Synthetic Media: Virtual Influencers & Live Animation: Figments (S19) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020

My name is Jay Rosenkrantz. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Figments, with my brother Scott. As we're building the next version of the WWE for esports, we went through YC Summer of 2019. I think one of the most fun and incredible things about this experience was learning how to tell the story of our company to other people. I'm really excited to tell you that story right now.

But my favorite back and forth with the partners at YC was around the idea of just leading off by saying we're building something that's pretty crazy. So, it's the next version of the WWE for esports, and we're doing this by creating brand new virtual characters with fictional storylines who play esports. So, unlike wrestlers who body slam each other on TV, our characters compete at the most popular video games in front of gigantic live audiences on Twitch.

This robot with a jetpack here, its name is Morales. It's our first character. It's a robot created to crush humanity at Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. It's insanely good at the game; it's actually one of the best in the world, and it is a hilarious trash talker. So, over the course of a few months this summer, we grew Morales into a partner streamer on Twitch and almost 10,000 subscribers on YouTube through a viral event in the fighting game community called Beat the Robot. Here's a trailer that shows off a little bit of what that experience was like.

In order to create characters like Morales, we had to build unique technology, specifically a virtual production tool for our talent and content team. These tools that we put together mix live streaming video and audio pipelines with the front end of motion capture technology. When COVID hit initially, we're based in Los Angeles. We came here after YC to build a great in-house storytelling studio for our company.

The way we envision it sort of looks like a mix of game development studio, content company, and talent agency. We wanted to build that culture in-house, but when COVID hit, we had to figure out how do we take this all remote. It was actually a blessing in disguise because while the challenges were kind of nightmarish to figure out, when we came out on the front end of that, we realized now we're able to work with talent that's not just located in the Los Angeles area. We can remotely collaborate with anyone in the world, as long as there's a high-speed internet connection.

So, we built our technology in a really performer-friendly and scalable way. We basically said, "Hey, like we want to do this in a way where nobody has to go to large motion capture stages." You can create the content for these characters and their storylines within the constraints of your home office or streaming room at home. We basically wanted to get out of talent's way and say, "Hey, you focus on taking a page from what Emma was talking about—creating the drama of a stream, creating something that's going to be entertaining and that's going to build a community of followers around your character and around multiple characters as we expand."

We do a lot of work in Unreal Engine creating this app. We use AR Kit on iPhone; it's one of our major technologies that we're working with. I've got a little video that kind of shows off the features of the app. You can take a look at this. This is something that we're actively hiring to continue building these tools out because they enable us to create content that really couldn't previously exist, primarily due to the fact that we can use real-time game engines for live animation and mocap.

If you're familiar with or been paying attention to what Lucasfilm has been doing on the front end of this with The Mandalorian, we're using many of the same features and technologies in order to fuel our content creation.

So, what we're able to do with all this is, as a result of our early stage production, we were able to partner with Reebok. Actually, thanks to a relationship we've gotten—a great friendship with another YC company called Athlane that pairs streamers with brands. Reebok was really excited about the idea that they could integrate digital products in a new way with virtual characters and get them integrated on the live stream.

So, here's a video of Morales showing off his new classic leather legacy shoes on stream. Then, once other brands heard about this, they got excited, and that led to a partnership with Guayaquí Yerba Mate that took this a little bit further.

Okay, so that's us. We're still a really small early stage startup, and what's next on our agenda is launching more characters. We're able to do quite a bit with a remotely distributed team. I think at our core, we are storytellers and content creators, and we're building a giant crazy vision of the future new media entertainment company that tells stories that appeal to people who are fans of games and esports on Twitch, YouTube, and new social platforms like TikTok.

And platforms that I'm sure don't exist now but will be really important in the future. We're hiring for positions across the board: from Unreal Engine to graphic design, video editing, technical art, and marketing. If you think this is like the kind of crazy story that your— you know— is meant for you, we definitely would love to hear from you. Please reach out; let's talk. Thank you so much.