The leading “play-to-earn” virtual horse racing game. LIVE photo finish offers sports fans and Web3 enthusiasts the opportunity to play and earn through racing, breeding and staking.
Benzinga spoke with the founder of Entertainment for the third timeparent company at Photo Finish LIVE to learn more about how the company got started and what’s next.
Starting photo finish: Having launched several successful horse racing mobile games, gaming veteran Ian Cummings had the idea to launch a Web3-based horse racing game.
Cummings said the success of Best shot in the NBA AND Axie Infinite they were NFTs that helped push the thought process towards creating a horse racing game for the Web3 audience. Third Time Entertainment spoke with several blockchains before deciding Solana SOL/USDthe blockchain that launched the first PFP Photo Finish.
Third Time’s goal was to bring its existing mobile user base to Web3.
“We’re going to teach them about blockchain,” Cummings told Benzinga.
Cummings said the shock was that none of them cared and many didn’t have the ability to trade NFTs on a PC.
Instead, it was a massive viral wave of fans from within cryptocurrency that helped Photo Finish gain traction.
“It didn’t go the way I expected. We found a brand new audience.”
Cummings credited his past experience working in companies as Electronic Arts IT’S AT, Zynga AND FanDuel for helping give him the tools and knowledge to launch a successful game.
Cummings started as a tester at EA for the well-known NFL Madden game. Cummings spent most of his twenties working to become the person in charge and running Madden. While working on Madden he worked on elements such as animations, gameplay, franchise mode, owner mode, playbook and was the creator of “Hit Stick”, a popular Madden game feature.
After growing tired of being in charge of Madden – a job that required many meetings and presentations – Cummings moved to Zynga where he learned firsthand the big shift for the gaming industry towards digital and mobile games, including free-to-play. play.
“Zynga taught me a lot about monetization.”
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Horse Racing Market: While many in North America focus on following the four major sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey, Cummings says horse racing is the sport forgotten by the media.
The success of the Kentucky Derby, which becomes more popular every year, demonstrates the interest in horse racing, Cumming added. The unfortunate thing is that many smaller courses are collapsing and are being forced to subsidize casino construction, Cummings added.
While smaller in North America, Cummings said horse racing is extremely popular in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Japan. This sport has hundreds of millions of people around the world who are passionate about it.
“We could serve this niche,” Cumming said of creating a horse racing game.
Photo finish playback: The Photo Finish game offers everything related to horse racing, including racing, claiming, breeding and a marketplace that sees users buy and sell horses directly from each other, with Third Time taking a cut via commissions.
The game also has the CROWN tokenwhich Cummings says started as a thought from the early days and is something they approached differently to what others were doing.
Cummings said the magic of a cryptocurrency token, when integrated properly into a game, is that it can be used for user acquisition instead of paying Facebook to get users.
Players can purchase CROWNS and also earn CROWNS for races. You can also stake the CROWN to become a part owner of a racetrack and earn a share of the season’s earnings. For Photo Finish a season lasts four weeks.
Cummings told Benzinga that most video games are successful if they sell lots of copies or in-app purchases to users. For Photo Finish, the platform is about users, and the game makes money from commissions for using the platform and completing things like breeding and selling horses.
The key measure of success for Cummings is seeing “more people running all day, every day.”
Cummings said the game offers many ways to play and it’s important, like poker, to study and research the perspective you want to take. This can include building large stables and racing every day for daily fantasy lovers, breeding for long-term focused players, buying horses into pretenders, and flipping for profit for those with a keen eye.
Users can sign up and get a free training horse with just an email address.
What’s next: Third Time Entertainment has a partnership with Churchill Downs, Inc. CHDNthe owner of the Kentucky Derby.
A Photo Finish season includes a Virtual Kentucky Derby, something Cummings says helps give players the goal of winning the key race.
For this year’s 150thth During the run of the Kentucky Derby, Photo Finish will launch several key marketing elements that will be announced in the future prior to the May 4 race.
Photo Finish and Churchill have vetted each other as part of the multi-year partnership, Cummings added. This includes co-marketing efforts in past and future initiatives.
Cummings also told Benzinga that the goal is to launch the mobile app this year, which could unlock new territory for players.
Another key for Cummings is to obtain an official gaming license in multiple countries. Operated as a skill-based game in the United States, Photo Finish allows betting on races in some markets.
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Photo: PhotoFinish