🗣 Do you play mouse & keyboard or controller? Are you into motion sensors or own hardware for Guitar Hero? Games have spanned a variety of input controls, but one of the oldest is our voice.
Played Marco Polo in the pool? Sang Karaoke at your local bar? These are all examples of voice games and Max Child, CEO and Co-Founder at Volley who recently raised a $55M Series C co-led by Lightspeed and M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, joins me on air to talk about voice games in video games.
🏋♂️ Although there are few “breakout hits” in voice so far, here are some heavy hitters:
Shout to Jump — a platformer, where you literally, shout into your phone, to jump
Question of the Day — trivia game on Amazon Alexa
Song Quiz — music trivia for Amazon Alexa (acquired by Volley)
Voice has had technical hurdles in the past across speech recognition, speed of conversation, and fundamental linguistic issues in the ability to interpret intent. But just like Nvidia’s graphics cards supercharged 3D storytelling and better motion feedback and haptics turned novelties like the Sony Eye Toy into the Wii and VR, advancements in AI are allowing the merging of speech recognition and LLMs (having audio and text in one system) that are changing future outlook of the voice games landscape.
🔊 We discuss:
The history of voice games
Platforms for voice games
Technology that makes voice games fly
The Volley portfolio and Volley’s core user base and demo
The business of voice (business models, retention, platform mix, and top-end monetization)
Listen to the full episode on Naavik's channels on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, linked in the comments. If you’re looking to learn more about why Lightspeed and Microsoft invested, give Lightspeed's blog post on the fundraise a read: https://lnkd.in/e2Ght8Es. Thanks to Gaby Caliendo for helping us put this together. #gaming #voice
Financial Reporter • Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily • Founder of Journalists Club • Columnist @ Inc. Magazine • Fulbright Scholar • 2x Author
2wSeems like such an epic conference. Great stuff!!