Streamed Interactive UGC Platform for Game Content driving Utility and Value

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Warren Mayoss

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

warren@concurrents.com

Additional applicants

Barry Jenkins, barry@concurrents.com

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

10

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

We will rely on 3rd party game developer adoption of our plug-ins into the game so that we can stream the content to the player.

We will also rely on help for using APIs to work with Cardano on Authentication and other blockchain related functionality.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Nothing of the Concurrents Slice.gg Platform and underlying GPEG streaming technology will be open source. Concurrents will retain the IP ownership of the platform and technology

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

Gaming

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Summary

•       Concurrents’ technology makes it possible to experience AAA high resolution graphic content in seconds. Unlike the last 20 years of attempts to send video from the cloud, we cost-effectively stream game assets from the edge and render locally at any resolution and any framerate. Full games, partial games, single player, multiplayer, any genre. It does not matter. PC and Console are what we focus on to start but Mobile and AR/VR are on our near-term roadmap.

•       Our mission is to revolutionize the way that users experience games and other immersive kinds of content built with game engines. In a world where watching gameplay drives as much engagement as playing the game itself, we take that experience to the next level: interactive! (recorded or live).

•       Our strategy is to build a game content distribution platform that is thoroughly integrated with the way players discover, engage in, and share game content and experiences. By integrating and incentivizing publishers, influencers/streamers and their fans together on the same platform, we have a massive opportunity to disrupt the current market. Think Twitch and Steam combined!

 

Value Proposition

 

For the Consumer

A superior, high-end gaming experience delivered remotely in seconds, negating network issues and reducing storage requirements

For the Creator/Influencer

A unique tool set to produce richer, and more engaging content for their audiences and fans and new monetization opportunities all managed through a web3/blockchain backend

For the Publisher/Developer

Increased sales through differentiated user experiences, reduced purchase friction and access to the creator economy and incremental revenue streams 

 

Creating a better consumer experience

Players increasingly treat games like other media. They expect to be able to experience and understand a title before they buy. They’re seeking an emotional connection as a prerequisite to spending. Publishers need to respond to this reality. 

 

The Concurrents’ Slice is a way to get playable game content into consumers’ hands quickly and easily so they can sample what the publisher has to offer. With a single click – no grabbing dinner while it installs – players can experience games as publishers want them to. With no lag, higher quality and better framerates than video-based cloud-native solutions, we’ve just eliminated the gap between someone discovering content and getting their hands on it.

 

Providing Publishers the tools to succeed in the Creator Community/Economy

Publishers understand that influencer content drives real engagement with their games. Marketing games today has become an influencer proposition. The problem is that working through social media requires publishers to surrender control of their game content to have their message heard by consumers. They lack the tools to shape how their game is experienced in a world where influencers choose what to share. Concurrents gives publishers the ability to engage and collaborate in the creation of influencer content and be a direct part of the consumer relationship while tapping into an incremental revenue stream they have not previously had access to.

 

Empowering richer creator outcomes and audience building

Slice.gg will be the consumer facing destination site for creators that offers access to game content directly from publishers along with the ability for creators to produce truly engaging and thrilling cinematic game footage. In addition to offering instant access to gameplay, Slice.gg will provide robust yet simple-to-use tools that sit on top of the game engine runtime environment and allow creators to personalize their recorded gameplay with cinematic effects, like adding new camera positions to emphasize their spectacular kill shots or adding shaders to give it their own flavor. Because game content will be streamed to users, the new, enhanced content made by creators from their original gameplay will also be easy to share, creating a positive cycle of creation and sharing that will drive awareness and engagement with the original game content.

 

A new category of NFTs

We will enable streamers and creators to mint their recorded and cinematic Slices as interactive NFTs. Other players will be able to take those NFTs (access determined by the owner) and pay to create derivative cinematic versions of the players performance piece and thereby drive value to the original Slice NFT owner. Furthermore others can continue that process rewarding everyone in the chain before them including the Publisher of the game IP on which the Slice NFT was derived.

How it works

Our patented technology (GPEG) predictively streams graphics, geometry, physics, audio, and animation assets to a game engine running on the player’s machine. An automated process encodes the assets at the end of the development cycle to a visually mapped out game world for upload to the data center and CDN.  Our client-side plug-in monitors the player/viewer’s activity and location and then prefetches the appropriate assets for where they may be going in the next few seconds.

With GPEG, a player can start playing game content in seconds without having previously downloaded the engine or the game content.  GPEG supports multiplayer and single player games of any size, making content from large, multi-gigabyte games available in an instant. Slice is the name we use for the content publishers share with users/creators for play, recorded playback, and live streaming of their game using GPEG.

What's now/What future

For the next 18 months, we are focused on building out the creator community on Slice.gg and establishing Streamed Interactive Media (SIM), the sharing of interactive, playable game content, as an important category in gaming. As consumer growth and publisher adoption increase, this new form of content will become the bridge between game discovery and game purchasing, connecting influencer driven communities instantly with the games they love, transforming the AAA games sales process. Going forward, GPEG will also enable new types of interactive animation and digital effects programs for cable and over-the-top audiences.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Concurrents will build a community of millions of players. We believe that our transaction volume, transacted on Cardano, will drive valuable utility and the price of ADA up.

We believe that using the Cardano's smart contracts as our entitlement management system and with the ability to control the delivery of content to the consumer, we get around the "right-click" problem for NFTs.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Concurrents will measure its success on revenue generation and profitability.  Other measurements will be the number of users and the amount of time they spend on the platform and the number of daily, monthly transactions they generate. Although there will be no direct tie to Cardano’s success, ADA will be exposed to the forecasted millions of gamers and creators who utilize the Concurrents platform. This will drive utility and therefore value/growth of ADA.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

Outputs and Results

Usage numbers and statistics will be publicly available on the Slice.gg website. This initial project is expected to last 10 months but further development and growth will continue into the future. Future tranches of functionality will be spread across years.

Use of Funds

To scale the infrastructure and add games content to the platform. To continue development of features on the platform. To grow the community management function.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

We have spent over 8 years developing the underlying streaming technology. We have 13 patents granted with an additional 5 in the pipeline. Our CTO is a worldwide leading expert on human vision and perception. One of our cofounders worked with Tim Sweeney to develop the original (and subsequent) Unreal Engine(s).  We are mathematicians and computer graphics experts. Our product and strategy teams have members with decades of games industry experience. 

 

We are a software development company by nature. We have a strong agile development process that manages delivery of the platform to the overall specified goals of the company. Our management team has decades of financial management and software development at multiple fortune 500 companies with several in the games and entertainment industries. We have already de-risked the underlying technology and are now ready to prove it to the industry.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

For the time period of this project (10-12 months) our goal would be to onboard 2 publisher/developers of PC games that utilize the Unreal Engine with 1 or 2 games each that are launching in the next 6 to 9 months. We would release our UGC tools that allow for the creation of clips of game play using in-game camera and effects tools to create cinematic versions. The proof points will be the adoption of the tools and the sharing of the clips with other members of the community and on YouTube Games and Twitch (as video). 

**Concurrents has already begun publisher/developer outreach and we have 2 publishers willing to work with us when the platform is ready.

 

We expect that usage of the platform will begin within the last 3 months of the project.  Our user metrics will be modest but will be in the 1000 to 5000 DAU range growing to 10000 the following 3 months. 

 

Future usage of the platform will be much more substantial whereby we expect to have the following usage numbers:

 

2025 – 95K DAU

2026 – 530K DAU

2027 – 2.5M DAU

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestone 1: Complete the Slice.gg website for publisher and player management

Tasks

• Update for specific games from Publisher
• Integrate with Cardano and APis

Milestone 2: Integrate with Cardano platform

Milestone 3: Encode Game 1 for GPEG

Milestone 4: Create Game 1 Publisher Slices including reaction awards

Milestone 5: Create reaction awards and configure entitlements/reward values on Slice.gg

Milestone 6: Test Slices with limited audience

Milestone 7: Release Slices to public

Repeat Milestones 2 through 67for Game 2

Milestone 8: 3 months of usage data

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

In general, 3 to 4 Slices will be created for each game.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Although the transaction volume and therefore revenue will be small upon completion of this specific project, the long term growth Concurrents will benefit the Cardano ecosystem.

Costs are reasonable and customary for software development in the US. We are based in Colorado and North Carolina where labor costs are less than the major software centers such as Silicon Valley, Austin, or Boston.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept