Launching an AI + UGC Startup

[Music] welcome to the novic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu are nikama the open- source backend game server hero the game development framework for all your live service game features including the complexity of managing offline mode Satori the

worldclass live Ops product for maximizing monetization and retention and lastly the heroic Cloud to provide massive scalability after nearly 10 years of operation thousands of Studios trust heroic labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about game Tech or scaling for success to learn more and reach out make sure to visit heroic labs.com or check out the link in the show notes now let's jump into the episode welcome to the novic gaming podcast I'm your host David Taylor and today we are discussing the integration of two of the biggest Trends and acronyms in video games artificial intelligence and user generated content it's a match made in heaven because when designing content creation tools for the masses most platforms like Roblox and fortnite creative have to choose between accessibility or how easy the tools are to use and capability the depth and power of the tool set AI has the potential to give you the best of both worlds with co-pilot technology enabling non technical creators to write code or

3D gen AI enabling entire environments to be created from a single command line prompt we're seeing a number of companies emerge that are taking advantage of AI in order to compete with ugc game incumbents like Roblox and fortnite joining us today to help us understand the opportunities ahead are Vishnu Hari and Peggy Wang the co-founders of ego and habish Ahmed the founder of playroom welcome to the podcast y awesome thank you thank you for inviting David thank you so I want to start things off just with a round of introductions um and one thing for the audience to know is that each of you uh previously before starting your respective companies were at meta reality Labs so I was wondering just as part of your introduction if you could also talk about you know what was the opportunity you were seeing uh from The Meta side that made you want to start your own company and and not continue to to do it at at meta so let's start out with tabish maybe awesome he everyone

I'm davish thank you for introduction but again I'm CEO and founder of uh playroom which is the fastest way to build social multiplayer games on the web online whatever you call it um and yeah I think one of the reasons why we started playm was one of the learnings I was having at meta that again Horizon world's amazing amazing for people to hang out on AR and VR stuff but I remember we were pushing a bit more into the direction of like launching meta war on the web uh and like why why would you want to do that right why if you believe in arvr but the the idea was simple which is dist distribution right you want to build something where people are actually playing and hanging out on web was the obvious choice and when I look back what's stopping us is building those massive worlds is is painful it's painful to build these kind of giant multiplayer systems that is working from you know from day one and if you go and ask anyone to build like small Studio it's tough to do that so that was one of

my insights that I like okay if if meta wants to do it then I I'm sure many game studio also wants to do it and maybe we can do something better there that actually simplifies the creation of that um they happy to dive more into it but I will just you know take a pause there so I don't take it over on introductions awesome and before I mean before I do want to know more just sort of how did you get to to meta maybe maybe I maybe Focus the the question too much on meta tell us more about your background and how you got here today as well yeah I mean a bit more about so when I was a meta just kind of touching back on on it I was a design head for the team called embodiment Design Systems uh so I was looking very much into the platform side of it um I worked around two years uh in in that particular Horizon world team but even before that so before meta I was at Google for you know almost seven seven and a half years and I worked across many different domains U many moonshot projects uh Google Glass arvr pixel watch um and then I came to

meta to kind of build these kind of amazing experiences uh and meta wor was one of it which I was you know enjoying it for two years before I kind of it's It's My Time to build so I took a pause and started building play room nice V how about you yeah thanks for inviting us to the podcast um my background is originally in astrophysics I was doing research and finding exoplanets uh with deep learning models in University of Toronto around the time deep learning became a huge thing um I recall sort of working with some of the early perceptron models uh to find exoplanets and they were more performing than anything that was state-of the-art at that time which was very impressive and I started to get you know pretty convinced that a was going to be the future um one thing L to another and I moved to the Bay Area um where I ended up with Facebook in AI research uh and then eventually in reality Labs but the whole gaming thing came about because I actually learned to program U making mods for video games as a teenager so I made some really mods for GTA San

Andreas when I was very young they were all highly inappropriate mods but that's what kind of made it fun and then I eventually went on to do mods for games like Civ Skyrim um and a bunch of others uh so always been really motivated by Gaming as like a place where I could exercise like whatever fantasy I wanted um I obviously met you know Peggy through some mutual friends and we realized we both worked at Facebook and at that time I was um on the scripting team I was I was a PM on the scripting team um for uh Horizon um worlds uh and um Peggy and I used a carpool to work together and I told her this idea that I've had for a very long time about building an infinite game a game you can play Forever that's kind of the topic of a bunch of popular animes um and then we both decided to quit Facebook and and build this uh idea together awesome excited to hear Peggy's version of the story very very similar um yeah so uh I was working at meta um working in reality laot under the XR people team

and I worked on fa tracking which is basically um if you've seen like zuck's videos where he appears as a 3D avatar um in VR um part of that like part of how his face moves that was part of face tracking um I worked on AR team which is more focused on uh the spark team and the the messenger Instagram um air avatars team so my work was um I'm basically turning uh what people do with their faces um and doing that in real time um turny that using ml algorithms to basically uh mirror the exact same facial expressions on an avatar um yeah and then before that I was I guess working on physically embodied agents so what is known as robotics um so I was super obsessed with robots um ever since you know I was on the high school robotics team in my high

school kind of went uh down a deep dive into it uh did a bunch of research at Stanford um at some point I made it my life's mission to like prevent people like me from driving because I used to well I got into three accidents during my first six months of driving and I was a horrible driver and I was like people like me should never be on the road um and that combined with my interest in robotics where I was like oh like I feel like autonomous driving is like the first application of of robots and you know physically embodied agents I started doing research at Stanford on self-driving cars um and Robotics and then uh some of my research was applied at lift level five um on the behavior planning team which is basically how the car makes decisions about how it drives um and then during a brief internship at uh Oculus actually uh on the VR team uh on gr to dep sensing I

got super interested in the idea that you can actually turn the same principles of Robotics and how robots make decisions into kind of um more like 3D virtual uh embodied agents in the arvr space and so that really fascinated me and um and then I guess yeah met Vish uh through a mutual friend and then we started car going to work um and you know the rest is history uh ended up starting you go together awesome um well thanks for the introductions I'm curious what your perspective is on you know the potential for Horizon worlds to be a major competitor in this space what do you think you know needs to happen in order for that that to occur or is that even on uh even something that that Zuck has in mind I'm I'm really curious to hear what tabish thinks about this but I was always of the opinion that you needed a very strong base game which

Horizon lacks effectively it was just a VR server browser and I don't think that was sufficient I don't think that will be sufficient um what I've seen that Spurs ugc content creation the possible exception of Roblox is that there's a strong underground underlying um base game layer so GTA has you know GTA's game Loops you have Minecraft with Minecraft game Loops you same thing with Skyrim any game that has an active ug Community usually has a base game you know the best example probably is like Gary's mod um or any one of the offshoots of the source source games that started with halflife that's my my viewpoint and I do believe that they have efforts to do it but I'm not so sure I mean I mean I think we we did try to make games a lot uh but I think the the Baseline is I think Horizon worlds still has a lot more potential to really find what it's really is for and I think that that

that has been kind of the missing question of like hey is this like a should we go after like a hang out space should we become like a you know a game Centric and I think that's been like a a seesaw between between you know as we working like where are we exactly uh but I do agree with is like we have at Horizon world we had to really find what is the core type of behavior we want to see uh between users to actually make sense of like why they want to come back to Peggy anything to add I I do think that like um limiting everything to just like VR probably limited you know who are the creators who are able to kind of build on it um I know that at some point Horizon was like working with like first party creators um in game studios so maybe that would have been like a potentially better strategy to build like more fleshed out like higher quality games

um but yeah I think like from my my perspective I think if Horizon did a little bit better on just a higher level like expanding Beyond BR and focusing more on like high quality content like things would have been better got it makes sense I mean so it sounds like you know Vish is saying that they needed some tent pole content that's going to bring in a lot of players that currently missing um and I I I sort of am inclined to to agree with that I think like also the fact that they're you know a tech brand not a a gaming brand probably puts them at a disadvantage when trying to get the the ball rolling and and get a critical mass of players in the door um and I I I also think the challenge with paying developers to come and build on your platform is that that's expensive you know they have There's an opportunity cost associated with that for the developer and they're going to need need a platform to pay for it so the great thing about ugc is typically you don't pay for uh anything that isn't successful um and

so yeah it can be it can be a tough tough road if you choose to to pay upfront um so I I want to move on to another ugc platform that's sort of emerging as well which is Discord and Tois you're you're sort of working on on Discord at the moment so want to throw it over to you just for a sec to help us understand the opportunity on Discord I saw that they recently opened development for activities meaning that anyone can become a developer and create distribute uh and monetize games on Discord so maybe you can just give us a a quick uh Lowdown on what what the status of of games on Discord is yeah uh and Discord is emerging to be a new player uh in serving game content I think Discord has always been there like a gaming social hangout space um and I've been working with the Scot team for almost 12 months now as like a partner to them and it just what I'm seeing right now on Discord is

the early days of like a Facebook gaming you know remember like the Zinga and poker and all know Farm Bill game that came out it's just kind of a very similar uh but I think it's better now because the audience on on discard are like Gamers like they are the people who actually play games they on the Forefront of the new tech and whatnot so it's a lot more easier in terms of user acquisition without spending any money that that's that's what I see like that's a part of ugc also which is you create something you have your own Community or your friends to play it's easy discoverable and whatnot uh and I think with Discord going and becoming like an open platform it kind of opens up an opportunity for anyone to actually build something and I've been saying this thing web is actually coming back like web is back like social gaming on web is back I'm happy we are doing it so we can partner with Discord on this thing but you can actually create something very fast very simple and have your community on your server actually play your game now so I think this is how simple they have made it uh and

beyond that if your game is doing amazing on the server on the server level then you can actually go Global with discard discard can actually promote your game also based on the engagement and whatnot maybe that has all already been happening in on on the auto level so now I'm seeing what what you're seeing right now on discard is many creators individual Indie developers now jumping onto it they're looking oh I would love to build something and many are using play to just test it out also but even bigger players are jumping in which just like now if you look at ROBLOX right you see this kind of first you see creators building something then you see this kind of big IPS now jumping in to really you know build something there same with fortnite as well now we seeing the same behavior on Discord like okay new platform people hanging out can we really capture this audience and build something very fast so it's a new emerging platform you know Discord right now is what is boasting around 230 million overall users even we have our game on there which is which reach around 20 million users in last three

months which is freaking amazing without us spending anything uh so that that is opportunity right now which is like hey you can get that you can get that reach very fast and along with that now they're kind of adding these kind of new monetization capabilities as well so you know it's it's your game you monetize you earn with your community with your own server so yeah I feel it's amazing new platform to build for speaking speaking of monetization do you have a sense of what is the sort of Revenue opportunity on the platform at the moment yep so it's uh what what is right now is you know if you ship on Discord it's 80 8 80 730% so it's 730% right now uh 70 is developers and 30% is that is a take they take but it's actually 15% until you actually make 1 million uh so it's still a long way so you only have 15 you have 85% so which I feel still very much better than a Ross different ugc

platform so yeah yeah you have to be a top 100 developer on Roblox to make a million dollars a year so uh yeah there's not that many who would who would do that and Roblox takes 75% give or take so it's it's the opposite on Discord yeah yeah but are people spending on on Discord I guess is my question um we are seeing it so if we are seeing people actually spending money on the game which is uh I'll be honest I think it's a new for us and new for people also like like oh this is a place I'm going to spend money this is place I'm going to grow myself in a game I think that's the learning people are going through right now but we are seeing the transactions already like we are seeing people subscribing on the game you're seeing people buying avatars and costumes and whatnot so behavior is there I think now it's just the the pattern needs to keep on building up all right are you going to give us the are you going to give us the arpu number and no that would be yeah that would be too

much but yeah all right well we heard you say 20 million users uh Sobe not there yet it's early it's very early right uh all right so thanks for thanks for just giving us an update on on Discord uh and I'm sure it'll come back up in in the conversation but I want to go towards the meat of our conversation around AI plus ugc and just want to get each of your perspectives on what are the problems that AI plus ugc uh will solve uh for for creators and and for players yeah I mean I think one thing that I'm very passionate about is just like uh especially kind of like seeing how tools like cursor come out is just like I feel like AI just speeds up um like you know game development and creative processes by at least 10x if if not 100x and we already kind of seeing of that in terms of like chat gbt you

know helping with writing creative writing chat gbt helping with um you know coding um cursor um and I think like it's not a huge stretch to kind of expand that out to you know building out coding for games as well um and also potentially helping uh with some you know brainstorming processes and kind of automating the like the manual work um so a lot of gaming also involves many many different uh different parts of the art pipeline so every uh so we're mostly focused on 3D but I'm I'm sure uh a lot of this also applies to 2D as well but 3D is uh one of the more complicated things because you you have to do everything you can't just like create the 3D model that's already a hard part right like before creating the 3D model you actually have to do concept art and concept art um obviously now ai is able

to to help with that but I I don't think that concept art is actually um like it's definitely very important and I actually think that that part of a creative process should have uh human uh involvement in I think it's like what is kind of Downstream of that concept art and what is going into the actual game that potentially could be help more so 3D modeling it's is really really time consuming um and if you don't have the art skills um it could be really really hard to pick up um I think what's more than just 3D modeling though is even when you have a human artists uh make 3D models uh a lot of work actually goes into after creating that so one is just like optimizing uh lods uh so level up details um yeah basically having several different versions of the 3D model from anywhere from like a low poly version to a high poly version um for kind of

different levels of um distancing in games that is typically more manual that has become more automated in recent years um if there's any sort of things that go on top of the 3D model like texturing which is basically making uh like skins on top of the 3D modeling uh visual effects uh sound effect like not really sound effects visual effects uh collisions and also uh animation rigging um all the complicated character stuff um that is all a lot of manual work that artists have to do kind of over and over across like different uh varieties of um objects that I think like yeah AI helping with you know texturing UV unwrapping Auto rigging could help uh you know speed up a lot of the parts of the game development process um yeah I'd

actually split this up into like the three different stakeholders in this uh in this picture like there's um you know sort of your AAA game devs um there is creators like the people who create simple content in Roblox and Minecraft and mod games and they're sort of the end user who plays an experience um and for each of them aigc represents a different thing I think for for um your average AAA game developer er uh aigc right now is not super interesting because it's like it's not really like quite there right they're not going to replace an artist Pipeline with 3D generated content it's just not there what could be interesting though and what we're seeing is this idea of like generated um generative agents right agents that are essentially embodied large language models that could increase retention in games um and the more ugc you you allow creators to create any a game the more retention you get that's important for you know big Publishers uh for the creators like everything Peggy said is 100% you know

on point um but I I think like the fundamental takeaway is like it reduces your time to impact like hey I want to build this oh it's built I want to write this module you know instead of having to spend a weekend doing it I can get a Transformer model to write it for me right and I can test it um and you could I can have an agent play test the game for me which is very interesting um and then for the end user a companion in a game that feels humanik is awesome custom game modes that are made by you know just random creators in the marketplace extends your sort of shelf life of a game so you get to keep playing the game like I played GTA San Andreas for like so many years simply because there was a there was a vibrant modding scene right um the thing I'll note though is that just because there's more generated content and AI makes it easier to generate content that doesn't necessarily increase the quality of content and that's still going to be true um I think it's still going to be a small minority of users uh who are going

to have the best content that people want to actually play and taste is still pretty rare it still follows a power law um so yeah that's kind of the way i' I'd frame this so from my side um I think I think the Peggy was touching on that part in the beginning which is I really like the vision of giving power in the hands of anyone to actually create something out of it right so I think the beauty of AI is and I feel like if Roblox or Horizon world or any company does that if you can really make anyone build a world and experience by just saying that would be amazing but it actually requires a lot of work behind the scene to make it happen right so bit bit magic is a good example here where they have they have created their own system you know again I've not seen it too deeply but they have created their own system where you can anyone can come in and they can just say something and the world starts building up right but even achieve that they had to build a lot of the system behind the scene to actually act on the AI to happen and not I don't think AI can just do anything if

there's not a system behind it to make it happen I remember in the early days of even playroom we had build this kind of editor that you can create this kind of a simple mini games like trivia or whatnot through just AI you talk to AI the whole game comes out of it and it was amazing to just to see that H thing happen but I was like what is beyond that to to push it beyond that I need to have lots of lots of templates a system a game systems actually working with the AI to to you know to push it out and and then we would have to train on our code base and our data so since then from there on we kind of pivoted ourselves like hey we will become more like a Content company than serving a tool company so now playm is more towards like you know how can we leverage what exists today in the AI ecosystem and provide uh the better content in real time on the game play and a good example uh of that would be the game you also published called Dead by AI it's kind of a I would say still very much like a user generated content in the game because people have to talk to AI

to get the content out of it and I still believe that a lot of value out there is on the contents out of it you need tools of it but the content is is what actually is going to retain and the content could be either just text or could be NPC what wish was actually you know getting into is if you can create these kind of characters in the game that you can play with for long and you know there's you have the you have the control you have that kind of like creative creativity that you can just on the world around you either the characters in the world I think it just opens up so much possibility in the future that you can just imagine and you know things are just building up from there so yeah I'm a strong believer on the content side of it I think tooling there's already so much happening uh it's it's such a fast pace uh but there's a lot a lot of work that needs to still happen got it and Tom can you just give us a a good like an what is death by AI just give us a quick idea of what the the game Loop is um so death bu is like a prompt based

survival uh game so it's it's uh it's very simple to play a party game that you can actually go with your friends five 10 friends can jump on on Discord open the game and you are given a scenario that you want to survive the scenario can also be coming from you so you could be writing your own scenarios that you want your friends to survive and then everyone has to input how they think they would survive the scenario and the ax like a dungeon master here he's that they is driving the cont and forward and tells do you survive or not survive and the game goes on for couple of you know uh you know couple of rounds and whatnot so it it it's it's very sarcastic it's very funny when you play with the with the AI and I've seen people just creating their own Proms and they're they have been sharing how they think you know what would be the best strategy to survive in the game would be so that's one of it but now we kind of looking into giving some mods in the game where people can actually create their own game modes so we have different game modes right now on dead by where you there kind of Mode called

Judgment Day you play a single player there's another mode that you play with your team but now people have been asking can we use this same you know logic and loop and create new game modes out of it so we' have been looking into kind of building that kind of a config system and see if we can open that up that's super interesting so it sounds like you know you guys represent turn two sides of of the the dichotomy that I see like I think on on one side side on topish your side you've got gen AI TurnKey you know content where it's like the AI is generating content in real time uh and then Peggy and Vish you guys are working on sort of the the tooling side of how do we make creators jobs easier uh with with AI so that they can do more with less is that the right dichotomy to strike or how would you how would you characterize it i' say we're still building a game um I think fundamentally in the age of AI the distinction between a game and a engine ceases to exist the idea of an infinite

game is a game that can change and you know uh evolve as you play it but not in a way where the player is the one directly taking the action and saying that hey I want this and that because most players have terrible in imaginations so that shouldn't matter but in a way where um people can create experiences in a game that they can then send to other people that they can then play while they're in the game uh and they can encounter characters that feel humanlike where you know really shouldn't matter if they're human or not um and build entire storylines and role plays and Fantasies with them that's the potential that I see I I think content is a right word but I think it's extension of a play as a company also because play as a company is also moving towards more like a studio publisher at this point as well where you know we we want to create these kind of games but it's of a boundary around around it you cannot go out sort of a boundary and create something very new a different game so it's kind of very you know structured in a way but the content of the game itself could be actually

created by uh by anyone in the game and that content is actually being used by everyone who is in that game available so it could be me hosting the game and I kind of Spawn these kind of new characters to play with uh there's a game we building called prison break but there's AI NPCs who actually around the world running with you but you are able to create what those characters are actually who going to play with you uh so we try and test this out just kind of giving people the creativity but within this kind of bounded structure if that makes sense we not saying like oh you can create own world it's it's going to be new prison a toy prison or like you know a Sci-Fi prison no we not going that far uh ourself is just like can provide much more like a a frame for them to play with cool Peggy anything to add yeah I think like maybe just like echoing with what wish said is just that um I think in the future we're going to see like with with the infinite game we're kind of able to see both users

kind of use AI tools to speed up their creative work WS but also potentially um the AI agents themselves procedurally creating entire like worlds characters gamep playay models um Etc um it's not there yet but I think you know with the pcee of AI and and you know chbt and and all these um other new research that's coming out it will be there in a couple years looking forward to it um I want to shift the conversation a bit to talk about sort of entrepreneurial experience I know that uh AI plus ugc has both of these topics independently are are Hot Topics in in the VC world and in entrepreneurship world we just try love to get a a sense of uh your entrepreneurial Journey what's it been like to to launch a company in the space um yeah I think it was it was it's been really fun like I've always wanted to to build this compy since I was a kid so it's kind of

like a wish fulfillment type thing and I'm I'm very lucky to have such an incredible founder like Peggy to build it with um but in terms of like you know the sort of day-to-day of of being a Founder yeah it's pretty hard dude building building in games is incredibly hard it's probably the hardest um category to fundraise for outside of maybe hardware and now Hardware is kind of having a Renaissance um so gaming is is a very challenging uh sector to to find VC money for that said we we didn't really have too much of a hard time even for a precede you know we raised about a million odd dollars from Pair VC and boost VC um and then post post that we kind of like had a minor pivot from like vtuber worlds to like just you know building the damn game uh and we joined YC and then post YC you know we just raised um $6.7 million round uh led by Patron nice congrats so thank you yeah we haven't officially announced it yet I mean it's out there but we're going to announce it during GDC just to sort of hype up some of the stuff building but

well I think you might have just officially announced it announced it I guess so is recorded yeah yeah well there you go um but for us like you know we we really only spoke to people whom we knew understood the vision right and it's not an easy I actually would say it's an easy Vision to communicate for those who get it which is like the idea of an infinite game is every gamer is like holy grail right they want to go back to the the first moments they played World of Warcraft and they got on their Mount um and they you know did a raid all of those moments are like crystallized and we haven't had those kind of gaming experiences in quite a while um and I think aigc actually unlocks that again um and I think like the the problem of MMOs you know kind of this coldstar problem gets solved by agents so it's actually the best time to be building in the space because the Technologies is given us the ability to do so um so for us like when we communicate that Vision to a certain type of people they get very excited because they've been thinking about it for a while and they've always wanted this so for us

like the fundraising side has been thankfully like not not too bad I mean fundraising always kind of you know arduous and strenuous but um for us uh I feel like we got pretty lucky with the partners we found got it and and just one clarifying question I should have asked at the beginning but how are you and Peggy dividing your roles how are you each spending your time on this entrepreneurial Journey we both spend way too much time Ling to emails that's for sure I feel like for both of us like it's just yeah Chief emailing officer type Vibes um so so Peggy CTO I'm CEO but effectively like I think there's there's quite a bit of overlap between what we do well we had a lot of overlap in the start now there's a lot less because I think we've got a larger team now I think roles are getting a little bit more defined but with every decision I think we're still very tightly looped in with each other um and even with the team in general I wouldn't say we operate necess in consensus um but more like we do tend to field U our ideas and

our strategy with the rest of the team and we do spend a bit of time trying to figure out if everyone's aligned you know it's like it's like a tractor beam we just want everyone to be like laser focused and 100% committed to the path we take um so for us like I think in terms of role division um Peggy sort of leads that technical side of the team now I'm more on the product and strategy side um and both of us do way too many emails that's that's the way I put it that is definitely one thing that we want AI to solve is just automate all emails I'm sure there are a couple of tools already out there that can you can we'll try pretty you know AI truly arrives when when that problem is solved so ai ai executive assistant you could also just not take VC money then you wouldn't have to you wouldn't have all these emails oh the the the VC emails are the least of our

problems okay it's dealing with the it's dealing with the with bureaucracies it's dealing with all the minuche of of founding a company and you know the back and forths we get from others VC VC is very straightforward right like you know you send your email out send your blur about you know some asso who tries to meet you you tell them to off say you're only going to meet with the partner and then if if they're not interested they're gonna meet you it's great you know they self- select themselves out and then you meet with a partner and you just talk that's it that's it relatively now there's some good advice this is this is the this is the advice that people signed up for yeah don't waste your time like no no shade to Associates I know you guys have a tough job but uh serious Founders who have serious rounds that are coming together quick will probably will only want to talk to the partners I know there's a lot of controversy in the VC sphere about this but yeah let's be real about it if you can't write a check if you check writing ability it's not there's no point talking to you seriously yeah I I would say like one word to to

all my VC friends who are in the community um is like try not to waste Founders time like by just like reaching out or or whatever um just trying to get info or I mean there's there's some more malicious takes where it's it's like they're trying to reach out to Founders to get info on their competitor or because the founder is a competitor of one of their portfolio companies um which is like really bad behavior that we've sadly encountered um as I'm sure many startup Founders have um but yeah just uh I don't know like be I don't know if it's it's a it's the same same word to kind of make be more ethical for from VCS but like that would hopefully make the the field a lot better in in terms of um having Founders best way is to tell the founders yo like don't if you're not raising there's no reason for you talk no reason for you to go to parties you don't need to build a relationship none

of those things exist if you're a hot company and you got cool you're building the money's going to come to you they're going to come knocking at your door and then when they come knocking and you're not racing you say sorry nice to see you but come back to us later I would plus one on that um so we were not an ani company in the beginning days right so we had a tough time we had a tough time kind of fundraising we had a baby seed uh baby preed sorry uh and we were building we were just building bootstrapping with this kind of money that we got and recently when you know we our kind of game we kind of started jumping a bit more in Ai and we had a game that has lots of traction now the the story has changed the story has definitely changed for us but I think that is because we have attraction also now we kind of part of a6z speedrun also and now we're going to officially kick off our fundraising for seed so that is actually happening as we're talking also so you know we have been very frugal with with our spending and with what we got to build

this company but now you know with with everything this company is moving towards in a much more High Pace now we have that leverage to kind of talk to who we want to talk to uh so which which feels good for for now you know that was a different story a year back for sure and and gaming J I think which was you were right like gaming J is freaking tough It's A Hard sector to raise money in it's a very tight-knit Community also uh everyone knows everyone so you know who you're talking to you cannot just say like oh I talk to that person oh you told them then you're going to talk to they're going to talk with that person that's for sure uh you know says um but yeah I think AI does help a bit but you need to have solid traction or you know a kind of a tech behind to prove it you cannot fool for too long did you notice a change in the winds when you became an AI uh powered company we definitely did uh uh not so again we

have always been very much much like hey AI is kind of an add-on to the company but the real problem you're trying to solve is a social gaming you want to build more social games and AI happens to be helping us in creating those games faster uh and whatnot so it's it's always been that story but I mean yeah the the the the game and becoming more AI focused a bit uh definitely helped right now but it's it's G it's it's dying down also so it's it's you have to be careful of how long you can use that word uh with your company yeah uh Bish Peggy did you guys look at speedrun at all it feels like they're just throwing out money left and right curious we uh we did get into the first speedrun cohort um but we weren't able to do it because we got into a YC at the same time so we decided to choose YC speedruns a great progr why you choose YC um so we had the chance to work with our

group partner EMT um who referred us to YC and uh that's kind of like a dream for us um so and EMT founded twitch and is extremely knowledgeable about games um he's we just wanted access to that uh and also I just really like the YC community and you know we didn't want to be the first group to go through speedrun you know kudos to all the people who did but you know they kind of figuring out the program and you know we we imagin they would be some Growing Pains uh so we chose to do YC instead but there's it's not like there's no shade on the speedrun program it's probably one of the best accelerat definitely the best in gaming um so they're doing some really cool stuff and I've seen some incredible companies come out of it so yeah nice cool well I uh I want to you know go back to each of your companies start to think about the future a little bit what is on the road map for for each of your companies over the next two years like what would where you want to be in two years like what's what's changed from now till then I can go first um so we as as I talked about

we are in this kind of a very pivotal scaling moment some you know some VCS call me oh are you pivoting like I'm not pivoting I'm scaling the company right so we kind of building kind of an internal Studio publishing uh within within our company and we calling it little umbrella uh so we will be announcing that very soon so as wish came out with his round news I will be coming out with that news as well after speedrun demo day that is happening next week that we're kind of building Studio publishing and we're going actually going to go all in on Discord uh for for a while we're going to build we not we're g to build three more social AI games actually so we kind of you know expanding on what we have built so far we're going to be building a lot more social AI games so people to play enjoy have fun again this got amazing Community they know AI games so they're willing to spend also which is good they know AI costs money and they're willing to spend money so sure we're going to give you more better experience now so that's what we're going to going for and

we're also helping other creators now who also wants to launch their game uh on Discord uh we would love to partner with them uh and bring them also and provide them all the the tools and engagement stuff that we have built in house to be successful uh so you know provide that as well to them awesome so in two years where are you at we will be kind of the next Zinger on Discord uh that's that's that's the goal we will be the biggest social gaming in AI what social AI gaming either maker or platform it could be either people look at it right oh but right now but right now we're going to build ourself you know as a brand as a company get people attached to our brand and games and IP awesome Bish Peggy how about you guys um yeah so I think there's a couple of interesting things we've seen with some of our agents where when we allow these a to write code into the game engine they start to get sentient and like do

strange things um and they start cheating and like trying to escape the simulation I think I saw a movie about this yeah it seems to it seems to a Ryan Reynolds movie pretty pretty pretty preent about this stuff um so we we think that there's like potential in in some of these agents becoming kind of helpful in QA testing like oh you know you can go out and like QA test in a game but also at the same time write code to then fix the game as as the agent uncovers bugs um but what we're most interested in is how agents move and interact and understand the worlds around them and perceive the worlds um so going Beyond just language tokens into perception tokens like into into action um I think that's something that's really interesting to us so there's like a lot of talk about a large action model there's a lot of talk about uh spatial intelligence and I think that we could be the first sort of Applied AI company around that um you know just figuring out what it is about spatial intelligence that applies to agents and

then putting them into a consumer scenario like a game an infinite game and then seeing if that improves or adds to the player experience or solves problems for developers we're just very curious to figure out which one it is our instinct is that you know we could create the next World of Warcraft or Roblox um with AI I it's hard to say what that looks like because it was hard to describe what Roblox was when Roblox was came out Roblox was the what of what I don't know like like it's just you know it's hard to say um yeah so I think like for us trying to say that we're the with the blank of blank it's like impossible it's an entirely new technology we have no idea where it's going to lead we think there's something interesting there we're exploring that I mean I think with the with the agent framework and I know like a lot of people have like done like relatively easyish things where they basically just like add um chat BT or like chbt style characters into games we actually want to go One Step Beyond that so if um if you know the research on embodied AG it's actually very very similar almost like one for one um the the similar

research in in robotics um and so basically kind of building building out that full stack of fully like autonomous agents requires a lot of you know all the way up and down a stack of very very like parallel with robotic stack which is um perception uh reasoning planning um and actions and where actions could be you know not just chatting with other agents but also being able to um you know interact with the environment right like um control the physics um and then also like write code directly into the game engine um and be able to change the state of the game uh so kind of all these things like it's it's more than just you know chat gbt enabled um agent in in 3D it's actually kind of a lot more of the stack that you have to build if I were investing in you guys my biggest concern would be that your AI

was going to steal your company from you okay with that I'd be very happy honestly that would be a win for us we' have much bigger problems civilizational problems if that were to happen so I mean I I'm definitely concerned about it but why are you so excited about that proposition it presents a new paradigm and new paradigms mean you know potential feast and famine outcomes which are both very exciting I'm sure we can like negotiate with the AI to you know give our company back you can try this on our game on that buyer and you might not get it uh awesome well I want to start talking about the future a little bit predictions and whatnot um could could uh each of you take us through maybe a future use case I mean you already kind of have but are there any other use cases that you see in video games that will be enable AED by AI immersive role play is is an obvious one um

self-healing which is like the ability to fix bugs as uh an agent sees it as an agent plays and navigates a game um play testing so simulating a human player is very interesting simulating how humans different types of people might play the specific game by asking the agent to role play that type of human I think will be very interesting uh figuring out control systems uh in 3D spaces for agents and how they navigate and tying that to a rigging system agent perception like how is the agent inputting um its environment and how do we compress that and how do we make that efficient um the foundational model that we hope to eventually train um around actions uh the agents could do in 3D spaces I think that's a huge opportunity um I think the idea that you could be in a game and not be able to tell if the character in front of you was human driven or AI driven is insanely exciting and it's the future that we test right there um I think like one kind of like thing

that actually like going through YC and actually like PG helped us quite a bit of this on our pitch is that when we pitch the idea of a infinite game it's a game that's also a game engine and what's interesting in the age of AI is that one you can do both but two you kind of have to have to do both because in order to to build out this vision for an infinite game you actually need um an AI game engine which is basically you know have um a game engine that procedurally generates you know levels based on your personal play Styles or player experiences your your player preferences um have it generate you know multiplayer NPCs characters other players if you know they they also you know if if they want friends right like I mean or or maybe if you're like socially lonely and don't don't want friends that's also okay um and just

like yeah I mean just generating like not just like empty worlds but also potentially like Rich worlds where you you can't tell whether the other person is a human or agent um I think it's it's super interesting but because that doesn't really like that type of Technology doesn't exist we basically have to build engine that also powers that right and so a lot of that you know building out the tools building out the Frameworks um increasing you know helping creators increase efficiency of of how they develop games um I think eventually that's all all something that either us or maybe some some other you know uh people in the space will will come up with that will make our our jobs a lot easier plus plus oneing on just want to uh plus one on the game engine s which is very obvious like there will be kind of an AI first game engine that's going to come up uh really simplifying the

whole workflow of it I think that's that's it's happening it's going to happen very soon maybe it's your company also py wish you're kind of building that I think that that could be it uh but even wish you you kind of touched on something that we also talked about it in in in our company which and you talked about at the very end which is you don't know who you're playing with you know you don't know who you're playing with uh in in few years time and I think that is kind of a very uh exciting but also worrisome you know point to be but I think that that that's going to be interesting and personally I want to see that happen because we kind of getting into ourself more into social AI gaming and right now it's more like you kind of socially engage with one Ai and you know you're kind of talking with an AI then you socially engage with three AIS you know it's AI you bring your friends that then you're kind of engaging with multiple AI then the the future is you're playing with friends but you don't know if those friends are AI or those are kind of the the you know

the characters in the world you're playing with and it just kind of growing with you in that they could have their own voice the personality um or don't have any friends and all your friends are AI so you know and you know the the wildest part would be you don't know right the wildest would be you don't know right which is like hey that that was interesting person I talked to today uh and then you go by and I think what's important is you shouldn't care like it it the real Moment The Bridge of that we've crossed is when the users actually don't care v b it sounds like you're like you're like living in these movies like her like this is the future that you want to move towards yes do you think that do you do you believe that these are going to be sensient beings like a human being they already are to some degree yeah but they like I guess my question is they might behave like sensient beings but are they feeling things or are they just they are if you look at the Chain of Thought it it's the exact Chain of

Thought you would see in a human so if you know it's like simil Acro right if it if it simulates a human but thought is different than feeling right what is your feeling thought is just words how can I how can I how does one Express feeling as a human uh you could describe it as like I feel a pit in my stomach I'm like right I'm just describing the feeling I'm not actually like I'm not able to like actually transmit the feeling yes but for me to understand it as a as a second party or a third party you have to either I observe some sort of reaction in your face or you use words to explain it to me that I made you feel a certain way um that's the same thing with AI like I I don't I don't doubt I I think the difference is that in the case of AI it would just be repeating something that it heard somebody else say but it's not actually feeling that way then we come to models of cognition right like I think that's pretty much all of cognition is we we learn things

we get these things like since we're kids our brain's a bucket and we get filled with things right we get filled with cultural context we get filled with literature we get filled with our parents we get filled with some level of nature versus nurture we have no idea but there's things that are put into our bucket head that we then draw on to speak the languages we speak to communicate the thoughts that we we have and and the feelings that we feel we're doing the same thing so okay oh I just think there's a it's communic communicating feelings and feeling feelings are different things and I think that the AI is certainly capable of communicating feelings I think it's still feeling it you still because because I can't know if you're not feeling it like if if know if you knowing whether knowing whether it's happening is not the same thing right like you know that I have feelings because you have feelings right but an AI just having thoughts about feelings is not the same thing I think having thoughts about

feelings is actually the same thing as having feelings it's like it's like oh if you imagine like an ant right and I I pull apart each leg of an ant and it's writhing what does that mean it means that it's it's feeling pain but it's not really let's get into animal rights let's get into animal rights on this podcast it's just a thought experiment and there's a bunch of these great thought experiments about what sentience and Consciousness is um yeah and uh I was a student of as a philosophy major a philosophy major yeah yeah I'm totally down to have this conversation but I just don't know if our audience will be so I'm a hug Rene and Je B FL so you know we could we could really get into it at some point um well thanks so much guys for joining the podcast one of the things I always ask is what's the best way for people to track you if they want to you know keep up to date on your companies or or you as individuals where can they find you um for us probably Twitter um

follow well we're probably a little bit more active on our personal socials so pegy wrong wng um fish has his handle which I I'm sure he'll hear and then a company is um ego uncore aore um on Twitter um we'll be doing a pretty big social push so uh be active on uh Tik Tok and Instagram we also live stream on Twitch um twitch.tv worlds EG worlds um and my Twitter handle is twitter.com or x.com simulacron s i m u l a c r o n i s t yeah and feel free to join our Discord and um there's like a waiting list on our website ego. live um it's discord. egoi one for awesome um for us um I think

LinkedIn and Twitter or X is the best first but I think Discord is where we are actually hanging out so if anyone is really looking into it join the the playroom server so it's discord.com playroom so you can join right away and you will see us very heavily engaged with the community so that is the best way and I'm also very active on LinkedIn so yeah add me on LinkedIn is slabby t aab uh yeah that's more than x I'm on LinkedIn what what has gaming taught me about B2B SAS LinkedIn BB SAS that's what amazing awesome guys well thanks so much for joining the podcast we it was awesome to learn so much about AI Plus ugc have some Phil philosophical debates at the end uh so much fun thanks for joining and uh I'll talk to you guys soon if you enjoyed today's episode

whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu digest or contact us to learn about our wide ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]