A Calgary-based company has become a key player in the mobile game creator field and a publisher specializing in sports and entertainment augmented reality titles.
Trevor Doerksen, CEO of ePlay Digital Inc., says the company is poised to take advantage of the growing billion-dollar esports industry.
The company, which was established in 2017, is a game publisher. Its first game was released in August. Called Big Shot Basketball, it’s “part of a series of games that are seen as Pokémon Go meets sports, esports and entertainment,” says Doerksen.
“For a lot of people, esports will be new I suppose. The idea that people watch other people play computer games. They’ll find that as a new phenomenon. Something they maybe haven’t heard of. Or something that they think is a lot different than people watching other people play football or baseball or hockey. In esports, you’re watching other people play video games.”
Doerksen said esports is considered a billion-dollar industry by many North American analysts.
Trevor Doerksen
“It’s a big, growing industry and so big that maybe we don’t know what it is already, where the money’s being made. It’s digital. It’s not happening on TSN or ESPN exclusively. It’s happening online. It’s happening internationally. It seems as though we don’t quite have a handle on just how big it is and where it’s growing,” he said. “Is it on mobile? Is it on PC? Is it happening all on Twitch and YouTube? Is it happening elsewhere? But the esports industry from ticket sales to advertising revenue, sponsorship revenue is at least a billion-dollar industry.”
The company recently announced the first mini-games to be released, along with other new features for the Big Shot Basketball iPhone app. The update has new challenges and games that users can play to earn Big Shot points. In addition to Big Shot players’ drafts being automatically added to challenges and being awarded points for the on-court performance of their NBA roster, the new challenges will allow manual entry of NBA players from the users’ Big Shot roster.
The first Big Shot mini-game will be available in the Challenges section of the app and is called Swish. Swish players earn points to unlock levels and features in Big Shot by hitting baskets consecutively.
ePlay’s wholly-owned subsidiary Mobovivo, which was founded in 2009, specializes in augmented reality, mobile game development and mobile esports streaming.
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