Live Aware Labs Secures $4.8M for AI-Powered Game Developer Feedback Platform

Seattle startup Live Aware raises $4.8M for new AI-powered game developer feedback system

Seattle-based startup Live Aware Labs raised $4.8 million in a seed funding round to continue work on its self-titled feedback management platform for game developers. The round was led by Transcend, with participation from A16Z GAMES SPEEDRUN, Lifelike Capital, and angel investors Patrick Wyatt, Luis Villegas, Michael Evans, Chacko Sonny, Eden Chen, Seth Sivak, Brendan Mulligan, Curt Bererton, Brian Vesce, and Todd Hooper. Live Aware's management platform is designed as an all-in-one set of tools for video game creators, focused heavily on processes that let developers get better feedback, iterate faster, and work in close communication with a community of players and testers. "Audiences are diversifying tremendously," co-founder and CEO Sean Vesce tells GeekWire, "and more developers are realizing [the value of] building a game in lockstep with an audience from the earliest stages of development. If you can get versions of your game and your vision in front of real people and have them play, that information is really helpful." Vesce is a longtime game developer who worked for Crystal Dynamics on several games in the Tomb Raider series. More recently, he was the creative director on Never Alone, a critically and commercially successful 2014 indie video game that's based upon real-world Native Alaskan folklore. "Some people call this 'player-first' development, or 'community-driven,'" says Vesce. "We got our taste for it early on in the Never Alone project. We built that game almost entirely along with the Alaska Native community... we were constantly sharing our work and soliciting ideas and getting their input." Vesce continues: "In the same way, game developers working on the next action game in development with their community have a much higher chance of success." The other co-founders at Live Aware are head of product Nathan Wheeler, a former Seattle teacher who went on to work at the Seattle indie studio very very spaceship, and CTO Dave Berger, the co-founder and former engineering director of Microsoft subsidiary 343 Industries (now Halo Studios). Live Aware arose from the realization by Vesce and Berger that the tools did not exist for other studios to take the same player-first approach that had previously worked with Never Alone. The Live Aware platform is designed to allow developers to put their games in front of their community, get feedback, and implement the results "almost in real time." One of its primary tools for doing so is AI. In a typical test session for a video game, testers and volunteers will generate mountains of data and footage, only a relative fraction of which is at all useful. With Live Aware, game testers will record themselves as they play, in a setup that looks a little like a YouTube reaction video. Their vocal reactions to what they're experiencing give Live Aware's LLM something it can lock onto, so it can scan through all that footage, archive it, and provide all the most useful information to developers as a plain text file. It's an all-in one solution for a process that's more typically done as a kludge of multiple, non-interactive processes. "I wish I had this while I was making Halo," Berger tells GeekWire. Other services provided as part of the Live Aware platform include automated translation in 30 languages and integration with other game development tools, such as Unity, Unreal Engine, Slack, Discord, and as of last month, Monday.com. Live Aware is currently in use at several studios worldwide, including Krafton (PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds), GSC Game World (the forthcoming STALKER 2), and the recent Los Angeles startup Believer. According to Vesce and Berger, the company plans to launch a pay-as-you-go plan for Live Aware in 2025, in order to make the platform accessible for developers at all levels of funding.

Live Aware Labs raises $4.8M for its AI-powered gamer feedback platform

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Live Aware Labs announced today that it has closed a $4.8 million seed funding round. Transcend led the round, with a16z Games Speedrun, Lifelike Capital and several angel investors participating. The company plans to use the funding to build out its community feedback platform, which is currently in use at several gaming studios and allows them to capture and analyze player feedback at scale. Live Aware's AI-powered platform not only compiles feedback data, but also provides actionable insights for developers. According to Live Aware, this helps developers build an engaged community of gamers through the whole development process, as well as understand what their community thinks and wants. It also improves game quality as it can incorporate feedback through the whole process, from early development to post-launch operations and requires zero integration. Sean Vesce, Live Aware CEO, told GamesBeat in an interview, "At its core, Live Aware is all about empowering game developers to truly understand and act on player feedback at scale. In an industry where the alignment of developer vision and player expectations is crucial, we're providing a tool that can make a real difference in creating market-defining games. It's about building with your audience, not in spite of them." Improving a game's chances of success Live Aware is planning to build out its platform's tools for developers, including the expansion of its sources of information and multiplayer insights, as well as integrating newer technologies. "Ultimately, our goal is to empower developers of all sizes to create amazing games that truly resonate with their audiences, and this funding is going to help us accelerate that mission." Andrew Sheppard, general partner at Transcend, said in a statement, "Live Aware's real-time feedback platform is transforming how developers improve game quality and speed up production. Their innovative approach to capturing player insights and vision for revolutionizing game development best practices aligns perfectly with our mission to support the boldest entrepreneurs shaping the future of gaming. With early traction from leading studios already in hand, we believe Live Aware will play a key role in helping studios build more engaging, successful titles." According to Vesce, Live Aware is also evolving to include other sources of information: "We're integrating data from multiple channels - not just player commentary, but conversations from places like Discord, results from surveys and more to provide a holistic view of player experiences. By maintaining context throughout the entire development lifecycle, from early prototypes to post-launch updates, we can offer unprecedented continuity in understanding how player sentiments evolve. We believe this approach will enable teams of all shapes and sizes to build better games, faster with a much higher chance for achieving commercial success."