We're backing AlterGard, the first investment from Altered Ventures Fund II. AlterGard turns the people who watch games into people who play them.
AlterGard announced the investment on October 27. Read their announcement.
// The audience
An audience that only gets to watch
Millions of people spend hours every week watching others play. They comment, cheer, subscribe, and donate, yet none of that touches the game itself. Their participation ends in a chat window. It is one of the largest audiences in entertainment, and the games themselves barely use it.
// The product
Viewers become participants
AlterGard calls it Viewer-Driven Gameplay. During a stream, viewers can trigger a challenge, send an enemy, or help the player survive. Each studio decides which actions are available and how they affect the game, so participation is designed into the experience instead of bolted on.
The platform pairs this with AI-assisted content creation, so studios and players can build maps, environments, and levels faster, and with a monetization model that shares revenue among developers, creators, and streamers.
// Inside the platform
One integration layer, many games
// Why we invested
Three reasons
The thesis. Fund II backs AI media, game infrastructure, and spatial computing. AlterGard is infrastructure, not a single title: one integration layer, many games, with AI at its core.
Why now. Streaming made the audience; AI-assisted creation finally makes it cheap for studios to design for them.
The founders. Ovidio Escobedo co-founded the studio 1 Simple Game, behind titles like Taco Master and The Lullaby of Life, and has spent his career shipping and publishing games. He knows this problem from the studio side. With co-founder and CTO Omar Ramos, he built the team to solve it.
Ovidio Escobedo
Co-founder & CEO, AlterGard
Omar Ramos
Co-founder & CTO, AlterGard
“AlterGard fits our thesis to the letter, but what made it an easy decision is the team. Ovidio is not only an accomplished Mexican game developer, he is one of the most capable founders building in this category in Latin America.”
// Proof in real games
Built and validated inside real titles
The technology is being built and validated inside real games, starting with Dravo's Twisted Show, a cooperative horror game from Titan Games where the audience can make survival harder or help players find a way through.
Dravo's Twisted Show
Live Link
I'm Not Jelly
Map Molder
Diet Survivor
Live Link
Palookas
Live Link
Games using Map Molder and Live Link, as listed by AlterGard
// What comes next
More studios, more creators
AlterGard is a US company with its team in Guadalajara, Mexico. With this backing, the team will strengthen its infrastructure and developer tools and bring them to more studios and creators. If you build games or stream them, AlterGard wants to hear from you.
Congratulations to Ovidio and the whole AlterGard team. Proud to be building with you.