‘Reverse the Odds’ wins two broadcast digital awards

‘Reverse the Odds’, our groundbreaking mobile game that allows players to help beat cancer whilst rebuilding the world of a loveable race of creatures, has secured an impressive double-win at the 2015 Broadcast Digital Awards. The game picked up the awards for ‘Best Game’ and ‘Best Content Partnership or AFP’ whilst Maverick also received a further nomination in the ‘Best App or Website for Programmes’ category for our ‘My Mindchecker’ suite of mental health apps.

During the same week, Reverse the Odds was also nominated for a Cannes Lionin the mobile game category.

This follows hot on the heels of a win for ‘Reverse the Odds’  in the ‘Digital Programme: Children and Young People’ category at 2015 International Digital Emmys and news that it has been nominated in the ‘Digital Creativity’ category of the 2015 Television Craft BAFTAs.

Reverse The Odds is a free puzzle game where each level you play helps in the fight against cancer. Developed by Maverick and Chunk Digital for Channel 4, the game is a partnership with Cancer Research UK and Zooniverse.

Available for App Store, Google Play and Amazon App Store, the game is aimed at casual players of all ages. In playing the game every user aids in the work of Cancer Research UK by analysing real cancer slides as they progress through the game story. The more people play the game, and the longer they play for, the more Cancer Research UK’s scientists are helped.

The game story tells of a girl who cares for a magical world populated by tiny creatures called “The Odds”. But when the girl becomes too tired, the creatures and the world become grey and lifeless, so she enlists the help of players around the world to play through over 350 levels revitalising the Odds, and restoring the world from a desolate wasteland back into an amazing and colourful wonderland.

Watch our game guide >

Since it launched in October 2014 over 3 million slides have been analysed by players across the globe. The game was nominated for a prestigious TIGA Award in 2014 and was featured by numerous gaming blogs as their game of the day as well as being promoted on the front page of the Amazon App Store and Google Play. The Nominet Trust named Reverse The Odds as one of the 100 examples of digital technology changing the world for the better. The game garnered media coverage in The Guardian and on Sky News, whilst our partnership with youth skewing YouTube channel Daily Mix was a vital part of the success of the multiplatform campaign. We brought together two of the UK’s biggest YouTube stars, Joe Sugg and Jim Chapman, and got them to set their followers an Instagram challenge to analyse as many slides as possible in a given period of time. This video was viewed over 75,000 times on the day of release, with players from across the world taking part and the winning player analysing over 700 slides on their own.

The most important aspect of the project was to provide the Stand Up 2 Cancer TV show with a powerful legacy device to keep viewers engaged after it had finished broadcasting. Through in-show pushes and public announcements around Stand Up To Cancer shows, plus pre-roll adverts served to on demand viewers, the response from the game players was nothing short of incredible  A quarter of a million classifications were carried out in the 24 hour period around the SU2C live show – prompted by in show mentions and calls to action sent to everyone who donated money on the night. Even more importantly, when a comparison analysis was carried out to look at the accuracy of the classifications in Reverse The Odds against individual pathologists working on their own, it was the citizen scientists that generated the more accurate results – a remarkable outcome.