Earlier this week, a game we’ve been working on for over a year launched on the iOS App Store and Facebook. TradeSports is a second screen sports probabilities trading game developed by Binary Event Network, a New York city-based startup founded by equity traders.
A year ago at Casual Connect 2011, Kerry Choe and Thomas Little of Binary Event Network (BEN) were looking for a game design partner for the project, which at that time was very much in its infancy. They had progressed to a rough prototype but felt it didn’t represent their vision and needed a reboot.
So Kevin and Adrian came on in August 2011 and set about reworking the design to be a contemporary freemium mobile social game. This was truly a joy as we’re sports fanatics and believe strongly in the second screen app and game space, which we see growing daily.
Soon after coming aboard, AC&A also connected BEN with an art director, Tim Allen, a very senior creative talent that has done art direction on mainstream consumer sports apps such as the Nike+ running app. Tim immediately raised the bar for the visuals.
And finally, AC&A recommended to BEN a new development partner for the project, Finger Food Studios in Vancouver, BC. Adrian has known Finger Food’s founder, software engineer Trent Shumay, for nearly two decades as they worked together at Electronic Arts Canada in the 1990s. Trent and his social mobile game development studio are some of the best at what they do.
Besides leading the design and sourcing the developer and lead artist, AC&A’s Product Marketing Manager, Chris Bjerrisgaard, also lent his hand at refining BEN’s financial models (revenue and traffic projections) and developing a marketing plan. Chris stays on the cutting edge of mobile social KPIs and is our ace-in-the-hole for anything marketing-related.
Once the development team had been made over, the project took off. It was a joy to iterate day by day with the talented crew at Finger Food and the visionaries at BEN. Overall, we’re quite happy with how the project turned out, even knowing how many improvements are still set to roll out over the coming weeks and months.
If you’re interested, check out our TradeSports work in more detail.
