Gaming is one of the biggest categories for video on the Internet, and a new startup is stepping up to make it easier than ever for people to share their own content.
Above: Forge already provides gamers with an easy way to record and share clips.
Image Credit: Forge
Forge, a video-sharing social platform, has added a new easy-to-use tool to its client that enables gamers to quickly begin broadcasting live PC gameplay to Twitch and YouTube. This puts the company in a crowded field that already has a number of powerful apps like Raptr, XSpilt, OBS (Open Broadcasting Software), Nvidia’s ShadowPlay, and Microsoft’s Xbox app, but Forge is positioning itself as a simple alternative that will get people online and streaming in moments. Video related to gaming is a massive business on the web. Live broadcasts featuring entertaining gamers is the core of what made Twitch worth $970 million to Amazonin 2014, and it is also YouTube’s second largest category behind only music.
Now, “making streaming simple” is definitely a refrain we’ve also heard from Raptr and Nvidia, but Forge chief executive Jared Kim thinks his company’s tech will remove the barrier of entry for even more people.
“We’re building Forge so that it will just work,” Forge chief executive Jared Kim told GamesBeat. “We want this to be the easy solution for 99 percent of people [who are not power users].”
One of the big differences here is that Forge has put a lot of energy into its system and network auto-detection optimzers. A lot of the software on the market is great at getting you streaming, but many people often run into troubles when they see that their live Twitch or YouTube Gaming video doesn’t look great or has a lot of lag. Kim, who previously founded the WeGame recording software, has a lot of experience with this. He claims that the setup will detect the best settings so that the average gamers won’t have to think about things like variable bit rate.
Forge is still in its early days. The company raised $4.5 million in an initial funding roundin March. But it is not putting a lot of emphasis on generating revenue at the moment. Today’s launch is about getting people using its software. Down the line, however, Kim said he is thinking about ways to introduce features that people would want to pay for. These could target more experienced users, but none of that will come at the expense of gamers who want a streaming app that “just works.”
More information:
Forge is fast, automatic, always-on game capture. Users can download Forge for free. It costs nothing and there are zero ads, just gaming entertainment.... read more »
