Visor, a San Francisco-based performance analysis company, wants to make you better at Overwatch. The company raised $4.7 million to develop an “artificial intelligence system” to analyze Overwatch gameplay and provide instant feedback to players, according to VentureBeat.
An open beta iteration of the Overwatch feedback platform will begin, with the intention of helping players get better at the game. Venture capital firm Accel led the funding around, according to VentureBeat. Y Combinator, Afore Capital, and NextGen Venture Partners were also involved in the investment. Visor said it’ll use the money from the investment round to expand the platform and build out its team.
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A video posted to YouTube earlier in August shows how it works: “intelligent alerts” pop up in the Visor overlay while the user is playing Overwatch. The platform notifies players when ultimate use should be prioritized or when healers need to be focused, for example. Visor can also tell when the enemy team is trickling in, and notifies the player to keep playing aggressively to capitalize on that. A post-game summary wraps up the game once it’s finished.
To do this, Visor uses data from the game to remember a player’s history and understand how the specific game works. “After just one match, Visor starts calibrating to the individual, tracking longitudinal performance within a match to identify exactly when a gamer is under- or over-performing on critical in-game metrics,” Visor said in a press release.
Visor said its platform is “flexible and game-agnostic,” meaning the company can grab data from any game “with minimal latency.” Machine learning is at the base of the service, allowing Visor “to be extremely precise in the experiences [it] create[s].”
Overwatch is just the first game that Visor will focus on. The company has been prototyping the build with the Overwatch University subreddit to prepare for the beta launch. The program is downloadable at the Visor website. It’ll run in the background while playing Overwatch. Visor will start itself up when you start playing, and stop when you stop.
