Daniel Yoo, Chief Marketing Officer at Sizzle.gg – Interviews Series

Daniel Yoo, Chief Marketing Officer at Sizzle.gg, a one one-stop shop for gaming stream highlights.

When did you first discover your passion for gaming?

My parents own a video game store in New Jersey that’s older than I am, so I was blessed with almost every gaming console since the 90’s. But I started taking gaming seriously after meeting dozens of competitive Starcraft and DotA players in the Pittsburgh area while I was an undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon. Although universities didn’t have an official esports scene back then, there was a healthy underground scene for competitive gaming in and around Pittsburgh. After graduation, I pursued Starcraft 2 then Hearthstone professionally while playing poker as my main source of income. Although a wrist injury ended my competitive gaming career earlier than I liked, I’m still involved in competitive gaming with Riot’s newest card game, Legends of Runeterra, by sharing strategies and tips on Twitter, @runeterradex.

Could you tell us what is Sizzle.gg?

With over 5 million monthly streamers and streams lasting up to 12 hours, it’s not fun to comb through long videos to look for the best scenes. Our mission at Sizzle.gg is to become the “SportsCenter for Gaming” by showing you only the best moments based on your preferences, whether they’re fails or high-level gameplays.

How did did the initial idea for Sizzle.gg come about?

Before Sizzle.gg came about, the co-founders Vijay Koduri, an ex-Googler, and Murali Raju, who previously started his own media company, wanted to build a tool that allowed users to create highlight compilations manually. As we discussed the possibilities, we realized that compiling gaming highlights can actually be automated through AI. We could detect the kills, the action scenes, and even the funny moments. So we interviewed hundreds of gaming fans about our idea and they loved it. Most of them followed 3-5 streamers and asked if we could extract the best moments from those streams while keeping the arc of the story.  So that’s what we set out to build. I’m proud to say that we’ve now built a great AI foundation for gamers.

How does the AI determine which moments to feature in the sizzle reel?

We analyze the video, audio, and chat from Twitch and YouTube. For instance, analyzing the video of the gameplay tells us the kills and action scenes. Our chat analysis can detect when an online audience is laughing, so we know it’s a funny moment. And our video and audio analysis can detect when a streamer is excited, so we clip those moments. With all of these detectors, we get a pretty thorough picture of the best moments for our sizzles. We also use artificial intelligence to determine how a highlight is compiled for a user based on their preferences. For example, I might be looking to improve as a Brimstone player in Valorant. Sizzle.gg would then personalize the highlights and show the high-level plays made by Brimstone.

What games are currently offered on your platform and which games are you working on adding next?

Initially, we started with Fortnite and League of Legends and recently added Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Warzone) and Valorant to our list of supported games. Since we’ve already built out the foundation for launching new games, we’ll be adding many more games in the upcoming months at an accelerating pace. Our goal is to eventually support the top 20 gaming titles on livestream platforms.

How has the feedback been from the gaming community?

Overwhelmingly positive. Based on the feedback we received, Sizzle.gg doesn’t cater only to the most serious gamers, but even the casual ones. I personally might be looking to only watch high-level plays in Valorant to improve my own gameplay, but another viewer might want to relax for the day and watch just the funny moments in Fortnite. We’re currently in the process of collecting as much data from users to better understand how we should personalize for different profiles.

For a streamer that wishes to join the network what’s the process?

If you have at least 10k followers/subscribers on Youtube or Twitch, you can introduce yourself and ask for an application our #content-creator channel in our Discord. You can also email us at [email protected].

What’s next for the Sizzle.gg website?

More games and features. We’re currently in our beta stage to collect feedback and focus on product features such as personalizing highlights and the ability to create highlight compilations on your own. We’re also looking to expand our partnerships in esports to provide more value to gaming fans. Recently, we supported multiple Fortnite tournaments and produced highlights for the fans to enjoy. As we grow as a company, so will our involvements in esports.

Is there anything else that you would like to share about Sizzle.gg?

We’ll be running tournaments and giveaways in our Discord channel for feedback. If you have a favorite game you’d like to mention, or maybe a new feature on our website, let us know by joining our Discord channel: https://discord.com/invite/Xu8pTrb

Thank you for the interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Sizzle.gg.