Please join us in welcoming the new EVP of our Publishing Platform, Jerry Heinz. Joining us from his previous role as CTO for ActZero, an AI-based cybersecurity firm, Jerry has spent over 20 years seeking out ways to improve human communication and connection through technology; improving reach and reducing latency. An engineer by trade, Jerry specializes in large-scale distributed systems, with a history of enabling business growth at massive scales from a technical perspective.
Heinz has spent his career working at luminaries like Amazon, where he brought GPUs to AWS/EC2, founded Game Lift and Lumberyard and was a founding member of Amazon Game Studio. He also spent time at Nvidia, acting as the chief architect of GeForce NOW, GRID and compute.nvidia.com.
As well as his Genvid position, Jerry also sits as a Council member of Ball Metaverse Research Partners, co-managers of the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF ($METV), holds teen patents in game streaming and application virtualization and volunteers as Operations Leader and Director of Basic Training for King Country Search & Rescue.
What makes you believe in the potential of the MILEs format?
I’m a believer that cloud computing brings virtually infinite scale to games and other real-time experiences. However, traditional game streaming has been a solution in search of a problem. No one actually wants to play an FPS on a cell-phone. Large catalogs of old games are only mildly interesting to customers.
MILEs, on the other hand, are authentically cloud-native forms of entertainment; an evolution in both video games and television. Every fan of a TV or video game series has had at one time or another said “I want to be part of this story.” MILEs accomplish this through savvy use of cloud computing and game streaming to pull fans into the action. Clever game play makes participation accessible (and fun!) for the most casual of gamers, yet the challenge scales to the most skilled players.
How will Genvid’s platform differ from a traditional video game publisher’s platform?
Most game publishers focus on common plumbing leveraged by all of their games allowing rapid distribution to many channels (mobile, consoles, PC/Mac, connected TVs, etc). Using Genvid’s technology, we reach all of these channels while ensuring fans have high-quality and frictionless onboarding/play/purchase experiences, no matter what device or platform they use. This is table stakes.
In addition, though, the past few years have taught us the power of using “X is a data problem” as a hypothesis. For us, reach and engagement are data problems. Genvid’s proprietary IP gives us the technology to reach and engage anyone with a screen. However, attracting eyes with the right content at the right time and immersing them in that content requires deep understanding of and finely-tuned responses to user behavior.
Our platform’s foundation is a state-of-the-art data pipeline that learns from user behavior. The data pipeline generates actionable insight that underpins marketing, content development, and monetization.
What sort of partnerships are you going to be focusing on?
Platforms are about partnerships and ours is no exception. To be successful, we will build strong relationships with 1st party hardware platforms, customer engagement tools, app stores, identity providers, payments platforms, and security services … to name a few.
In what direction would you like to see MILEs moving over the next decade?
Total immersion and true community. My favorite TV shows of all time left me wanting after each show. I was fine waiting for the next episode, but I wanted to be part of the world during the in-between times. Discussing the episode on forums was interesting, but I wanted to be playing alongside my fellow fans in the world and I want those interactions to actually have bearing on the story. We’re just discovering the power of the MILE format; I’d like to see MILEs deepen a fan’s connection with the franchise and with other fans in between a story arc’s “big moments.” Nothing builds human connection more than when we create something incredible together.
Read a longer interview with Jerry and our CEO Jacob Navok over at GamesBeat
