Indexing Streamed Content
Our Investment in Shapeshift Gaming
Twitch spawned an entirely new form of digital entertainment by allowing for mass viewership of real-time streamed content. Over the past decade, they have validated the interest and business viability of watching other people play video games. This has been a huge step forward for the gaming and esports community.
Unlike Youtube videos (or other stored video sites), streamed content is real-time. Being able to watch something as it happens is powerful, and is a big reason why streaming companies (Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, Huya, Douyu) have been so successful. But because streamed content is fleeting, there are some drawbacks. When you are choosing a streamer to watch, you typically have to rely on their overall rating and presence. On Youtube, you can search for content for a given topic and find the best video in seconds. You can’t do this on streaming sites; discoverability is hard. Instead, you typically watch a streamer you’ve enjoyed in the past and hope that you enjoy whatever they might be doing now. Often enough, unfortunately, you can end up watching someone eat lunch while they take a break instead of playing the game you wanted to watch them play, which is frustrating.
To tackle this problem, Shapeshift Gaming is launching Jumper.tv; a streaming content aggregator and viewership platform. Shapeshift monitors hundreds of top streamers (and thousands or more in the future) from different streaming platforms with machine vision technology. They aggregate data for those streamers to build a real-time streamer search index with a plethora of data points to track, such as what game is being played, players left in the match, time left, how many kills/eliminations the streamer has had, and what weapons are being used, among others.
Starting with Fortnite, viewers on Jumper.tv are showcased the most exciting streamers at any given time. They can filter by their preferences and quickly discover engaging content. Once the match is over, Jumper.tv automatically “jumps” to another streamer based on machine learning algorithms that find the most relevant and personalized content to watch at any given moment.
In traditional sports, customization is very limited in regards to viewership experience. If there is any customization (MLB.tv, NFL Redzone, etc) it costs extra. Streaming, while being free and not littered with advertisements yet, still has its flaws. A major one being that gameplay can be boring at certain times. Jumper.tv tackles this issue with a real-time dashboard that shows viewers where streamers are in the game and how well they’re doing so the viewer can pick and choose the content they want to see or let the algorithm choose streams for them. This experience is customized for each viewer, which we believe will become the standard across streaming viewership experiences.
One of the most attractive proponents of NFL Redzone is that they only show games that are either in the red zone (<20 yards from the endzone) or the closest team to the red zone. This is valuable because a typical NFL broadcast shows on average 100 commercials and only 11 minutes of actual gameplay over a 3 hour period. With Jumper.tv, the experience of NFL Redzone is coming to esports and gaming, but instead of only having 13 games to choose from one day a week (the amount of NFL games on Sunday), you will be able to choose from 100s of streamers across the most popular titles, any day of the week. Jumper.tv won’t exclusively prioritize streamers that are in the endgame though, they’ve created a weighted rating system that picks streamers having great games overall. For example, a streamer with 15 kills and 30 people left in Fortnite will be prioritized over a streamer with 1–2 kills and 3 people left.
Through Jumper.tv, Shapeshift is tackling an important theme we focus on at Konvoy; creating an improved viewership experience for audience members. A better viewership experience means better engagement and improved monetization in the future. Streamer discoverability also feeds into this because it creates a healthy competitive market for streamers with less entrenchment, which ultimately contributes to better content for viewers.
Real-time content, specifically streamed video content, is a large part of the entertainment of the future. Beyond Jumper.tv, the streamed content indexing technology that Shapeshift is building has the potential to help harness that content and build a tool for people to seamlessly search for real-time content.
We’ve been getting to know Eyal and the Shapeshift team over the past few months and have been incredibly impressed. They are a group of gamers, developers, and product experts with a real understanding of the industry and a vision for where they can take this. The whole Konvoy team is excited to partner with Shapeshift as they disrupt the streaming landscape.
