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PortalOne raises $15M from Atari and more for a new hybrid gaming/TV show app
Gaming and streamed video have been two of the biggest pastime winners during the last year+ of pandemic living. Today a startup that has created an app that brings those two entertainment formats together is announcing a notable seed round of funding as it prepares to come out of closed beta.
PortalOne, a hybrid gaming startup, is announcing a $15 million seed round of funding as it prepares to come out of closed beta with an app that lets people play on-demand games and also watch live shows in which users can play against a special guest.
The startup and its funding are notable in part because of who is doing the investing.
It includes Atari and camera maker ARRI, Founders Fund, TQ Ventures (the firm led by Scooter Braun and financiers Schuster Tanger and Andrew Marks), Coatue Management (specifically Arielle Zuckerberg), Rogue Capital Partners (Alice Lloyd George’s new fund), Signia Venture Partners (via Sunny Dhillon), Seedcamp, Talis Capital and SNÖ Ventures out of Europe.
Other investors included Kevin Lin, the co-founder of Twitch; Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard and Dreamhaven; Amy Morhaime, co-founder of Dreamhaven; Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games; Xen Lategan, former CTO and executive advisor at various companies such as Hulu; and Eugene Wei, former head of Video at Oculus and head of Product at Hulu.
PortalOne is part tech startup and part media company. On the one hand, it has spent the last three years building a full stack of hardware and software that can be used to build games, record live shows and integrate the two into an experience that blends both on-demand and real-time gaming and entertainment.
“One of the benefits of building first is that what we are doing is extremely hard to do on a technical level,” said co-founder and CEO Bård Anders Kasin. “The way we do it is the key. It is our secret sauce.”
On the other, it is using that tech to create a gaming and live events platform and brand — providing a place for itself and third parties to build games and bigger live experiences around them. It believes that it’s managed to do something here that has eluded others for years.
“We come from the entertainment industry and have also been in games many years,” said Stig Olav Kasin, Bård’s brother and the other co-founder (and chief content officer). “We’ve talked to all the big companies and know that hybrid gaming combining games and TV is difficult,” not least because of the silos in companies where different groups “own” TV and gaming.
The Oslo-based company has so far been running a pared-down, early version of its service in the U.S. and Norway — two games so far, one called Blockbuster that, well, involves you throwing a massive ball and knocking over blocks, and another a reimagined version of Centipede — with corresponding talk shows set out of a living room that’s actually all computer-generated on a green screen.
Users can play and watch all this either through a VR headset or over a phone, and they win “prizes” for placing well in gaming competitions. Alongside that, PortalOne will sell virtual goods, much as companies like Fortnite do today.
The plan is to more widely launch the first iteration of its service — PortalOne Arcade, a selection of 80s-themed, old-school arcade games reimagined as multiplayer, immersive experiences combined with interactive talk shows — in the U.S. and Norway later this year before extending to other markets.
Bård Anders Kasin — who previously built a VR company and worked as a technical director at Warner Brothers, making movies such as “The Matrix” trilogy — and Stig Olav Kasin — who worked with his brother on VR and before that was a media exec on shows like “The Voice” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” — founded PortalOne back in 2018.
Between then and June 2020, when PortalOne launched its closed beta, the startup’s focus was on building out its technology and its content strategy and early partners.
From the sounds of it, it was no small task. Its tech stack incorporates virtual reality, computer vision, gaming technology and software and hardware to capture and stream video that drastically reduces the resources required for both, among other IP. Some of it PortalOne built itself; other areas it worked with Arri, a major player in motion picture camera equipment, which built a new kind of 3D camera for PortalOne.
Part of the challenge that PortalOne has been tackling has been the very process of creating content for a hybrid platform like the one it envisioned.
Typically, recording immersive experiences is complex and expensive because of the volumetric equipment that is used, the set-up of studios necessary to capture the experiences and more, which involve Hollywood movie studio size, staffing and costs.
PortalOne’s breakthrough has been to turn that process into something that can be produced more easily and at a much lower cost, necessary “since we have daily shows and we want to scale and mass produce more daily shows for each game,” said Bård.
In the PortalOne setup, in addition to the host — an affable Norwegian with a mostly American English accent called Markus Bailey — and his guest, there are only two other people involved, technician-producers triggering effects and controlling when the action switches from talk to game and back again.
From previously needing large sets and dozens of people, “now we can do all of this in a YouTube-sized studio,” said Bård.
On the content front, PortalOne is building its own games, but it is also tapping into an old-school gaming aesthetic, it said.
Atari is not only investing, but has inked a seven-year deal with PortalOne, giving the latter exclusive global distribution rights to some of its most popular arcade game franchises, which PortalOne is reimagining and rebuilding for its hybrid platform.
Bård said that the company wants to work with brands in music, sport, travel and education to build other games, too. (Braun’s reach here might not extend to Taylor Swift, but he’s pulled in Justin Bieber for the promo video, and possibly more.)
“Massive opportunities continue to emerge in the interactive entertainment space as distribution and business models evolve,” said Kirill Tasilov, a principal at Talis Capital, in a statement. “PortalOne is redefining mobile by unlocking new hybrid experiences at the intersection of games and video, and we are thrilled to be a part of their journey.”
Blurring the lines
In some ways, what PortalOne is doing is not completely new, since the lines between what is a game, what is interactive and what is linear entertainment have been getting blurred for decades.
You could argue that even game shows, one of the earliest TV formats, was an early stage in hybrid interactivity, although more modern programs like the ones that Stig helped build out, with interactive voting from at-home audiences using phones, definitely pushed the concept in new ways.
The coronavirus pandemic and the fact that so many in-person live events were cancelled, meanwhile, definitely paved the way for content players to think outside the box when it came to building new kinds of “live” shows. With Marshmello getting a huge response to his Fortnite “show” in 2019, the game saw 12 million people flock to its Travis Scott concert last year; and Roblox said in December its show with Lil Nas will pave the way for future events.
“When we see virtual concerts inside of TikTok, Roblox and Fortnite, it’s great but PortalOne offers an evolution of interactive metaverse entertainment — true real-time, one-to-many interaction between gamers around the world, all in a mobile-native hybrid game format,” said Dhillon, a partner at Signia Venture Partners.
Yet if well-established platforms really pick up on this trend, that’s an endorsement of what PortalOne has built. But they could also feasibly build their own live game shows, too, and blow PortalOne out of the water just as it’s dipping its toes in.
This is also where its time spent building tech could prove either to be a boost or a bust. Gaming is a notoriously tough one to call when it comes to resonating and taking off with audiences, and so too will presumably the experiences that are built around those games.
“The next big social platform will likely be a convergence of media with gaming at its core — a truly new immersive interactive experience — and PortalOne is a major contender for becoming such a platform,” said Kevin Lin.
Indeed, if PortalOne finds an audience for what it’s making, it will have the tools to serve them more content efficiently and and cheaply. But if it doesn’t strike the right note, the question will be how and if that tech will otherwise be used.
For investors right now, it’s more about the opportunity.
“As PortalOne continues to grow, it is seamlessly integrating the gaming and entertainment worlds to create a single interactive experience and endless opportunities for content creation,” said Braun. “Creators and performers alike want new and innovative ways to bring their craft to life, and PortalOne is meeting that demand in a way that no other business has done. I’m excited to work with the entire team to realize their trailblazing vision. I have never seen anything like this before.”
Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund — in the news today for another reason, his role in bringing a lot of attention to Miami as a new tech hot spot — also thinks that the building of infrastructure and tech combined with the media element will give the startup a lot of runway.
“We back companies that we believe have strong potential to become global category leaders,” he said in a statement. “PortalOne creates a new category and simultaneously the platform that is clearly set to dominate that new category. The market is ripe, the opportunity is clear, and the potential is unlimited. PortalOne is poised to create a before and after in the industry.”
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No rules, no problem: DeepMind’s MuZero masters games while learning how to play them
DeepMind has made it a mission to show that not only can an AI truly become proficient at a game, it can do so without even being told the rules. Its newest AI agent, called MuZero, accomplishes this not just with visually simple games with complex strategies, like Go, Chess and Shogi, but with visually complex Atari games.
The success of DeepMind’s earlier AIs was at least partly due to a very efficient navigation of the immense decision trees that represent the possible actions in a game. In Go or Chess these trees are governed by very specific rules, like where pieces can move, what happens when this piece does that, and so on.
The AI that beat world champions at Go, AlphaGo, knew these rules and kept them in mind (or perhaps in RAM) while studying games between and against human players, forming a set of best practices and strategies. The sequel, AlphaGo Zero, did this without human data, playing only against itself. AlphaZero did the same with Go, Chess and Shogi in 2018, creating a single AI model that could play all these games proficiently.
But in all these cases the AI was presented with a set of immutable, known rules for the games, creating a framework around which it could build its strategies. Think about it: If you’re told a pawn can become a queen, you plan for it from the beginning, but if you have to find out, you may develop entirely different strategies.
This helpful diagram shows what different models have achieved with different starting knowledge. Image: DeepMind
As the company explains in a blog post about their new research, if AIs are told the rules ahead of time, “this makes it difficult to apply them to messy real world problems which are typically complex and hard to distill into simple rules.”
The company’s latest advance, then, is MuZero, which plays not only the aforementioned games but a variety of Atari games, and it does so without being provided with a rulebook at all. The final model learned to play all of these games not just from experimenting on its own (no human data) but without being told even the most basic rules.
Instead of using the rules to find the best-case scenario (because it can’t), MuZero learns to take into account every aspect of the game environment, observing for itself whether it’s important or not. Over millions of games it learns not just the rules, but the general value of a position, general policies for getting ahead and a way of evaluating its own actions in hindsight.
This latter ability helps it learn from its own mistakes, rewinding and redoing games to try different approaches that further hone the position and policy values.
You may remember Agent57, another DeepMind creation that excelled at a set of 57 Atari games. MuZero takes the best of that AI and combines it with the best of AlphaZero. MuZero differs from the former in that it does not model the entire game environment, but focuses on the parts that affect its decision-making, and from the latter in that it bases its model of the rules purely on its own experimentation and firsthand knowledge.
Understanding the game world lets MuZero effectively plan its actions even when the game world is, like many Atari games, partly randomized and visually complex. That pushes it closer to an AI that can safely and intelligently interact with the real world, learning to understand the world around it without the need to be told every detail (though it’s likely that a few, like “don’t crush humans,” will be etched in stone). As one of the researchers told the BBC, the team is already experimenting with seeing how MuZero could improve video compression — obviously a very different problem than Ms. Pac-Man.
The details of MuZero were published today in the journal Nature.
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Pre-orders for the Analogue Pocket retro portable game console start August 3, ships May 2021
Analogue has repeatedly proven that it’s the gold standard when it comes to retro gaming, delivering extremely faithful, but modern hardware to play original NES, SNES, Sega cartridges and more. The company revealed its forthcoming Analogue Pocket last October, and now it’s about to kick off pre-orders for the portable classic console, which can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games out of the box, and works with even more classic handheld game systems via adapters.
The Analogue Pocket will be available to pre-order for $199.99 on August 3, starting at 8 AM PST (11 AM EST). The actual ship date is quite a while after that, however: Analogue estimates that the hardware should actually start to be delivered to customers in May, 2021. That’s due to “the unfortunate global state of affairs and supply chain challenges outside of our control,” according to the company, and they’re hardly the only indie hardware outfit feeling the pinch of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on tech suppliers.
Image Credits: Analogue
The good news is that so long as you’re patient, the Pocket will almost certainly deliver the goods. Analogue isn’t new to this, having successfully shipped multiple products in the past, including the Nt mini, the Super Nt and the Mega Sg. Each of these more than delivered on their promises, offering fantastic performance in bringing classic games to modern TVs and displays — without relying on emulation.
Analogue Pocket has changed a bit since it was originally introduced last year, with the start and select button relocated to the base of the front of the device, a design change designed for “optimal comfort,” according to the company. The Dock you can use to connect the Pocket to your TV for a big-screen gaming experience also now features a recessed USB-C port to make the connection more stable.
True to form in terms of combining classic gameplay with modern conveniences, Analogue has designed Pocket with a sleep and wake function that’s much more like what you’d expect from today’s smartphones and tablet: Press the power button once and the console enters a low-power suspended state — press it again and it wakes to right where you left off. That’s an awesome perk for games that often lack their own internal save mechanisms.
Image Credits: Analogue
The Analogue Dock ($99.99) can support up to four controllers at once, using either wired, Bluetooth or 2.4ghz wireless connectivity. You can also use separately available multilink cables to connect up to four Pockets for local multiplayer action.
Analogue is also offering a range of other accessories for the Pocket, including a transparent hard case for storage and transportation, a USB-C fast-charging power brick, adapters to provide compatibility with Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket Color and Atari Lynx games and MIDI and Analog sync cables for connecting to Mac, PC and music peripherals for use with the company’s Nanoloop music creation software.
Image Credits: Analogue
The company has also revealed some new software features for the Pocket, including “Original Display Modes,” which provides faithful representations of the displays (quirks and all) of the original hardware consoles for which these games where available. The display itself is made of Gorilla Glass for extra resilience, and offers variable refresh rates and 360-degree custom rotation control.
Analogue Pocket has a 4,300 mAh built-in rechargeable battery that offers between six and 10 hours of play time, and more than 10 hours of sleep when not in active use.
This definitely looks like Analogue’s most impressive product yet, and one that will be truly amazing for portable console gaming.
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The dreaded 10x, or, how to handle exceptional employees
The “10x engineer.” Shudder. Wince. I have rarely seen my Twitter feed unite against an idea so loudly, or in such harmony.
I refer of course to the thread last month by Accel India’s Shekhar Kirani, explaining “If you have a 10x engineer as part of your first few engineers, you increase the odds of your startup success significantly” and then going on to address, in his opinion, “How do you spot a 10x engineer?”
The resulting scorn was tsunami-like. The very concept of a 10x engineer seems so… five years ago. Since then, the Valley has largely come to the collective conclusion that 1) there is no such thing as a 10x engineer 2) even if there were, you wouldn’t want to hire one, because they play so poorly with others.
The anti-10x squad raises many important and valid — frankly, obvious and inarguable — points. Go down that Twitter thread and you’ll find that 10x engineers are identified as: people who eschew meetings, work alone, rarely look at documentation, don’t write much themselves, are poor mentors, and view process, meetings, or training as reasons to abandon their employer. In short, they are unbelievably terrible team members.
Is software a field like the arts, or sports, in which exceptional performers can exist? Sure. Absolutely. Software is Extremistan, not Mediocristan, as Nassim Taleb puts it.
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Tesla is bringing the ‘Fallout Shelter’ game to its cars
As part of the gaming option for Tesla’s cars, Todd Howard, the director of Bethesda Games, said that the company’s “Fallout Shelter” game will be coming to Tesla displays.
Elon Musk is a huge fan of the Fallout series, saying in an interview at the E3 gaming conference that he’d explored “every inch” of Fallout 3.
Earlier this year, Tesla announced that it was adding “2048” and “Atari’s Super Breakout” to the list of games that drivers and passengers can play on the company’s dashboard display.
The company added Atari games to its slate of apps and services last August via a software update. At the time, the initial slate of games included “Missile Command,” “Asteroids,” “Lunar Lander” and “Centipede.”
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Atari games are coming to Teslas via software update
Here’s some unexpected fun, courtesy of the man himself. Elon Musk announced via Twitter today that Teslas will be getting a handful of classic Atari titles in the next four weeks, courtesy of a software update.
Along with already announced self-driving features, Version 9.0 of the electric vehicles’ software update will include “some of the best” old games as an “Easter Egg.” The eccentric CEO appears to be soliciting suggestions via social media at the moment, including Pole Position, Tempest and Missile command, among others.
Tesla has relied pretty heavily on software updates to help push features. Sure, this one is in good fun, but an update arriving late last year brought the fairly necessary addition of FM radio and a tripometer to the Model 3 — both pretty glaring omissions.
Some of best classic @Atari games coming as Easter eggs in Tesla V9.0 release in about 4 weeks. Thanks @Atari!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 1, 2018
The games will likely be playable on the cars’ massive center display tablet, which is positioned in portrait mode on the Model S and X and in landscape on the Model 3. One presumes that the titles will only be playable when the vehicle is parked, so as to avoid having to explain to the officer that you crashed your car because you were playing Frogger.
Speaking of not going anywhere, Pole Position will apparently use the steering wheel as an input — again, when the vehicle is fully parked. Indeed, $49,000 is an admittedly steep starting price for a new Atari console, but at least you can drive the thing around when you’re done with Missile Command.
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Two new handhelds will help you relive the golden age of gaming
Whether you’re an older gamer who remembers the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis with great fondness or a doting grandparent who doesn’t remember exactly what the grandkids wanted (the Nintendo Swamp or something?), the new AtGames portable consoles will either excite you to no end or cause deep disappointment. These crazy little consoles contain dozens of Atari or Genesis games. The… Read More
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Here’s what Atari’s upcoming Ataribox console will look like
Retro consoles are the new next-gen consoles, and nothing’s more retro console than Atari. That’s why the teases from the gaming company about its upcoming ‘Ataribox’ have been so intriguing to gaming fans – it could be amazing. Now, we know what it looks like, and thanks to an email update (via The Verge), also broadly what it will be able to do.
The design is… Read More
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A look back on the golden age of Atari gaming
This excerpt is from Jamie Lendino’s Breakout: How Atari 8-Bit Computers Defined a Generation, an amazing book that details with an obsessive’s eye the rise and fall of Atari 8-bit computers. In this chapter, he looks through a few of his favorite Atari games and brings the memories flooding back of long weekends spent twirling joysticks in the rising dawn of computer gaming. Read More
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Stealthy gaming company Wonder is ready to tease its new mystery hardware
Wonder, the incredibly stealthy new gaming company, has quietly created a signup page for information and perks related to its plans for global domination of the gaming market from its Los Angeles headquarters. The company is calling its new campaign the “Alpha Program”, and folks that are interested can get updates on Wonder’s product, provide feedback, and get perks and… Read More
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