BetterPlay Studio launches KOZEE platform

Gaming is an intrinsic part of modern culture.

According to The Entertainment Software Association, a trade association for the video game industry, 227 million Americans play video games. 74% of American households have at least one gamer, and those numbers continue to climb every year.

Increasingly, people are turning to videogames for more than entertainment. Gamers are seeking social connections and stress relief from video games.

Michael Sapiro is one of those people.

Sapiro grew up playing video games and was an enthusiastic gamer throughout high school and college. As he got older and began juggling full-time employment, parenting and household responsibilities, gaming fell by the wayside.

Until the pandemic changed that.

While homebound in 2020, Sapiro dusted off his old Xbox 360 and slipped in a game disc.

“It really helped. I exercise and I do a lot of yoga and mindfulness things, but this helped in a unique way. I wouldn’t say it was the only thing that helped. It was a unique aspect to add on to that regime and so I researched it… I was blown away by how the mental health community has embraced video games and what they think of the potential for video games,” Sapiro said.

“No one talks about it, even though they’re ubiquitous and most households have somebody who games more than an hour a day. (I thought) ‘why aren’t people paying more attention to this?’ And that was the jumping off point,” he said.

From there, Sapiro jumped into BetterPlay Studios with cofounder Vanessa Lane. The gaming collaborators founded the company to provide “world-class gaming experiences alongside our mental health partners that help our community have a deeper and healthier relationship with gaming.”

Launched in 2022, the company plans to release its minimum viable product (MVP), KOZEE, on April 8. KOZEE is a platform to connect gamers with games that make players feel good, while identifying patterns in their gaming behavior and connecting gamers with a community of like minded players.

“We are going to have between 10 to 14 games- we’re still finalizing contracts. Some of them (the games) were made intentionally around mental health- there was a theme around mental health and that inspired the creators of them. Other ones we’ve vetted through our psychologists who say ‘this could be helpful in certain circumstances.’ You see that very often with games that were never designed to help people with mental health can actually do that, so we found a way to select and identify those. That’s one purpose for KOZEE is to go in there having access to that content,” Sapiro said.

“The other half of KOZEE is that people can plug in any game they’re playing- it doesn’t have to be on the KOZEE platform. It could be an old Nintendo game from the 1980s, or it could be a modern game on the Xbox. They plug it in and answer a question right before they do their gaming session about how they’re feeling. Then they have another question when they’re done with it and over time, an algorithm will start identifying games that are good for you and games that make you feel better so you can understand how to use your hobby to improve your mental health and how to have a healthy relationship with gaming in general,” he explained.

The company is already garnering followers.

“We have a great community already. We have several thousand people across social media. We just launched our Discord and that’s very active right now. We have a great team manager who runs that, and we have events most Thursday nights. They are get-togethers for people where they can talk about everything in life, mental health and also play cozy games… We are definitely aiming at the 18 to 30 population, that’s the cozy gaming population. It skews female, which is great. We try to make it an inclusive place for all people that come,” Sapiro said.

The MVP version of KOZEE is browser-based, but the company is currently working on refining the app version of the platform as well as other modifications that will improve the user experience.

“We’ll be adding new game content regularly,” Sapiro said. “We’re changing the design to make it more interactive, and we have some fun ideas on AI and engagement that we’re working on too.”

BetterPlay Studios sees a future where KOZEE will impact not just gamers, but also game creators. Sapiro notes that many creators in the game development industry are currently out of work. He sees mutually beneficial opportunities for collaboration between the company and game developers.

“There’s nowhere for them to go, so there’s all this talent that is just languishing. Traditionally they are dependent on publishers to fund their projects and the publishing model is complicated… through KOZEE what we’ve been able to do on a very micro-level is fund projects by some of these talented solo developers and small development teams,” he said.

Largely bootstrapped, the company has also received funds from grants and pitch competitions. For now, KOZEE is being offered to users in a “pay-what-you-want” format. By the end of 2024, the platform will move to a monthly subscription format.

To learn more about BetterPlay Studios, connect with the company here. To explore KOZEE, click here.