All-Star Game Studio Gardens Partners with Pragma For Elite Online Multiplayer Support

Los Angeles, CA - AUG. 15, 2024 — Remote-first game development studio, Gardens, announces a new partnership with the backend game engine, Pragma, to enable the online multiplayer ambitions of the all-star team. Their upcoming game will be an ever-evolving online PvPvE shared fantasy adventure, and the team found in Pragma a perfect fit for the online and live service needs of the expansive world they’re creating.

Pragma was founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking, analytics, monetization, and player data for the world’s most ambitious online games. The Pragma backend game engine is a fully extensible source code product, allowing the technology teams in the studio to support the creative approaches of game designers. Bridging the gap between capabilities and creativity in an environment that is often challenging, Pragma leads the way to saving millions of dollars in costs and years of development time all while effectively de-risking the launch of the game utilizing its advantages.

With today’s announcement of the partnership between Gardens and Pragma, the Gardens team further commits to the creative goals of their upcoming unannounced game, unrestricted by technical limitations thanks to the tools of the backend engine. “It has been really great working with our team of game designers to get all of their ideas and come back with implementations. And I am much more flexible and can accommodate their unique requests with Pragma because they give me an extensible system that lets me not give just a one-size-fits-all answer”, said Serge Knystautas, Head of Engineering at Gardens Interactive. Co-founder Stephen Bell added: “With all of our choices we’re very careful and take care to do our due diligence and deep dive on things. Ultimately, Pragma was the clear choice.” 

The Pragma Backend Game Engine gives the development team a single backend solution that is consistent and encompasses all the basic needs of an online live service game, while also giving them the tools to customize what they need as sophistication is a need. The tech term, in the words of Knystautas, is extensibility. Gardens was looking for a platform they could extend without having to build from scratch and invest large amounts of resources in maintaining the toolset.

“Gardens is one of the top gaming studios and the more we see their vision uncovered the more we realize that we are working on a generational game. Giving gamemakers, that are at the top of their craft, tools to be able to execute on their vision is one of the most enjoyable parts of building Pragma”, states Eden Chen, CEO at Pragma. 

Gardens was founded in 2021 by Chris Bell (Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Sky: Children of the Light, Way), Lexie Dostal (Dustforce), and Stephen Bell (Blaseball, What Remains of Edith Finch), and has grown to include a talented team of developers from projects such as Half-Life: Alyx, Firewatch, Ashen, Ultima Online, God of War, Tunic, Diablo IV, Fortnite and more. The team kicked off with support by independent backer funding, raising $4.5M in July 2021 in a Seed round led by Transcend Fund. In 2023, Gardens raised $31.3M in Series A funding as Lightspeed Venture Partners and Krafton co-led an exceptional syndicate that included connections to major gaming platforms, publishers, and industry veterans, and which added former Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson, former Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO Jack Tretton, former Tencent President and Take-Two CEO Ben Feder, and Yamauchi No.10 (the Nintendo Family) to its advisory team.

Gardens’ upcoming, yet unnamed game, builds upon the special ways members of the team have designed shared online experiences in the past (Journey, Sky: Children of the Light, Ashen, Blaseball, Way), seeing  players cross paths and adventure together through shapeshifting, untamed fantasy wilds. 

Gardens is a game studio that aims to connect the world through play.  Founded by designers of games like Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Blaseball, Sky: Children of the Light, and more, Gardens grows deeply social, living virtual worlds that bring players together to forge lasting relationships and vibrant global communities.

LINKS:

Pragma has helped build some of the biggest video games and distributed systems in the world at Riot Games, PopCap, Google, Amazon, and EA for games like League of Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Plants vs Zombies 2, and Eve Online. Pragma has raised more than $50 million and is backed by leading investors like Insight, Greylock, and Upfront.

The Pragma Backend Game Engine is the only solution that is truly extensible. Now, game designers aren’t blocked by restrictive black-box features and your studio isn't trapped into a framework that you'll inevitably grow out of. The Pragma Backend Game Engine is also capital and resource efficient because studios no longer need to hire a large backend team and get the ultimate peace of mind that their game will always be ready to scale.

LINKS: