be using HTML5 instead of Flash. This will allow Gamzee to produce only one codebase for its games and have them work on both the Web and portable devices.

As well as working with Bobby Kotick to revive Activision in the early '90s, Marks also acquired the Acclaim name and logo once the company went bankruptcy. After turning it into an online publisher he then sold the company to Playdom in 2010 (who were then acquired by Disney - who subsequently closed Acclaim Games).