Andreessen Horowitz partner Joshua Lu knows that you can never get too comfortable in the video game industry. He experienced the heyday of mobile gaming when he was head of product at Zynga, working on hits like Words with Friends. Then he was a vice president at Blizzard Entertainment, where he helped create tentpole hits like Diablo Immortal. Then he was head of product management at Meta, where he worked on the VR game Horizon Worlds, and learned to look at games in a new way.
“I had to unlearn what I thought were universal truths and learn a whole new way of doing things,” Lu told TechCrunch.
Now, Lu wants to see where video games are headed from the front lines. After joining the company as an investor in 2022, Lu helped launch the company’s Speedrun accelerator, which invests $750,000 in about 40 gaming startups twice a year. It’s currently in its third cohort, with applications for a fourth cohort opening. Lu says he’s seen how AI and new distribution platforms are changing the industry.
Half of the current batch of accelerators are AI companies, doing everything from AI-generated stories to using AI for 3D avatars. “The last game I worked on at Blizzard took six years to release and had a budget of $250 million,” he said, referring to Diablo Immortal. “But how great would it be if you could make that kind of game with a tenth of the budget and a tenth of the people?”
We can argue about how great it is that AI is eliminating high-paying developer jobs at big game companies, but if AI helps more startups form and become qualitatively competitive, then it is a compelling idea.
Lu says he’s seen firsthand how companies can be creative, citing Clementine, a startup that went through a speedrun. “We released a demo where you had to talk to an AI and solve mysteries so that the AI wouldn’t figure out that you’re human,” he says. Depending on how much of an existential threat you think AI could be, that’s either a scary premise or a joke.
Lu also mentioned Echo Chunk, a company that raised $1.4 million in a round led by Speedrun. Echo Chunk went viral with its game Echo Chess, which uses AI to instantly generate an infinite number of levels. “This is all fairly early exploration,” he said. “But we’re excited about the new types of game design interactions and game dynamics that AI can unlock.”
Lu is also advocating for startups to build games on top of Discord. Earlier this year, Discord began allowing developers to create apps that people can use within its chat platform. Lu said that over the course of his career, he’s seen a decline in the places people discover games. For example, no one is discovering games through their social media feeds anymore, as many people did with Farmville. “Where are we going to find the next platform where we can build and distribute truly social games?” Lu said.
Several companies have moved into Discord’s accelerator building. Lu said several companies have moved into building on Discord over the past 12 weeks. “There are more games being made than ever before, and it’s harder for developers to stand out,” he said. He hopes building on Discord “will help people find the content they really want to make.”
