A ‘performance analysis’ company in San Francisco is developing an AI program with the aim of making you better at Overwatch. The company, called Visor, has raised $4.7 million to fund the program, with investments from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel, Y Combinator, Afore Capital, and NextGen Venture Partners. The company intend to use the money to expand Visor and build out its team.
“Visor is a real-time game data platform that powers a new category of intelligent, in-game experiences for the everyday gamer,” the team said in a press release, adding that their mission is “to reinvent the way we all play games.” It’s certainly a lofty ideal.
The team has been prototyping Visor over the last year, with the help of the Overwatch University subreddit, in preparation for the open beta which you can sign up for on the Visor website if you’re interested. “It is for the everyday gamer,” Visor CEO Ivan Zhou said in an interview with GamesBeat. “There isn’t an ideal gamer. It’s not aimed at becoming top 500. It is to create a real-time performance compared to yourself. We don’t think of Visor as a coach.”
Generally how it works is that the player has Visor running alongside Overwatch, and while playing the AI pops up with “intelligent alerts” that give you advice on moves you can make next – such as ‘Help Healers’ or ‘Prioritize Ultimate Use.’ They’re tooltips basically, real-time tutorial pop-ups to give new or struggling players a helping hand. You can check out how it works in the video below.
After the match there’s a post-game summary, and the AI begins adapting itself to your playstyle – ‘assimilating’ you, if you will. The company says, “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.”
Overwatch is just the first game Visor are focusing on, although they say it can work with any game. “Our hope is that Visor becomes an essential part of the way this generation plays games,” they say.