Statespace picks up $2.5M to help gamers train
Gaming continues to grow in popularity, with esports revenue growing 23 percent from last year to top $1 billion in 2019.
But the metrics by which talent is evaluated in gaming, and the methods by which gamers can train to better hone their craft, are varied and at times non-existent. That's where StateSpace, and specifically the company's gaming arm Klutch, come into play.
In 2017, Statespace launched out of stealth with their first product, Aim Lab. Aim Lab is meant to mimic the physical rules of a game to give gamers a practice space where they can improve their skills. Moreover, Aim Lab identifies weaknesses in a player's gameplay - one person might struggle with their visual acuity in the top left quadrant of the screen, while another might have trouble spotting or aiming at targets on the bottom right side of the screen - and allows gamers to focus in on their weaknesses to get better.
Today, the company has announced a $2.5 million seed funding round led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Expa, Lux Capital and WndrCo. This brings the company's total funding to $4 million.
Alongside growing Aim Lab, which is on track to soon reach 1 million users, one of the company's main goals is to create a standardized metric by which gamers' skills can be measured. In football, college athletes and NFL coaches have the Scouting Combine to make decisions around recruiting. This doesn't necessarily take into account stats like yardage or touchdowns, but rather the raw skills of a player such as 40-yard sprint speed.
In fact, Statespace has partnered with the Pro Football Hall of Fame for 'The Cognitive Combine', becoming the official integrative medicine program cognitive assessment partner of the organization. Statespace wants to create a similar 'combine' for gaming.
The hope is that the company can offer this metric to publishers, colleges and esports orgs, giving them the ability to not only evaluate talent, but to better serve casual users through improved matchmaking and cheat detection.
"We want to go a level beyond your kill:death ratio," said cofounder and CEO Dr. Wayne Mackey. Those metrics greatly depend on factors like who you're playing with. You won't always be matched against players who are on an even keel with you. So we want to look at fundamental skills like hand eye coordination, visual acuity, spatial processing skills, and working memory capacity."
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Klutch has partnered with the National Championship Series as the official FPS training partner for 2019. NCS has majors for both CS:Go and Overwatch, two of the biggest competitive FPS games in the world. The company is also partnering with top Twitch streamers and Masterclass to create The Academy.
Academy users will be able to get advanced tutorials from streamers like KingGeorge (Rainbox Six Siege), SypherPK (Fortnite), Valkia (Overwatch), Drift0r (CoD), and Launders (CS:GO).
Obviously, gaming is a major part of Statespace's business model. But the skeleton of the technology has a number of different applications, particularly in medicine. Statespace is currently in the research phase of rolling out an Aim Lab product that is specifically focused on helping people who have had strokes recover and rehabilitate.
Statespace wants to use the funding to build out the team and expand the Klutch Aim Lab platform beyond Steam to mobile and eventually console, with Xbox prioritized over PlayStation, as well as launching the Academy.