Seattle-based startup Live Aware Labs has secured $4.8 million in seed funding to enhance its all-in-one feedback management platform for game developers. The funding round was led by Transcend and included contributions from A16Z GAMES SPEEDRUN, Lifelike Capital, and several angel investors, including Patrick Wyatt, Luis Villegas, Michael Evans, Chacko Sonny, Eden Chen, Seth Sivak, Brendan Mulligan, Curt Bererton, Brian Vesce, and Todd Hooper.
Live Aware’s platform offers a suite of tools that enables game developers to gather valuable feedback, iterate efficiently, and foster close collaboration with players and testers.
“Gaming audiences are becoming more diverse than ever,” explains Sean Vesce, co-founder and CEO of Live Aware, in an interview with GeekWire. “Developers are realizing the importance of building games in close partnership with their audience from the earliest stages. If you can get your game in front of real players and gather their insights, it becomes incredibly valuable.”
Vesce, a veteran game developer, previously worked at Crystal Dynamics on several Tomb Raider titles and later served as the creative director for Never Alone, a critically acclaimed indie game based on Native Alaskan folklore. “That project taught us a lot about ‘player-first’ development,” Vesce recalls. “We built Never Alone with extensive input from the Alaska Native community, constantly sharing progress and collecting their ideas.”
This philosophy underpins Live Aware’s approach—developers working hand-in-hand with their communities increase their chances of success.
One of the platform’s standout features is its use of AI-powered tools to analyze feedback from playtest sessions. During typical testing, massive amounts of data are generated, but only a small fraction is actionable. Live Aware streamlines this process: testers record their gameplay, akin to reaction videos on YouTube, with their vocal responses captured and processed by the platform’s LLM (Large Language Model). The AI scans hours of footage, identifies the most useful insights, and delivers them as plain text files to developers, enabling rapid design adjustments.
“I wish I had a tool like this when I was working on Halo,” says Dave Berger, CTO and co-founder of Live Aware. Berger previously co-founded 343 Industries, the Microsoft subsidiary behind the Halo series.
In addition to its feedback tools, Live Aware offers automated translation in 30 languages and integrates with popular game development tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine, Slack, Discord, and more recently, Monday.com.
The startup’s roots lie in the shared experience of Vesce and Berger, who realized the absence of robust tools for a player-first approach while working on earlier projects. Their goal with Live Aware is to empower developers by providing real-time insights from their communities, streamlining the often fragmented feedback process into one cohesive platform.
Several well-known studios have already adopted Live Aware, including Krafton (developers of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), GSC Game World (working on STALKER 2), and Believer, a new startup in Los Angeles.
Looking ahead, Live Aware plans to introduce a pay-as-you-go model in 2025 to make the platform more accessible to developers of all sizes and budgets.
Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seatt...ew-ai-powered-game-developer-feedback-system/
Live Aware’s platform offers a suite of tools that enables game developers to gather valuable feedback, iterate efficiently, and foster close collaboration with players and testers.
“Gaming audiences are becoming more diverse than ever,” explains Sean Vesce, co-founder and CEO of Live Aware, in an interview with GeekWire. “Developers are realizing the importance of building games in close partnership with their audience from the earliest stages. If you can get your game in front of real players and gather their insights, it becomes incredibly valuable.”
Vesce, a veteran game developer, previously worked at Crystal Dynamics on several Tomb Raider titles and later served as the creative director for Never Alone, a critically acclaimed indie game based on Native Alaskan folklore. “That project taught us a lot about ‘player-first’ development,” Vesce recalls. “We built Never Alone with extensive input from the Alaska Native community, constantly sharing progress and collecting their ideas.”
This philosophy underpins Live Aware’s approach—developers working hand-in-hand with their communities increase their chances of success.
One of the platform’s standout features is its use of AI-powered tools to analyze feedback from playtest sessions. During typical testing, massive amounts of data are generated, but only a small fraction is actionable. Live Aware streamlines this process: testers record their gameplay, akin to reaction videos on YouTube, with their vocal responses captured and processed by the platform’s LLM (Large Language Model). The AI scans hours of footage, identifies the most useful insights, and delivers them as plain text files to developers, enabling rapid design adjustments.
“I wish I had a tool like this when I was working on Halo,” says Dave Berger, CTO and co-founder of Live Aware. Berger previously co-founded 343 Industries, the Microsoft subsidiary behind the Halo series.
In addition to its feedback tools, Live Aware offers automated translation in 30 languages and integrates with popular game development tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine, Slack, Discord, and more recently, Monday.com.
The startup’s roots lie in the shared experience of Vesce and Berger, who realized the absence of robust tools for a player-first approach while working on earlier projects. Their goal with Live Aware is to empower developers by providing real-time insights from their communities, streamlining the often fragmented feedback process into one cohesive platform.
Several well-known studios have already adopted Live Aware, including Krafton (developers of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), GSC Game World (working on STALKER 2), and Believer, a new startup in Los Angeles.
Looking ahead, Live Aware plans to introduce a pay-as-you-go model in 2025 to make the platform more accessible to developers of all sizes and budgets.
Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seatt...ew-ai-powered-game-developer-feedback-system/
