Live Entertainment · Mobile Gaming · Daily Broadcast words with friends live × zynga

Words With Friends Live was a nightly in-game trivia broadcast embedded directly inside Words With Friends 2, Zynga's flagship mobile word game. Zynga needed a production company to build and run the show from the ground up. We handled everything: writers room, talent, production, and broadcast for a full daily run.

the writing room: late night meets mobile gaming.

We built a writers room for a daily live show, which meant staffing it with people who could write fast, write funny, and write on a schedule that left no room for a slow week. We brought in writers with roots in the Groundlings and late night television, writers who knew how to make a game show question feel like a punchline rather than a test. Tom Johnson and Glenn Clements led the room. Glenn also served as lead producer on the show, overseeing the full production chain from the writers table through broadcast.

the format: live inside the game.

The show ran nightly inside the Words With Friends 2 app, letting millions of players compete in real time against each other on word and trivia questions while a live host guided the broadcast. AlphaCat and Derek Mehn served as on-camera talent, holding the energy of a live show night after night across a full season. Oxford Dictionaries partnered with the show for in-game word definitions, giving players a learning hook alongside the competition.

the season finale: garth brooks closes the show.

For the season finale, we delivered a shortlist of talent options to Zynga. They booked Garth Brooks, the number one selling solo artist in US history and an avid Words With Friends player, to co-host the finale on May 1, 2019. Brooks broadcast live from Zynga's San Francisco headquarters, bringing one of country music's biggest names into a mobile game for the first time. The finale aired at 6:15PM PT and drew an audience that matched the scale of the season.

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