TECH TALK: eSport madness and new water technology
The beta version of Quarterback is now available for League of Legends and will expand to additional eSports titles in the upcoming months.
By ARIEL SHAPIRAJONATHAN WEINBERG(photo credit: COURTESY QUARTERBACK)
Quarterback, a monetization platform for eSports players, has announced the beta availability of its platform for all eSports talents and their fans. Designed to bring talents and their fans closer together, Quarterback opens up new monetization channels for players, streamers and other talents, while enabling fans to show their support and interact with their eSports gaming idols by playing their favorite games.The beta version of Quarterback is now available for League of Legends and will expand to additional eSports titles in the upcoming months. Quarterback was part of Fusion LA, the first accelerator for Israeli start-ups in Los Angeles.The program offers free office space in Santa Monica, subsidized housing and a $20,000 investment in return for equity in the start-ups. Fusion LA pledges to help selected entrepreneurs with a soft landing, including legal and financial support to ease relocation to the United States. The Israeli entrepreneurs complete a four-month program aimed to help their companies gain traction, raise capital and work with industry leaders in the US. The accelerator is currently accepting applications for its next batch of Israeli start-ups, which will start in February.The Quarterback platform allows eSports players to easily and effectively engage with their fan base by hosting daily challenges, sponsoring clubs, giving away prizes and offering perks. Quarterback acts as an overlay on top of the game without the need for any integration, enabling gamers to play the way they always have. The platform adapts in real time to the fan’s gaming abilities and offers customized challenges endorsed by the talent’s club.“The eSports audience is exploding, and eSports talents are becoming celebrities,” Quarterback cofounder and CEO Jonathan Weinberg said. “But they don’t have an effective way to truly engage with and monetize their fans, especially when they’re off-line and unable to create new content. Quarterback cultivates direct value between eSports talents and their community by offering a digital fan club that provides passive and incremental revenue while creating a whole new experience for the eSports fan.”Nielsen’s 2017 US Games 360 Report shows that 94% of eSports fans are gamers themselves. In fact, they spend seven times more time playing games than actually watching them.It is therefore important for eSports talents to capitalize on their fans’ time spent playing games in order to deepen their loyalty – and monetize their fan-hood.Until now, however, eSports talents have only been able to monetize fans when they are watching eSports. Quarterback empowers eSports talents to super-serve their fans and generate revenue during their “downtime,” when their fans are playing their own games. Fans can engage with various skillbased challenges such as: • Customized Leader Challenges – eSports talents can offer player challenges or have Quarterback automatically create challenges for them, enabling players to compete in unique challenges.• “Beat the pro” challenges – Fans can participate in challenges against the score of a club’s leader to try to prove their dominance and hang with the professionals.Advertisement• Club vs club challenges – Clubs compete against one another, with each fan contributing to the club’s success, for example, “Which club can generate more kills in the next 24 hours out of 500 individual games.”• Private challenges – At any time, each fan can create a private challenge against people within the club, such as: “I bet I can beat your KDA score in your next three games.”• Adaptive challenges – Quarterback analyzes the fans’ performance in real time and offers customized goals that consider the fans’ capabilities and helps them improve in each of their sessions, for example, “Get the next kill in the next three minutes,” or “Reach 100 CS by minute 11:40.”Hilico Off-Grid Solutions Israeli start-up Hilico Off-Grid Solutions, an initiative offering a portable system for collecting, filtering and storing rainwater, was founded by Moshe Balilti and Eyal Yaski-Weiss.Hilico was recently chosen to represent Israel at The Venture, the 2018 Chivas Regal Whiskey search for promising social enterprises, and is currently competing against five finalists.Hilico aims to provide water and energy solutions to outlying communities, poor neighborhoods, disaster areas and camping sites.Studies of the global water crisis show that people living in areas with adequate rainfall often do not have enough drinking water and are forced to buy water at exorbitant prices or drink contaminated water, which causes disease and raises mortality rates.As a result, Hilico has developed the world’s first rainwater collection tool, which is inexpensive, easy to use and can be used in a variety of different environments.If you run a young start-up, have developed an interesting app or have a question, please feel free to contact info@social-wisdom.com.Translated by Hannah Hochner.
