Esports continues to make remarkable advancement and growth, and with the misconception of “just playing video games” slowly getting brushed off, we are witnessing in real time the rise of companies [startups, bigger corporations, etc.] make their impact in the world of gaming and esports. As a result we have seen revenue go as high as a $1B, and with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide coupled with thousands of players worldwide.
Today we highlight the journey and input of what will be an innovative step to supporting the esports players and industry at large: Hendrikye Wagner, who is the founder and CEO of HypeRate, an app to measure players’ heart rate while playing and streaming video games. She is also an ambassador for Women In Games, a nonprofit organization that is into encouraging women to enter the gaming industry workforce and steadily increasing the percentage in the executive positions in esports.
Hendrikye‘s work with HypeRate began as a result of her having to probe what would be a fairly good heart rate app for her son’s Apple Watch while playing video games, with almost everything tried not being very helpful. After speaking with her partner who had been working on apps, they came up with a code to get the heart rate and put it on screen. After the code was made, it was tested and put out on Reddit as a beta version. They ended up having 3400 testers – a surprising amount and evident of people really wanting to use this app – to which they went on ahead to carry it out and have it widespread.
What HypeRate does is integrate your real time heart rate into any form of media. So should the platform be, say Twitch, you download the app onto your Apple Watch and then link to your OBS and have your audience view your rate as you live stream. So with upward or downward spikes in your heart rates your audience can detect if you are excited, or scared, and also help to determine when to call it a day with the playing of video games. This application is gradually getting integrated with software as it has had a partnership with Unity and Unreal, both game developing softwares.
The help that HypeRate gives to esports is immense. Games do not necessarily encourage a lot of movement; there is mostly a lot of sitting down (for hours). To ensure professional gamers have their health in check, HypeRate helps in creating schedules that would improve their health as they continue to do what they love and are paid for — playing video games. The future for HypeRate according to Hendrikye is to enter the VR space — having a much personalized experience in gaming while your heart rate is in check as well as meditation apps, which the creators are experimenting on already. There may be slight differences in the measurements but they will be possible to effect in either space nonetheless.
“You can make so many things work. You can make technology work. You can make design work, all the things that you can do, but if you don't have the right team on board, you cannot make this work in no case.” — Hendriyke A. Wagner, CEO, HypeRate.
Hendrikye highlights what may be the toughest thing with operating a startup: finding the right team. It is necessary to find the right people that can work in harmony to help execute operations such as building the product, developing the code, and selling the product, and if that is not existent in a team, it will be difficult to carry out even one task because there is no coordination. Like-mindedness in a team helps a lot because that way you are not far off with your stream of thoughts on a project, and can work out ways to not make conversations draining on finding what will be the right fit when executing tasks. What also helps with startups is to have the readily mindset in wanting to see things being taken care of: identifying that there is indeed a problem, and then developing strategies to be carried out. Finding like minded people in communities like Discord helped her to make relationships that will lead to developing a solution; going beyond similar interests and finding ways to work around complications.
You can watch the episode below:
Esports has helped create jobs for lots of people. Interested in knowing about the business side of esports? Listen to the Gamers Change Lives Podcast! We get experienced guests from all around the world featuring.
Written By Jeffrey Osei-Agyeman
