Gaming
Live Tech Games and ITV Launch New Interactive WordSurge Game for Viewers
Live Tech Games has unveiled a brand new free interactive competitive trivia game, WordSurge, offering ITV audiences exciting live gameplay while watching content they love.
This Morning hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary launched WordSurge live on air, inviting thousands of viewers at home to join the live mobile competition.
The game further extends This Morning’s interactive app offer into a live gaming environment, with the programme’s existing app being one of ITV’s most popular and downloaded already.
WordSurge combines the delights of recent word game crazes with the thrills of live gameplay and has been specially developed for ITV’s free This Morning app. Players can compete, battle and interact with each other to win cash prizes, sponsored by ITV Win.
The partnership between ITV and Live Tech Games offers new entertainment for UK audiences and allows viewers to become part of the game using their mobile phone, rather than simply watching the action on their TV screens. WordSurge has already secured the number one spot in both the App Store for Free Games and the App Store for Trivia Games. As well as having over 1.6 million minutes of game play.
“We are thrilled to announce the launch of WordSurge on ITV’s This Morning. We cannot thank ITV enough for the support it has given Live Tech Games, and are looking forward to seeing the results that this fun, entertaining and competitive game creates. We’re thrilled to be targeting a different audience with our new word play game and can’t wait to see the response WordSurge receives from players,” Samuel Worsley, co-founder and co-CEO of Live Tech Games, said.
Live Tech Games aims to create captivating, competitive mobile experiences that will engage customers. WordSurge offers a unique, exciting mobile experience for viewers in order to encourage everyone to play games. Viewers are instantly transformed into players as they go head-to-head in a live virtual tournament, taking place after the This Morning show. In game, viewers compete to find the answers to simple trivia questions in an evolving grid of letters, with a number of prizes available to winners of each tournament. The game rapidly rose to claim the spot of number one free game and number one trivia game in the App Store, surpassing huge titles like Wordle, Roblox, Candy Crush, Pokémon Go and FIFA Football.
“We are planning to grow WordSurge in the coming months, expanding its audience and enticing more players. We are also discussing the possibility of introducing different combinations of prize allocations to the game and hope to add more new features as the game progresses. We see huge positive growth for WordSurge and are anticipating further advances for the game,” Samuel added.
“ITV and the This Morning team are thrilled to be working with Live Tech Games to bring this form of second-screen content to our viewers. This is a really exciting new form of interactive entertainment that will enhance our reach with a younger audience and create innovative sponsorship opportunities for brands,” Bhavit Chandrani, Director of Digital and Creative Partnerships at ITV, said.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin Miner celebrates two years of hugely successful collaboration with ZBD
Bitcoin Miner, the world’s number one Bitcoin game, is celebrating two years of its collaboration with ZBD, a leading fintech company powering digital economies for gamers and developers. Since the partnership began, Bitcoin Miner has gone from a forgotten title with no players to becoming one of the largest play-and-earn games ever, with over 2 million lifetime users.
ZBD’s Lightning-powered payments technology enables developers to inject instant rewards into their games to boost retention and community engagement. Fumb Games, the studio behind Bitcoin Miner, partnered with ZBD in March 2022 to help revive its flagship title, enabling it to reward players with fragments of Bitcoin for playing the game as normal. From the outset, the integration of ZBD’s tech had a marked impact, leading to a 12x boost in 30-day retention. Two years on, Bitcoin Miner is achieving 40,000 daily active users, making it the biggest Bitcoin game by user count.
Besides the retention benefit of rewards, which leads to player retention that exceeds 6 months, the success of Bitcoin Miner has also been fueled by community-based features such as regular live events. The majority of Bitcoin Miner players are US-based millennial males who enjoy engaging with gaming communities, with weekly events leading to a 20% increase in revenue. As well as its own community of engaged players, Bitcoin Miner benefits from the ZBD app user base of more than a million gamers.
Paul West, Founder of Fumb Games, said “Bitcoin Miner has proven that US players love games that are fun, snackable and rewarding. The game is not only sustainable, but has soared to new heights since the partnership with ZBD. It’s no surprise that I’m very excited for the future of bitcoin and player-friendly rewarded games.”
Ben Cousens, Chief Strategy Officer at ZBD, said “The two-year collaboration with Paul and Fumb Games on Bitcoin Miner has been a quintessential success story for what we’re building at ZBD. It proves the value in offering rewards for gamers and the success of ZBD’s rewards and payments tech at making it possible at speed and scale. We will no doubt see further impressive numbers for Bitcoin Miner that cement its status as world’s number one Bitcoin game, and we also look forward to extending the potential benefits of Bitcoin rewards to more developers.”
In November 2023, Fumb Games also integrated ZBD’s technology in its idle tycoon RPG SpaceY. ZBD works with more than 100 game developers worldwide, including major brands such as Square Enix, and is also used by innovative adtech companies like Slice and AdInMo.
Gaming
UK Gaming Charity SpecialEffect to Receive Special Award at 20th BAFTA Games Awards
BAFTA has announced that UK gaming charity SpecialEffect, will receive the prestigious Special Award at the 20th BAFTA Games Awards. The award, which recognises outstanding contributions to games, film and television, is one of the highest accolades bestowed by BAFTA. Dr Mick Donegan MBE, founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, will pick up the Special Award at the annual BAFTA Games Awards ceremony on Thursday 11 April.
In 2007, Mick Donegan founded SpecialEffect to help people with even the most severe physical challenges to access video games. The organisation uses specialised technology to enhance access to video games and creative self-expression for people with a wide range of Disabilities.
SpecialEffect’s success began as a result of the collaboration between Mick, a specialist in assistive technology and his son Bill, a keen gamer with a background in product design. Since its creation, the charity has grown to thirty employees, raising all their own funds, and has provided specialist one-to-one assessments and support to severely disabled people throughout the UK and beyond.
Dr Mick Donegan MBE, SpecialEffect founder and CEO, said: “With a background in special education, I realised how much people with severe physical disabilities were missing out by not being able to play. I started SpecialEffect not only to help individuals to play video games but also to collaborate with the games industry to make their games more accessible ‘at source’. Since then, we have been privileged to be invited to share our ideas with more and more developers all over the world. Now, 17 years since SpecialEffect began, it’s an absolute honour for SpecialEffect’s work to be recognised by BAFTA.”
Emma Baehr, BAFTA executive director of awards and content, said: “SpecialEffect’s work is essential to the games world and is hugely deserving of a BAFTA Special Award. Their innovative and supportive approach to making games accessible drives progress within the industry, collaborating with developers and studios on new technologies to make games within reach to more people. We look forward to honouring their contribution to games at the ceremony on Thursday 11 April.”
Throughout the years, SpecialEffect has been involved in collaborating with Xbox, Sony and Logitech, to help design accessible controllers and a switch kit, enabling thousands more severely disabled players to access their games using a wide range of control devices. They have also worked with games studios and developers to help make their games more accessible. The organisation also developed EyeMine, a freely downloadable gaze-controlled interface to enable players to enjoy Minecraft through gaze-control alone.
Later this year will see the rollout of their EyeGaze Games (currently available on PC only) onto Android and iOS, games designed to be fully accessible for people with physical disabilities, whether they use gaze control, joysticks, switches or gamepads.
Gaming
The Rocket League Championship Series Major 2 Heads Back to Copper Box Arena in London This June
The Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) returns to Copper Box Arena in London, UK for the second Major of 2024 from June 20-23.
Copper Box Arena hosted a sold out RLCS Spring Major in 2022 and saw Team Vitality defeat Team BDS in the final. The venue will again play host to the world’s best Rocket League players as they compete for the second trophy of 2024, a chance to win the lion’s share of a $255,000 in total prize pool winnings and earn additional RLCS points to secure a spot in the Rocket League World Championship in September.
The RLCS Major 2 will be broadcast on Twitch and YouTube from June 20-21, and welcome a live audience in the Copper Box Arena for the weekend competition on June 22-23. Tickets go on general sale beginning at 10:00 AM GMT on Friday, March 29, and the direct link to purchase tickets can be found on the Rocket League esports social accounts. There are three presale windows for O2 Priority customers, Live Nation users and Ticketmaster users.
BLAST and Rocket League esports have teamed up with Live Nation, one of the world’s largest live entertainment companies to help support and promote the RLCS Major 2 coming to London in June 2024.
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