Its principals, Alex Amsel (founder of Tuna Technologies) and Jack Du Rose (co-founder of Colony.io), have joined Fig, and Adam Powell (founder of Neopets) has provided initial funding support for Shard.

“Shard seeks to accomplish what we set out to do with Fig, center the publishing process around the people who are most passionate about the properties being created - the community,” said Justin Bailey, Fig’s CEO. “Shard will be offering a unique community-based approach to the funding, engagement, and cross-promotion of games. We’re really excited to add the talents of Alex, Jack and the Ownage team to help Fig develop this platform for the games industry.”

To launch and build engagement with the Shard platform, Fig plans to work with established game developers and brands. Fig Publishing, Inc., Loose Tooth Industries’ subsidiary, has previously announced that it is working with the Gygax Trust to bring unpublished works of famed creator Gary Gygax to life, and is planning to allow the developer to use Shard to leverage these works and bring gamers new and deeper gameplay experiences.

Since Shard will be an open, decentralized platform, “owned” by the community of developers and gamers, all game developers will be able to use Shard regardless of whether they run a Fig campaign.  Fig will also be using Shard and integrating it in Fig campaigns. “While Fig is sponsoring the development of Shard as an open, decentralized platform, it can be used and modified by publishers, developers and gamers completely independently of Fig. Fig intends to support the growth of the Shard community throughout its early development, with a focus on working with game developers to explore new innovations and opportunities enabled by the platform,” remarked Alex Amsel, Creative Lead for Shard.

Interested parties can sign up at the official website for more information. Fig will be sharing further details as it develops the Shard platform.