Gamerized, a Social Media Platform For Gamers
Social media continues to be a major factor in how video game content creators market themselves. Still, social media platforms don’t necessarily have gamers in mind. Facebook has made tremendous strides in making incorporating social media for gamers in their platform. The platform, however, still leaves much to be desired. That’s where Gamerized, a social media platform for gamers, comes in.
Gamerized is Social Media for Gamers By Gamers
I first learned of Gamerized from ChasingLux on Twitter and her huge advocacy for the new social media platform. She was discussing Twitch’s newly, super enforced DCMA policies and Gamerized’s new backend.
I needed to know what Gamerized was and why I, a gamer and content creator, needed to join. After visiting the website I was intrigued. It had the familiarity of Facebook, but wasn’t quite the same. The community seemed friendly, diverse, and the community manager and founder were active. Almost reminded of Tom from Myspace, except, well, actually engaging the community. So I reached out to Gamerized’s founder, Ryan Miller, to learn a little bit more about the platform and where it was going.
Interview with Ryan Miller, Founder of Gamerized
GNL: How did you come up with Gamerized?
Ryan Miller: [It came about] with me socializing and I was honestly tired of being socially scattered across Twitter, Instagram, Youtube--stuff like that. So, I decided to build my own social network, uhh, with my team. Basically what we're solving is the principle of these big companies--Twitter, Facebook, Youtube--they're too big and they really don't care about the user experience. That's a reason why I also started the company. I wanted a social network that we have a voice in--that our users can shape the future [of] our company.
GNL: Right. That's admirable.
RM: That's one of the reasons why, like, you will find me jumping in meetings with uh, users daily. That's--a lot of my time is understanding what the users want and building up the features they need.
GNL: Okay. I like that. When did you start Gamerized? When did it come out.
RM: The software went live in March. Since then we've grown to over 15k users. And with a retention rate of around 60 percent. Our monthly average is around about 8-10k. It kind of fluctuates. Our daily average--the retention rate is--some days is hit or miss—it's around 3,000 to around 6,000 daily users.
GNL: Oh wow. That's pretty cool for a new social media platform that doesn't have backing from backing from major institutions, I should say.
RM: Well, uhh, our company is a portfolio company with one of the largest VC firms in Indiana. So we did successfully raise our pre-seed round. We did a $20,000 pre-seed round from Elevate Ventures. We didn't want to raise too much. We could have raised a big round, but since we're still a startup—concept is net worth--if we raised $100,000 they would have took too much equity or more equity. So we only raised what we absolutely needed. And that was around $20k to get some development work done that I personally could not do.
GNL: Do you foresee linking with different streaming platforms Twitch or Youtube in the future?
RM: Yeah, so we actually on our last version we just recently did a version update a few days ago, but our last version we had the ability for users to broadcast their live stream directly to the news feed. Like any other network, where it's like it's just a hyperlink, whenever you used our platform, you can watch your livestream or your follower's livestream directly in the newsfeed. And that counts as a view for their stream.
GNL: Nice.
RM: From there, let's say that you go live and I'm following you. I'm throwing down my news feed and your livestream automatically plays Twitch. I'm able to follow you, subscribe to you, and directly chat directly to you on your Twitch, from your post on Gamerized.
GNL: That's dope. I like that. Because it gets really ridiculous like trying to go from stream to stream just checking everything but if it's in my feed, and I can just see it and click on it? Yeah. That's cool.
RM: And with this last version update that we just pushed a few days ago, we removed that feature so we could rebuild it and reengineer the process of getting your stream noticed. We didn't want to try to have that incorporated in the new layout and stuff, so we took it offline temporarily and we'll have it back up online probably with our next version update. Where it's faster and more user friendly.
GNL: So are you a developer?
RM: I learned how to develop, but the majority of the code is developed by my team. I initially started the process of it, but other than that--we are a team of developers with passion. We got, right now, Mike—he is our C# developer for the mobile app. He's in the process of launching it. We have Drew who is our PHP expert—that's what our platform is built on. He actually came from one of our competitor companies. And we are pretty happy about that. He'd seen the vision that we had and said that our competitor—they're really not doing what they should be doing--connecting to users early, building a platform with the voice of our users. So, he really, really liked that fact that I sit down and chit chat with our users and really explain what our goal is and get valuable feedback.
GNL: So Gamerized is really a social media platform created by gamers.
RM: And the definition of that is 100% accurate. You can find--you can pretty much ask anyone in the Discord that we have right now how many times they chat with me, chat with the team--how many times their ideals have been already implemented into the social network.
GNL: Are you a streamer? Or are you just a fan of streaming?
RM: I used to be. But with the same problems with everybody else has--I'd stream for 8 hours with two views--one of them was my bot and the other was my phone.
GNL: Understandable. Yeah, that was me for a while.
RM: I was really tired of having to spend 8 hours a day and then hours upon hours networking on all these different platforms. And that's what really inspired me to fix the issue of connectability when it comes to the gaming industry.
GNL: So what games are you into? Do you have a specific genre?
RM: I'm a Call of Duty through and through. That's all I play. I'm one of those players where you jump into a Call of Duty match and you'd swear up and down I was cheating because I've perfected my system and I've become master.
GNL: I just really wanted to learn more about the company and more about you. And speaking of you, where are you from? Is it Indiana?
RM: Yeah, I'm from Jasper, Indiana. It's actually where the company's located at. And basically, been in Indiana for the majority of my life. Born over in Charleston, SC.
GNL: Oh okay. I'm a little bit north of Charleston a few miles over into GA. I'm just outside of Augusta. Been here almost 10 years.
RM: Oh. Right on the border. Now, do you listen to music?
GNL: I do. I listen to all sorts of music. Pretty picky, but I like mostly old school stuff. I'm an older person.
RM: *singing*
I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie
To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock
to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie
To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rappin' to the beat
GNL: Yeah, pretty much! That's me, mostly old school.
RM: Easy E, Too Short…
GNL: I've never really been into Too Short. But a lot of the old school hip hop, R&B, yeah--and I had my grunge phase. I'm still a 90s/2000s punk girl. A little bit of emo.
RM: I can see that. So, the reason why I asked is that our company is in the process right now--we just released a beta version for the music section that offers streamers and gamers a copyright free music they can listen to. Not the elevator music [from] but these are independent artists that have signed onto our record label to provide copyright free music that's not just beats.
GNL: Nice.
RM: We opened the beta, the private beta for roughly about a month to find out if there's any errors and bugs and stuff like that. We took it offline to reengineer the process of listening to the music and getting connected with artists. And we will be releasing that very, very soon. Probably within the next couple of weeks to the public.
GNL: That is amazing! That is amazing! And a blessing. Especially right now with everything going--and me having to download all of my VODs before they're deleted.
RM: Yeah, the Twitch hammer is what really inspired the music development. We had to hire a team of experts in the music industry, sit down with them, talk to them about what we can do solve this issue for the gaming industry. So our development team created a platform that artists can come to. They have to get vetted by our team. And then once that happens they can upload music to the platform. And right now we have roughly 190 signed artists to our company providing music for you. And as we go along we'll increase that number to tens of thousands of local artists who want their name out there to help the gaming industry.
GNL: That is really cool. That is really cool and helpful. Is there something you want to do with Gamerized that you want to do but haven't worked out yet?
RM: The only thing that we don't have the funds for yet, is our own streaming identity. Instead of using Twitch, we would like to eventually have that option for the users to give back. Unlike twitch who takes 50% of your subs…we want to give the power back to the content creators.
GNL: That would be pretty cool and definitely needed. Because that two dollars and some change can really add up.
At this point in the interview, we had some technical issues with the audio. So we ended the interview a little early.
But it was an absolutely pleasure talking to Ryan about Gamerized. We can't wait to watch the platform evolve into something even more amazing than it already is. Are you on Gamerized, yet? If not, it’s definitely worth checking out. Share with us your experience.
