Syntertainment: Will Wright's new $5M startup venture

Will Wright has announced his latest startup venture "to blend reality and entertainment," Syntertainment. As reported in Venture Beat, the new company is the joint effort of Wright and Silicon Valley technologist Avi Bar-Zeev, with a $5 million investment from investors including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and individuals such as former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. The company also carries over several team members from one of Wright's previous startup ventures, Stupid Fun Club. (His other, Hivemind, was halted by litigation in 2012.) Wright calls the new venture "an evolution of my interests." "This is not a huge, mega project," he tells Venture Beat. Co-founder Bar-Zeev is a veteran of Microsoft, Disney and Amazon, having worked on everything from the Bing search engine to Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride. "I tried to work with [Wright] at EA, but I was offered a job in a different division. So I turned it down," Bar-Zeev tells Venture Beat. In joining Syntertainment, Bar-Zeev says his role will be "on the tech side of things," while Wright oversees the company's creative direction. "The world is changing so fast," says Wright, declining to offer any specifics on what the new startup will be doing. "We've seen the rise of the app market, indie games. There are still Grand Theft Auto games and things like that around. But the rest of the market is evolving so fast. You now have to have a distribution system to go with your game."