Aside from Emmett (if you haven't seen it, check out his excellent TED Talk on what streaming means for the future of entertainment: https://www.ted.com/talks/emmett_shear_what_streaming_means_...), we've got three pretty cool 10-minute lightning talks lined up:
- Designing Characters with Deep Learning, Cory Li, Founder at Spellbrush (W18)
- Synthetic Media: Virtual Influencers and Live Animation, Jay Rosenkrantz, Founder at Figments (S19)
- MMOs in the Instagram Era, Jimmy Xu, Founder at Highrise (S18)
After the talks, we'll open up a virtual expo hall to meet with the founders and teams.
Many of the gaming startups fly under the radar at YC, but in my (biased!) opinion, if you love games they're some of the most exciting. And the gaming industry often tackles some of the most exciting and challenging frontier technology problems before anyone else.
Working at a startup is not for everyone - and gaming startups are some of the craziest for sure. But if you're in a position to go for it, based on my experiences I can say there might be no greater adventure. So if this piques your interest, check out the event link and apply to attend/come learn about open roles in engineering, game design, art, marketing/media and more.
Hope to see you there! https://www.workatastartup.com/events/gaming-tech-talks-2020
I do wonder if I'm destined for "games services" instead of games, given my background in web development and ML.
What do you think are some areas in gaming that are ripe for a good service offering?
Come attend the event and ask the founders what their biggest pain points are -- that's usually a good way to figure out if there's a problem you could solve by developing a service!
I can only speak for my own experience, but when I was making VR games it would have been great if someone built a unified interaction system that worked across all distribution platforms. Or a service that automated porting between the various HMDs.