As society continues to evolve, many programs or AI’s like ChatGPT have been created to try and help accelerate things or to try to make things easier for the people using them.
The world of gaming has recently seen the introduction of Gamerabble, an AI-based gaming tool that aims to give a better learning experience to newer players.
Fabrice Samedy sat down with Chris Matthews, CEO and co-founder of Gamerabble, to discuss topics surrounding his newest creation. After the conversation, Chris Matthews set up the coupon code “leaguefeed” for the community to use on both gamerabble.com and academy.gamerabble.com.
Fabrice Samedy: Hi, I want to start this interview by asking a simple question: who do I have the pleasure to talk to?
Chris Matthews (Co-Founder and COO of Gamerabble):
My name is Chris Matthews and I am co-founder and the COO of GameRabble.
Fabrice Samedy: It’s a pleasure to talk to you. In your own words, can you explain what GameRabble is?
Chris Matthews: Sure, GameRabble is an esport coaching and community platform for players that want to improve and engage in a non-toxic gamified experience.
Fabrice Samedy: Can you explain what kind of service does GameRabble provide to the customers?
Chris Matthews: Sure. So we provide a couple of different things. We’ve recently pivoted fully into AI. We launched an AI based match analyzer in November that will analyze your gameplay.The way it works is simple,you upload your gameplay and the AI will look at it and it will give you immediate feedback with a bunch of fancy statistics. These stats will tell you what you did well and what you utterly sucked at or what you can do to get better. The program can send you to different exercises that you can do to get better. It can also direct you to an in-person coach.
On top of that, the entire thing is gamified as well, which means that there’s different Quest cards that you can unlock. For example, if you get five head shots with a character, the AI will recognize that and a Quest card flips over. You will be able to gain things like GameRabble XP which you can build up to purchase things like coaching experiences or stuff like a free medium pizza. We also have our coaching side of the platform where you can hire one of our vetted coaches who caters to all sorts of players so they can feel more comfortable when they play online with friends, coworkers, or with strangers.
Fabrice Samedy: When it comes to the coaching side of the platform, what games can the customer get coaching in?
Chris Matthews: Right now, we will provide coaching for anyone that wants to be coached. So, assuming that the coach fits in with our ethos and everything, we’re willing to offer anything if there is a market for it. For now, our biggest markets are League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends, and surprisingly, Sim racing.
Fabrice Samedy: Where did the idea of creating such a tool come from?
Chris Matthews: I’m a longtime gamer, but I also am an adult that runs a company, so I I don’t have as much time to game as I would like to. I am at the point where with my limited time, I would like to get on and play these games and not have some 12 year old telling me 50 different ways that I should go kill myself or how bad I suck after 30 seconds of playing. I saw that there were other coaching platforms out there, but they sort of lean into people that think that they’re gonna be a high level professional esport players which most people are not, which also means that they also don’t need an extremely high level coach either. You know, if I wanted to go out and learn how to play golf and I went to hire Tiger Woods, it would be a waste of everybody’s time because he is well above and beyond what I’m ever going to be. I just need somebody that can sort of sit there with me and give me tips in a very friendly manner and that will help me get better. Additionally, I am a father now, so I saw an opportunity to try and make the gaming world a better place for my son before he starts getting into too much online games.
Fabrice Samedy: Right, and how does GameRabble differentiate itself from the rest of its competitors?
Chris Matthews: Our ethos is different. We want to be the sort of a kinder and friendlier platform that is available to those new players and the discontent ones instead of aiming ourselves at the super high performance crowd that sometimes lends itself to the toxic side of things. We want to get together with the people that play because they like playing or that want to get a little bit better at playing when they do play without necessarily having the need to be with the super competitive, high performance players.
Fabrice Samedy: From the client point of view, how does the whole process work?
Chris Matthews: As I mentioned earlier, we have a few different offerings. It depends on what you want because some people don’t want to hire an in-person coach and are only utilizing the software.The software itself is free and that’s what 90% of people are gonna use. There is a $7 a month subscription available for that as well that will give you unlimited vids from an in-person coach.
So for $7 a month, you get unlimited human analysis and you can also have that video that you made . So that’s two levels utilizing the software and then some people just want to go straight to playing with a coach to get that immediate feedback from an actual person.
Fabrice Samedy: You mentioned earlier that you’re using an AI. I want to ask you, what made you decide to use that tool for this project?
Chris Matthews: Our ethos and software is trying to be a little more fun and more friendly. We also wanted something that is going to be less tantamount to what a lot of people see as cheating.
You know, there’s a lot of software out there that gives you so much information while you’re playing the game that it gives you an unfair advantage and a lot of people see that as cheating.
Even the developers don’t approve of a lot of this and you definitely can’t use these things as tournaments, so you’re not actually getting better at playing the game.It’s like if you’re playing chess and you constantly had someone over your shoulder saying what move to take. Are you a better chess player or are you just doing what your coach is telling you to do?
Our product actually does not incorporate an overlay while you play, it doesn’t give you that feedback until afterwards. It’s there to actually coach to get you to be better. With that in mind, not only can it be a good tool for the players to actually improve, but it can be a tool for the coaches to utilize it as another step in the VOD. It can also be a good tool for streamers and influencers because it also automatically generates highlight reels, and all you have to do is push a button and you can share it with your socials as well.
Fabrice Samedy: From your point of view, what are the benefits that come from using your platform?
Chris Matthews: By using our platform, you are actually going to improve and you’re going to have fun doing it as well. We fully guarantee that our coaches aren’t going to start tilting and go nuts on you or lose their patience with you because you’re a new player or that you’re just not that good at it. You are going to improve in whatever game that you end up signing up for and you’re going to have fun doing it as well.
Fabrice Samedy: How long has GameRabble existed?
Chris Matthews: I think it initially launched exactly two years ago. It had been in development for about eight months prior to that, so let’s say two and a half years total.
Fabrice Samedy: What has the feedback been like since the launch?
Chris Matthews: We’ve had some amazing feedback, especially from the coaching side of things. People really appreciate what we’re trying to do and our users and coaches are some of our biggest cheerleaders. The reason behind that is because a lot of them have gone other places and tried the mountain, but they kind of felt like they were just another cog in the wheel, that they weren’t actually being looked after or cared for as a person. We tried to actually reach out to our coaches, players and solve problems or engage with them. I will talk to anybody that wants to talk to me. They have a direct line to one of the founders to talk about whatever they want.
Fabrice Samedy: Okay. I don’t know if you can provide some statistics about how many people have used your platform since the launch and how many coaches do you have?
Chris Matthews: Sure, as far as the coaching side of things, we have about close to 500 coaches on board.
They’ve brought in quite a few users on their own with probably about 700, actual players utilizing those coaches as well. We just launched the software and we haven’t marketed it yet. We launched the software at the very beginning of this year and that has already brought in 172 users until this point and all of that has been by word of mouth or us reaching out to get people to test it out and give us feedback on it.
Fabrice Samedy: Are you happy with the growth of it so far?
Chris Matthews: We’re not happy with the growth of the software side of things yet, but like I said, we haven’t started marketing it yet. Part of the reason why we haven’t done that is we are actually launching a brand new platform. Hopefully, it will launch in the next five to eight weeks and it is going to unify our platform. Right now, we’ve got two parts of the business and we are going to launch a new platform that’s going to unify everything to make it a lot easier for our players to find. With this fusion, they’re gonna be able to talk to each other and help improve the offerings for our users.
Fabrice Samedy: What is the future for your company and this project?
Chris Matthews: So for the future of the company, we are going to continue to develop our AI, not only with the current software that we have, but we are going to add more options to that software.
We’re working on adding a couple more games and we’re looking at potentially adding in an AI coach who is built into the software. It will be able to give you human-like feedback on top of everything else that it’s giving you. Obviously, it’s got a long way to go and it won’t have the soul that an actual human does. We’re definitely leaning more into AI with the software. We are also going to launch an AI matching system for players and coaches to make sure that the players actually get the best coach for them instead of going and picking someone out randomly. With that said, they can do that as well. They will be able to pick out and be matched with a coach depending on approximately 50 to a hundred different data points to make sure that they’re gonna be matched with the right coach for them.
Fabrice Samedy: What are your wishes with those new modifications to your product?
Chris Matthews: I wish that it would be ready tomorrow. That’s my main wish. Once it’s out there, I hope that people can really understand the value that we’re trying to give them. Which is that we really want to build it for them and not at them.
Fabrice Samedy: Okay. You spoke earlier about including new titles or new games to your offer. Can you tell me what kind of games you are looking for?
Chris Matthews: What I can tell you is that the next few games coming out for the software are going to be first person shooters. We’re also working on some of the sports ones as well. We’re playing around with things like FIFA and Rocket League, but the first ones to be out are going to be first person shooters. I don’t wanna tell you exactly which ones yet because one might end up leapfrogging the other, and I don’t want us to be wrong. What I can tell is that there’ll be a couple of the big FPS’s out there.
Fabrice Samedy: Last thing I had to ask you is if you had to convince someone to use your software or your platform, what would you tell them?
Chris Matthews: I’d tell them that the software is free. You don’t have anything to lose. In fact, if you use the software, you could actually win things there. We’re still rolling out some of our sponsorships that will be able to give our users free things like we talked about. You have nothing to lose. In fact, you could actually gain things by utilizing the software. On the coaching side of things, if you’re really not happy with the way things go, we’ll give you your money back.
Fabrice Samedy: Well, that is all that I wanted to ask you for this interview. Again, thank you for taking the time out of your day for this. I wish you a good day.
Chris Matthews: Absolutely. You too. Bye bye.
Conclusion
As someone who loves to play competitive video games like League of Legends, but don’t have as much time as before, I think it would be to my own benefit to use the services that Gamerabble offers. I think that using these services would help me get better at the game that I spent a lot of time playing in the past while maximizing the limited amount of time that I have now. I would personally recommend stuff like that to the people that are in a similar situation.
All the services described in this interview and more information can be found at https://www.gamerabble.com/.
