What is ePlay Digital and what does it do?
Doerksen: ePlay is one of Calgary’s growing number of game publishers. We have created a celebrity-filled, Pokemon Go style game platform for sports, e-sports, and entertainment.
We will soon launch the first location-based title from the augmented reality mobile game platform based on the NBA. In Pokemon Go, users are competing for monsters. In Big Shot Basketball, users are competing for NBA players and when LeBron scores … you score!
Pokemon Go style games are ranked number five in China and number four in the U.S. for mobile game revenue in 2019 – they’re even bigger than Fortnite mobile.
The leading games make between $50 million and $80 million per month on in-app purchases, e-sports and advertising.
We’ve partnered with one of China’s largest media conglomerates to distribute and market Big Shot Basketball in the NBA-hungry nation. In North America, we’re building celebrities and the brands that endorse them directly into the game – they are characters and special features that will help users’ advance in the game and make their avatars look great.
When did the company start? Why and how was it created?
Doerksen: ePlay was created in 2017 to build on the team’s experience in building and releasing games for Fortune 500 clients such as ESPN, Intel, Sony, Time Warner and others. The team decided it was time to leverage the experience in creating games for TV, FIFA World Cup, and the L.A. Lakers to create and publish games for fans. We got to know what sports, e-sports and entertainment fans were looking for and wanted to deliver cutting-edge experiences for and with audiences.
Augmented Reality was maturing quickly and what we could do, just a couple years after our first augmented reality project for musicians, was advancing. We knew we could take advantage of the huge opportunity in mobile games for sports, e-sports and entertainment.