Today, we’re announcing the launch of our $1M Developer Engagement Fund and Developer Incubator. We’ve always had the vision to put the control in the creators’ hands through self-serve tools, and with the recent announcement of our developer kit, our fund and incubator will empower and support the next generation of avatar experience builders and creators.

This is a full circle moment for us. Years ago, we realized where social media was headed. Driven by the mobile camera, people were pushed to care more about their physical worlds than their inner worlds. Expressing words, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and dreams was very difficult. A culture of inauthenticity was born online and we wanted to change that.

An avatar is a representation of your inner self; all your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. It removes physical looks, skin color, socio-economic status and allows people to express their raw personality however they see fit. 

The one thing an avatar has in common with the camera is that they are both tools, and just like how social networks were formed around the camera, social networks will also be formed around the avatar. 

Our social network will be interoperable and XR ready, filled with experiences built by developers like yourself using the developer kit.

How do Experiences work? 

Experiences should be designed to elicit that inner personality from users, providing users a way to express nuanced parts of themselves that they might not be able to express elsewhere. Those nuanced parts of yourself that might only come to the surface in those times that aren’t worthy of sharing a picture or video. On a commute, resting after work, waiting in line, and more specific locations where we spend a ton of time, but that time might not be worthy of being shown with the camera. 

With avatars and AR experiences, we hope to offer users different tools that will help them express themselves during these times. These kinds of mini games and experiences will enable a user to capture their raw emotions, feelings, and thoughts, and all of these experiences will make up our avatar social network. 

How are Experiences built? 

Our developer kit includes a state-of-the-art Avatar Framework that allows for any type of avatar variety and aesthetic, an AI Generative Bot to help create and train AI Characters for your game, and XR Compatibility allowing for embodiment with high performance and quality. This tech will allow developers to create a variety of experiences ranging all the way from mini games to social worlds and allow their AR experiences to be brought together in a shared ecosystem as an interoperable avatar social network. 

How do I build an Experience? 

Today we are launching a $1M Developer Engagement Fund for developers building AR experiences for our avatar social network. The fund will allow developers to unlock funding based on performance benchmarks across each individual experience and the collective of all experiences, given the experiences will be built with interoperability in mind. 

The first developers that will be eligible for the fund will be candidates that are selected for Genies’ Developer Incubator, which will be launching this summer with the first cohort and will continue to roll out new cohorts on an ongoing basis. The incubator will provide the opportunity for builders to receive mentorship from us to support them as they create their experiences, along with the opportunity to collaborate with other developers as they create and launch the first Genies’ XR-ready Experiences. 

Developers applying for the Developer Incubator will be evaluated based on their product-minded and entrepreneurial prowess, their previous experience with Unity or other gaming/XR projects, and their ability to think creatively around how they would leverage Genies’ avatars and tools to enhance the overall AR experience. Successful applicants will not only receive financial and resource support from our team, but will also gain access to our vast network of industry experts, who will provide guidance and mentorship to help developers maximize the opportunity.