Mobile gaming has been dominated in recent years by a handful of companies, and competing for top spots with new games is tougher than ever. However, that doesn’t keep companies like Scopely, known for games like Yahtzee with Buddies, from trying to break through to the top of the mobile charts with releases like The Walking Dead: Road to Survival, which challenges players bring together a group of characters and level up their skills to survive in zombie-filled The Walking Dead comic book universe.  

Road to Survival reached more than 4 million downloads in its first week, and ranked among the Top 25 Grossing Games across 17 countries. The company also recently announced a cross-over event with the Telltale Games, which involves iconic characters from the critically-acclaimed Walking Dead adventure game series appearing in Road to Survival from December 10 to January 31. Scopely itself has been listed as among the Top 10 fastest growing companies in America in 2015 by Inc. and Deloitte consulting.

[a]listdaily speaks to Scopely’s head of product marketing, Jamie Berger, and product manager Steve Wu, to discuss The Road to Survival cross-over event and what it takes to make a new mobile game a success.

How can mobile games stand out in an increasingly crowded market

[Jamie] We see aligning with great brands and intellectual properties as a critical path to success in a market that offer consumers essentially unlimited content choices. Brands like Yahtzee and The Walking Dead are ideal because they naturally translate to great game experiences, and come with mass awareness and a deep reservoir of consumer affinity. With strong brands you already “stand out” in a crowd of generic content, It’s then a matter of activating and exciting the fan base.

What steps can brands like The Walking Dead: Road to Survival do to grow audiences beyond the comic book and television series fans

[Jamie] Even with a an incredible brand like The Walking Dead, there are still millions of players who love the role-playing game genre and would enjoy Road to Survival even if they’re not a core fan of the IP. A successful branded game needs to innovate in design and features to reach beyond the core and attract new fans. Social play and features are a big part of growth for a branded game as well. If you are a fan of the comics and download Road to Survival because it’s a Walking Dead game that’s great. If you then join an in-game faction and recruit a friend of yours who may only be a casual fan of the IP then you are able to create sustainable growth within the existing audience.

What’s the most important thing to keep in mind after a game releases

[Jamie] You can’t stand still. In our product features, in-game content and marketing, we are constantly telling consumers something new and exciting – and making the game a better experience today than it was the week before. It can be an all-new way to play with others like “Dice Duels” in Yahtzee with Buddies, or surprising new content like our current Telltale Games cross-over event in Walking Dead: Road to Survival. This enables us to be more effective marketers; engaging our current player base through CRM, and successfully attracting new players through advertising and social.

Tell us about the partnership between Scopely and Telltale Games. How did it come about

[Steve] If you’re a fan of great gaming, then you’re probably a fan of Telltale Games, and the entire Walking Dead: Road to Survival team are huge fans of Telltale’s Walking Dead series; so, for us it was an aspiration to collaborate with them after our launch. Fortunately we share the same partnership with Skybound Entertainment, who set up a conversation earlier this year where we could show them our concept for a mobile RPG that incorporated the entire cast of characters and storylines from the comic series. We are continuously expanding the game with new stories, missions, and characters, so it was a natural opportunity to expand on the stories of the Season 1 characters, and particularly Lee and Clementine.

How will the Telltale characters fit in to the Road to Survival world What will happen to them after January 31

[Steve] We’re launching our events with a special roadmap area that follows the Telltale storyline and gives players an opportunity to battle alongside iconic Telltale characters. These characters will all be playable recruits that players can earn through in-game events and will appear throughout the game as permanent additions to player rosters, fighting alongside other recruits in the Road to Survival world.

Will the Telltale characters include any special abilities that set them apart from existing ones

[Steve] Each Telltale character will have unique character stats, leader skills and Adrenaline Rushes that set them apart from existing characters in the game. Additionally, we are very excited to announce that Telltale characters will be the first characters ever to be released with our new Specialist ability which is a new, reactive set of skills that can trigger during combat based on certain conditions. These skills will greatly broaden the game’s depth and provide players with more options and considerations when putting together their teams

Does this event indicate future cross-overs between Telltale’s The Walking Dead and Road to Survival

[Steve] This cross-over event will evolve over the next 30 days as we release new story-driven missions and characters from Telltale’s Season 1. So far the fan reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, so possibly this leads to new collaborations in the future.

How will Scopely and Telltale promote this limited time event

[Steve] There is a huge community of Telltale fans who will be excited about the opportunity to go on a new adventure with Lee and Clementine, so we’re actively promoting with Skybound and Telltale across our range of social and community channels as well as aggressive promotion to our millions of current player via our CRM platform. To welcome all these new players, Scopely is giving away a “Lee” in game character to all of our new and existing players during this event.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Nearly one year to the date in which Ben Watley discovered Vainglory and fell into its rabbit hole, he finds himself playing the game to a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” and reverberating claps from the thunder sticks in front of close to a hundred people in the eSports Arena.

His passion for the game has compounded into competition where he transforms into his gaming alter-ego “FooJee” as part of his co-owned team GankStars. Watley has travelled from San Francisco to take part in the game’s first ever North American tournament. His team is one of the top-eight that made the cut from the 650 applicants, with the winner earning $10,000.

It’s the first week of December, and Watley is passing out cardboard cutouts bearing his bearded face in a Santa hat to teenaged boys who hold it unwaveringly. For the 28 year-old seasoned tournament video game player, it might as well be Christmas morning.

In August, Watley, a former manager at Apple, turned to video games as a legitimate, full-time profession, a decision his wife Kirsten supports. But first, he and his two teammates, one who’s just 14, are hunched controlling a hero to shatter a giant crystal called the Vain in the center of the enemy team’s base. A commentary crew calls the action with the kind of fervor that you’d expect in a pay per view boxing match. Tens of thousands more are watching live online via Twitch.

“Ive always loved games, and the way they’ve engaged me and challenged me intellectually,” Watley said. “I see so much opportunity here, and I love eSports. This is a movement.”

“I’m amazed by the turnout and the excitement here,” said Paul Ward, CEO of the eSports Arena. “This is the kind of event that opens the doors for others. The gaming culture has turned into popular culture.”

Watley, who’s team ended placing third and winning $1,500, is part of a larger eSports movement, specifically in the realm of mobile where the players are the tastemakers and influencers of the touch-screen generation. The eSports market is currently worth $747 million, according to SuperData Research, and it’s expected to grow 150 percent by 2018.

Enter companies like Super Evil Megacorp, who’re using smartphone-and-tablet exclusive games like Vainglory to make events for the masses more relatable, and inviting more people to be a part of the experience.

“There is a lot of promise to this kind of gaming environment. It’s accessible, more people have the devices, it’s more relatable, it’s in some ways more intuitive and learnable,” said Kristian Segerstrale, COO and executive director of Super Evil Megacorp. “One of the main driving reasons behind the game was that we felt like the touch-screen generation deserves the experiences and immersive franchises that (the previous generation) grew up on PC.”

Segerstrale says there will be nearly 3 billion touchscreens that will be capable of playing mobile games by the end of next year, compared to the estimated 700 to 800 million gaming PCs in the world.

“There’s a lot of promise in the touch-screen, competitive gaming industry,” Segerstrale, 38, says. “We grew up as PC gamers and want to replicate that experience. You can come together at any time as a team. Plus, you can see the player’s faces as they’re not obstructed by a monitor. There’s a human connection.”

Segerstrale describes the Vainglory community as an incredible, meaningful, long-lasting garden that’s continually tended. The game is not the type where you play for a couple of minutes for instant gratification, tap-to-win and log off. “We don’t really market the game, and don’t do TV advertisements or traditional user acquisition. We work with our community and help them find each other.”

It seems to be working. Sponsors like Amazon, Nvidia and Plantronics were out in full force for the tournament, held Dec. 4 to Dec. 6. (Liberation X defeated Nemesis Hydra for the $10,000 prize.) In November, the game was the No. 1 downloaded app in China for 10 consecutive days upon its Asiatic release, and in September, there were over one million unique users on Twitch, Segerstrale says.

The eSports market is an untapped one largely because developers have not realized the full potential of mobile. “It’s in the baby steps of becoming something gargantuan,” Watley said. “Once people learn to accept it, the obstacles are only what we make them. It’s just how fast technology can progress.”

“We’ve been blown away by how quickly the competitive scene has grown,” adds Segerstrale. “We were expecting to quietly grow in the community, and nurturing it over time. The growth has manifested itself in multiple ways as professional eSports organizations are getting involved. Another is sponsors who help fund events and teams. It offers legitimacy because a lot of the wonder: is this really a thing.”

Ward certainly thinks it’s a thing. He and a group of friends took the idea of an eSports facility that was three years in the making and opened a 15,000-sqaure foot red-brick building two months ago in Santa Ana.

“ESports is a key demographic for advertisers because players are hyper engaged and are early adopters and brands from big to small are noticing that,” said Ward. “If a brand associates with their community and their culture, gamers will have an affinity for them. It’s a very unique way to get in contact with potential customers.”

Ward, who once ran 200-person tournaments in college, says the last two months has “exceeded all of our expectations.” They’re already looking into bringing the big-venue feel that’s a throwback to the old-school land centers by expanding into locations in Austin, Chicago, Seattle and the Bay Area.

“We want to create a space where players, brands and game companies can come together and create a gaming community and culture around eSports,” said Ward. “We never wanted to replace the at-home gaming experience. We don’t think we can. We also know that we aren’t going to be a massive venue like the Staples Center. But we think there’s a lot of opportunities in between. It’s a unique platform for competition and expansion, and we’re very accessible.”

Segerstrale predicts a forward-thinking mobile game company will emerge in the next few years that will be three-to-five times the size from the biggest PC franchises. Can the one-year old Vainglory accomplish that

“We’re still in our humble infancy,” said Segerstrale. “We’re still babies when it comes to all of this. We’re learning. We’re really excited about the rapid growth of our garden.”

Razer is one of the biggest brand names in high-end gaming peripherals and equipment, while Lenovo is one of the top PC manufacturers in the world. The two recently announced a partnership to combine their strengths and develop a co-branded and co-marketed Razer Edition gaming systems based on the Lenovo Y series.

Lenovo’s Victor Rios has talked to [a]listdaily about the partnership, stating that “Razer has earned the respect and admiration of millions in the global gaming community.”

Now [a]listdaily speaks to Kevin Sather, Director of Systems Marketing at Razer, to further understand how this partnership enhances both companies.

How did Razer reach a partnership with Lenovo

Lenovo is a global technology leader and the number one PC maker. Their expertise in PC technology, supply chain, and manufacturing compliment Razer’s strengths, focus, and dedication to the PC gamer.

In what ways will the Razer brand and expertise enhance Lenovo’s products

Razer is a world leading lifestyle gamer brand specializing in connected devices and software for gamers, with 10 years of experience in the space. This strategic partnership to co-brand and co-market new special Razer Editions of Lenovo’s Y series gaming devices opens the door for future collaboration, including the potential to co-develop devices as well as cross-channel opportunities in the future to deliver the most immersive gaming experiences to gamers worldwide

How will this partnership expand the Razer brand to a broader audience

Lenovo is a technology leader and the number one PC maker, with a global “innovation triangle” which enables it to tap into global talent with major research centers in the U.S., China and Japan. There are over one billion gamers in the world, and they’ll be getting the best of both worlds, enjoying the combination of Lenovo’s hardware capabilities and performance of the Y Series devices, and Razer’s immersive connected technology and gamer focused expertise.

Razer has its own line of gaming systems, such as the Razer Blade. How will these co-branded systems fit in with that line-up

Each company will continue to produce and market their respective lines of gaming devices. The partnership is focused on combining the best elements of both brands into co-branded products that will be marketed as “Razer Edition” versions of Y Series devices.

How will Lenovo Y Series Razer Edition gaming systems be promoted

At first, it’ll be through our social channels. That’s part of the reason this was announced at DreamHack in Sweden. We wanted to show a prototype of a Lenovo Y Series Razer Edition desktop to an audience that is PC heavy. DreamHack was an ideal venue to share the news and show off the device, not only for those in attendance in Sweden, but gamers worldwide watching via live streams. We are excited to be able to share the products that will be born out of this partnership with our loyal fans all over the world. We create solutions for gamers, by gamers, and these new co-branded products will adhere to that core value.

“There are so many streamers out there now,” says Gunnar Optiks’ Community and Communications Manager, Chad Wingerd. “They’re not necessarily professional gamers, they’re just an up-and-coming personality.”