miya trackingSome games can just be too hard to beat on your own.

Luckily, plenty of other people post tips and tricks in strategy guides all over the internet. But if you’re playing a game on your PC, you might not want to switch out to load a strategy guide.

MIYA, a Kickstarter project created by Seattle-based Rleyh Software, allows PC gamers to put that information on a second screen. Plus, it updates with data from your game live, even showing the direction a character is facing in the game. Users can toggle which stats they want displayed, ranging from points of interest on a map to strategy tips from the gaming community.

Vinit Jain
Vinit Jain

For the Kickstarter, developers Vinit Jain and François Cantonnet are focusing on two PC games: Grand Theft Auto V and The Witcher 3. Both games feature an open world with plenty of interesting features on the maps. With MIYA, gamers can quickly find those points of interest, whether they’re mission start points or health pack. But it’s not about making the game easier.

“The trick here is to provide the right amount of data to the gamers, to help them enhancing their gaming experience, thus their engagement with the game, without spoiling the fun,” Jain said. MIYA could filter information based on the context of the game, so you won’t be seeing spoilers like you might if you search game guides online.

The company plans to have more games in the future. Right now, it’s limited to a few games so the developers can test the system.

“We want to keep it community driven,” Jain said. “It’s all about the demand and the supply, and empowering gamers as well as the community of gaming enthusiasts all together.”

François Cantonnet

However, they plan to also support user-generated content down the road. So if a user wants to use a second screen for the indie game they’re playing, they can create the assets and upload them to the MIYA service where other gamers can take advantage of them.

MIYA doesn’t use mods or hacks to pull the data from the game. Instead, the app runs in the taskbar of the computer, looking for all the right data the game is pumping out. Then it pulls that data to the cloud and pushes out updates to second-screen devices like tablets, smartphones or another monitor.

The company is asking for $10,000 on Kickstarter over the next 19 days, with a little over $600 already raised. It’s currently being developed as a side project on weeknights and weekends by two Seattlies who work at Practice Fusion, a cloud-based electronic health records platform.

Jain previously developed Kouply, a mobile game that helps couples work on their relationship by gamifying good behavior, while he worked at Microsoft. Cantonnet also worked at Microsoft, helping to build the KinectShare video and photo sharing platform, before his role as senior lead developer at Practice Fusion.

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