Lightseekers is a new toys-to-life game from PlayFusion.
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Ex-Runescape devs announce Lightseekers, an ambitious-but-risky take on Skylanders (update)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Former designer who worked on the popular Runescape game have created a new startup PlayFusion and a new game Lightseekers that it hopes will represent the next generation of toys-to-life video games.

In a challenge to Activision’s $3 billion Skylanders business, Lightseekers is a connected-play video game with smart action figures, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and interactive trading cards. The company has teamed up with toy maker Tomy to make the toys, which you can wield as if they were controllers for characters inside the mobile game. It needs a partner like that in a market where Disney couldn’t survive and other big competitors loom, such as Warner Bros.’ Lego Dimensions.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.