K-Content News

Interview with the CEO of Technoblood: Overcoming the VR ‘Chasm’

How, specifically, did support from the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) help you with technology development?

The ‘Project for the Development of Human Physical Data and Contents Recommendation Technology to Develop User Human Data-based VR Contents Recommendation Platform’ helped us adapt FOVE for advanced VR contents. We use FOVE to track a user’s heart rate and eye movements. We save this data on our servers, and generate statistics. We analyze this accumulated statistical data, and, collect biodata from a random group of people; even doing this for a short period of time is enough to give us a normal distribution. We can find out through eye movements how excited a user is while gaming, and which ads they react to the most. KOCCA’s support helps accelerate the development of platform technologies that recommend appropriate contents based on user emotions. KOCCA’s support has also been critical in enabling use to advance our technology and sign an MOU with OGN.

What is the difference between the contents available at VR experience zones and Technoblood's own VR contents?

Our experience zone partners are playing the role of providing more and more people with the opportunity to experience VR. However, there is an inherent limitation to experience zones. A lot of us buy season passes for amusement parks, but few of us go more than 10 times a year. At the end of the day, things have to be accessible in order for us to use them frequently. This means that people need to have enough access to VR in order to be able to fully appreciate it. The platform Steam currently offers the most VR contents. They had 3,000 different VR contents as of the end of last year, and as of the middle of this year, they have 8,000. Steam uses search AI to show keywords for recommended contents, and one of these keywords—added recently—has caught people's attention. The word is “seated”. This is the direction the trend in VR contents will inevitably take. For the market to grow, we need to get from B to C. Businesses like us can bridge the gap.

How can the VR chasm be overcome?

People invest more than a million won into their smartphones. What we need to do is provide value that's worth the investment. Hardware vendors need to work hard, and the contents themselves need to appeal to customers. If we are able to satisfy general consumers' needs by providing VR contents they can enjoy conveniently and for a long time in a comfortable seated position, we will overcome the VR chasm (although it still might take some time). When Son Jeong-ui of SoftBank was investing millions into laying broadband Internet lines in the 1990s, many were worried. When everybody else is hesitant, taking it upon yourself to blaze a new trail is bound to be lonely work.

Why is it that you are providing free FOVE units to Internet cafes?

Although it's happening slowly, the Internet cafe business is transiting from online games to VR. Without Korean Internet cafes, there would be no Technoblood. It was thanks to the online games at these Internet cafes that we were able to expand our business. VR is more PC-based than it is mobile. This is why we are supplying the VR HMD ‘FOVE’ free of charge to Internet cafes. The Internet cafe industry has long been stagnated. It's our turn to give back to the users and the owners of the Internet cafes that made our success possible. VR isn’t a field where you can succeed singlehandedly without help. It’s got to be a symbiotic project with Internet cafes.

What are your future hopes for Technoblood?

I’d like to see our equipment have better performance. We'd also like to play a key role in bringing about a boom in the creation of new contents. The synergistic effects of adopting ‘eye-tracking technology’ in the VR market will inevitably go beyond VR and spill over into AR and MR. I also look forward to incorporating artificial intelligence. There are countless areas where the technology of tracking a user’s eyes to figure out their intentions can be used, in addition to VR e-sports casting. VR shopping malls, 5G, and the automotive industry are just some examples. At the time being, we aim to provide our VR users in Korea and Japan with unrivaled quality in e-sports casting. From there, we will expand to secure and provide users with various other contents.

SEO, Mi-hee│Guest Reporter│eidal0874@naver.com | Photos by MOON, Gyeong-rok