Founding OptimizerAI
How OptimizerAI was founded by 2 game and AI enthusiasts
Oct 06, 2023
Intro
Hi! I am Hayden, Co-Founder of OptimizerAI. OptimizerAI is a company that addresses the challenge of game sound effects with a real-time game sound effect SDK that generates sound from in-game context. With our solution, game studios won’t have to spend millions on their sound effects. We recently got accepted into a16z’s Speedrun program. We are currently based in Seoul, but we will be relocating to San Francisco after next January.
I have always loved games and AI. I have played over 3,000 games of League of Legends, 6,000 games of Hearthstone (reaching Legends rank), and have played all versions of Pokemon. Additionally, I studied deep learning independently for 2 years, worked on AI side projects, and conducted personal research, which is available on my LinkedIn profile.
Waanda
My Co-Founder, Young, and I have always dreamed of a future where individuals like us (who aren’t very knowledgeable about games) could create games of their own within minutes. Thus, we initiated a short-game platform, Waanda (short for World and Avatar), where people can create and play short games within minutes. We learned a lot from iterating this platform, especially about the importance of UX and an “Immersive Gaming Experience.”
To overcome the cold-start problem, we began by designing our own games to attract both players and creators. The first type of short-game we conceptualized was internally dubbed “interactive scene”, where creators can embed questions or messages within objects in a 2D image, which players can reveal by clicking on those objects. We developed the app for 3+1 weeks (with 1 week spent on addressing AppStore rejections) before launching it on the AppStore.
Make your UX clear
We first created a maker tool and published some games independently. However, upon reviewing user logs, we discovered that no one was utilizing the maker tool, and even those who attempted to use it abandoned it after a few clicks. We realized that the tool was too complex and lacked clear instructions, even for us who had developed it.
For the games we published, the situation was not that different. No one was actually playing them, and users weren’t even aware that they needed to answer a question to complete the game.
Learning that our app’s UX basically sucked, we removed the maker tool from the app and shifted our focus to creating enjoyable games(with better UX, better design and better contents). We hypothesized that if people found our games engaging, some would be motivated to create their own.
Immersive Gaming Experience
We then developed short mystery puzzle games, employing the “interactive scene” concept, where a player is presented with a problem at the beginning, and clicking on objects in the image unveils clues to solve the problem. Although user numbers increased with these short mystery puzzles, most only played 1 or 2 games before exiting the app. We hypothesized that either the short mystery puzzle games weren’t enjoyable, or the brevity of the games disrupted players’ immersion.
Therefore, we transitioned to creating a series of short mystery games with a continuous storyline. Each storyline consisted of 10~20 short mystery puzzle games, which players needed to solve sequentially to follow the narrative. We launched with two storylines:
- A scenario involving a zombie virus outbreak, with a series of mystery puzzles leading to the discovery of the zombie vaccine.
- A narrative where the player takes on the role of a detective, navigating through a 4-day investigation to identify a serial killer.
One feedback that stood out was, “Your game would be much better with sound effects; the absence of sound distracts me.” This feedback led to the founding of OptimizerAI.
Game Sound Effects
We dedicated a week to exploring sound effects and discovered that outsourcing cost $20 for just 5 seconds of sound effects, while searching online for the right sound effect consumed hours for just a single find. We found this unacceptable.
Initially, we launched a landing page titled “UnlimitedSFX,” promising, “We will create all sound effects for your games with AI,” and requested email addresses. We promoted the page on Unity subreddits (which were the only subreddits left after being blocked from most), and achieved a ~30% conversion rate, which was the best conversion rate we had experienced till then.
Next, we reached out to numerous game studios. Some were sharing their revenue with outsourcing companies solely for sound effects, and one large studio had spent over $1M on sound effects for their projects. We identified this as a problem and delved deeper.
Game studios were tackling the game sound effect challenge through three methods:
- Hiring sound designers
- Outsourcing
- Purchasing from online sound libraries
All these methods were either costly or demanded significant time and effort. We intuitively believed that deep learning could substantially reduce the costs associated with game sound effects. It was at this moment that we decided to found OptimizerAI.
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