The creators of ePlay’s forthcoming augmented reality game are taking players’ headshots and molding them onto 3D models to create life-size avatars that will be dispersed throughout streets, shops and cities. Hold your phone up to see Stephen Curry and higher still to see the much taller LeBron James, or at least a reasonable digital facsimile. The cartoony renderings might wink, smile or fist pump upon your approach.
“They would encounter that player, be able to greet the player, walk around the player, take a selfie with the player,” ePlay CEO Trevor Doerksen said, adding: “I think it’s pretty important, these facial gestures, these meaningful moments.”
And, of course, then comes the big question: Would you draft him on your fantasy team?
The premise behind ePlay’s ARKit-powered product is to build a fantasy game that will attract the casual player, all while offering new digital real estate to advertisers and sponsors. Doerksen’s background at Mobovivo games, which ePlay Digital acquired late last year, was in creating second-screen apps for sports networks like ESPN, CBS and Time Warner Cable Sportsnet. The appeal is for the 80 percent of sports fans who don’t play gamble, he said.
“We started thinking,” Doerksen said, “‘What would the Candy Crush player want out of sports? What would the Pokémon Go player want out of sports?’”
The ultimate product — whose release date has not yet been announced but was previously pegged to the NBA season — is a fantasy game in which the players seem to appear quasi-randomly, with some input based on actual location, team schedule and promotional appearances. Robert Horry, the seven-time NBA champion, is an early investor.
Sports broadcaster Lindsay McCormick was on set for the movie The Bounce Back, in which she makes a cameo as herself, when a producer told her about an opportunity to get involved with ePlay’s upcoming product. Mobile games, social media and tech have all become important parts of her job, McCormick noted, prompting her to meet with Doerksen and see a demo. “I just fell in love with it,” she said.
“It’s funny to me how big Pokémon Go [became] — I think it’s worth a billion dollars now — and it was Pokémon, a topic that not everybody was a fan of growing up,” McCormick added. “Sports is something that everybody loves. To see a sports version of Pokémon Go, I think, is going to be massive.”
McCormick’s character has been incorporated into ePlay for users once they reach a certain usage level within the game. They’ll have the opportunity to take and share pictures with her or add her to their own team, after which she’ll dispense athlete draft and location tips. She said the process of becoming a digital creation started by taking a selfie that the staff animators turned into an avatar. ePlay will allow all users to enter the game the same way.
“If you get too photo realistic, they have to be more exacting to the point where you may not satisfy anybody,” Doerksen said.
His hope is to work with teams, player associations and brands to incorporate advertising and sponsorships into the game. At an arena, for instance, a pizza company might give away a few slices or pies, but ensuring that a key player for one’s fantasy team is available at the restaurant would drive more consumers there. McCormick offered input as well about how broadcasters, players and charities can use the platform as well.
“(A sales team) can move from selling mostly just concrete today or digital ads on screens to something that’s at least mobile activated and, very likely, implemented the way that those teams would like to implement for it their brands (such as) retail-activated,” Doerksen said.
Ads can be in the background of selfies or logos placed on uniform sleeves. The app will try to keep players engaged with reminders of team schedules and notifications of appropriately timed player appearances. Other companies, such as AR Sports, are working on similar concepts, although that game will be a drafting platform overlaid onto existing fantasy sports whereas ePlay is producing a standalone product.
Engineers at ePlay and Mobovivo, which was named one of the most innovative companies at this year’s Mobile World Congress, having been using a beta version of Apple’s ARKit. Doerksen said this gaming engine has enhanced the product, particularly for how the app can detect and discern flat surfaces for characters to be placed.
McCormick’s tech roots began when she worked as a Portland Trail Blazers reporter for Comcast SportsNet and also hosted DT Daily on Digitaltrends.com. Ever since, she has kept an eye on the field and remembers competing against Marshall Faulk in a virtual reality quarterback challenge game while hosting Super Bowl 50 events for sponsor SAP. That experience was too immersive, compared with AR. (Self-described as “one of most accident-prone people on earth,” McCormick played Pokémon Go but said her mom cautioned her about walking into the middle of a street over a Pikachu.)
“I think what I love most about augmented reality is that it adds layers of information to our experiences in real-time whereas (virtual reality) really takes you out of real life,” she said.