LIV, a Prague-based company that wants to make VR gaming more fun to watch, and in turn bring players and spectators closer together, has picked up $1 million in funding. That’s a pretty modest raise as far as ambitious upstarts go — and LIV is certainly ambitious. However, the list of backers includes noteworthy names, such as the founder of Oculus (and designer of Oculus Rift), Palmer Luckey.
Other investors in LIV include Jaroslav Beck, CEO and co-founder of Beat Games (the studio behind VR streaming hit Beat Saber); early-stage VC Seedcamp; accelerator TechStars; Prague’s Credo Ventures; VR company VIVE; and mixed reality production specialist Splitverse.
Founded in 2016, LIV is betting on the premise that VR gaming represents an entirely new platform, and it is new platforms with nascent ecosystems where the biggest opportunities lie. Furthermore, while the watching of video game live streams shows no signs of abating — made popular via sites such as Twitch — the spectator experience hasn’t transitioned very gracefully to VR.
“Creating content in VR is incredibly hard, there are no tools for it, and no shareable content form factor that conveys the experience of being in VR,” says LIV co-founder AJ Shewki, who was previously a professional gamer under the moniker “Dr Doom”.
“LIV empowers developers and content creators to grow their audience through shareable VR content. Developers integrate our SDK, and content creators are then able to create content with those games and experiences using the LIV App. The content format is called ‘Mixed Reality Capture’ (MRC)”.
The “Mixed Reality Capture” experience is inevitably best watched rather than conveyed through the written word (you can see an example below). However, what MRC essentially does is to inject a live video or, alternatively, a 3D avatar of the player’s body inside the video game stream so that spectators experience not only what the player sees (the classic VR first person perspective) but can also follow the “real world” movements the player makes to execute moves within the game. As a player moves their arms, for example, their avatar can be seen replicating the same moves based on sensor data pulled from the VR gear the player is wearing.
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