BALANCED proudly sponsored Nicholls State University’s Geomatics program led by Dr. Balaji Ramachandran’s research. The Geomatics program equips students with essential skills in land surveying, construction surveying, and mapping. The Geomatics program equips students with essential skills in land surveying, construction surveying, and mapping. Through this program, students receive the necessary resources and opportunities to excel in their studies and prepare for positions in these related fields. These endeavors exemplified BALANCED’s commitment to fostering academic growth and community development, leading to their sponsorship of this program.

BALANCED also offered its monetary support to the Colonel Esports program, an organization dedicated to competitive gaming and community involvement. This sponsorship provides students with opportunities to pursue their passion for esports and develop valuable leadership and coaching skills.

To learn more about this outstanding achievement and the impact it will have on Nicholls State University, click on the link https://www.nicholls.edu/news/2023/03/30/nicholls-foundation-raises-over-1-million-after-its-sixth-give-n-day/

Additional information on Geomatics can be found here: https://www.nicholls.edu/applied-sciences/

And if you are interested in the Colonel Esports program, you can find more info here: https://www.nicholls.edu/club-sports/esports/

Overview

BALANCED Media|Technology is again partnering with the Esports Awards to provide the official companion app and interactive experience (known as an ‘extension’).

The live awards show will be broadcast live from the Resorts World Las Vegas theatre on Tuesday, December 12 at 7pm PST on the Twitch streaming platform.

The Esports Awards is an annual event that presents awards to the top organizations, professional players, and broadcast personalities in the esports industry. The Esports Awards extension by BALANCED is incorporated directly into the live stream and provides viewers with live information and updates regarding the categories, nominees, and winners. The extension also provides a fun and engaging way for the stream audience to interact with the stream and participate in the event.

Features

[NEW] Giveaways

New to this year’s Esports Awards, the companion extension has added the ability to conduct live giveaways connected to audience participation. This allows the Esports Awards to directly connect their viewers with their sponsors in ways that directly engage their audience.

Awards Information

• A central, dynamically updating list of award categories that provides up to the minute information regarding the upcoming award to be announced, the nominees for each category, and the winners of announced categories

• Each award category on the extension panel is an expandable list of nominees, with the winner of the category highlighted after it is announced

Choose with the Community

• The extension also features Battle Polls that allows users to become active participants of the show by presenting a series of two nominees from a pool per category in rapid succession for the stream-viewing community to vote for their own favorite finalists, with winners advancing until one choice reigns supreme
• Battle Polls is activated from its own tab page and the polling interface is displayed over a corner of the stream. The battle results, as well as the overall winner, are displayed at the end of each round, along with a scale showing how often the user’s choice aligns with the popular vote that updates after each vote.

Use the extension anywhere with the Twitch Mobile App

The Esports Awards Companion extension is also available integrated into the mobile Twitch app. Viewers can keep track of the event on the go or on a second screen as the extension provides them with up-to-the-minute information and the ability to engage in Battle Polls.

Overview

BALANCED Media | Technology partnered with Esports Awards to deliver an interactive experience that runs on the Twitch.tv streaming platform as an overlay extension. Used by over 45,6000 stream participants, the extension provided a way for the Esports Awards stream to deliver information regarding the show’s progress and results, and for its stream audience to actively participate in the event, providing viewers a sense of ownership.

The Esports Awards is an annual event that hands out awards to various organizations, professional players, and event hosts in the esports industry. This year, the Esports Awards has returned to the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas for its 2021 edition. The award winners were chosen by players around the world as well as the Esports Awards Panel.

Features

Awards Information

• A central, dynamically updating list of award categories that provides up to the minute information regarding the upcoming award to be announced, the nominees for each category, and the winners of announced categories
• Each award category on the extension panel is an expandable list of nominees, with the winner of the category highlighted after it is announced

Choose with the Community

• The extension also features Battle Polls that allows users to become active participants of the show by presenting a series of two nominees from a pool per category in rapid succession for the stream-viewing community to vote for their own favorite finalists, with winners advancing until one choice reigns supreme
• Battle Polls is activated from its own tab page and the polling interface is displayed over a corner of the stream. The battle results, as well as the overall winner, are displayed at the end of each round, along with a scale showing how often the user’s choice aligns with the popular vote that updates after each vote

Go Mobile on the Twitch Mobile App

The Esports Awards Companion extension also made available on the mobile version of Twitch. Viewers could keep track of the event with up-to-the-minute information as well as engage in Battle Polls using their phone or other mobile device.

CEO Robert M. Atkins and Studio VP Jay Halderman attended the event in person and Technical Director Cameron Ferguson was also at the Awards to provide live extension updates. Esports Awards Head of Partnerships gave the BALANCED extension high praise, stating that the extension was so useful that he and other Esports Awards personnel were using the extension to keep track of the show progress and results.

Overview

The BALANCED extension continues to be an important part of Complexity-Limit’s Twitch livestream broadcast, as over 800,000 stream participants have engaged with the extension, tracking Complexity’s raid progress over the multi-day event, seeing live stats and player rosters, getting information on bosses, and engaging with fun activities such as competitive trivia and games of Whack-A-Gnoll, which also creates training data for computer vision machine learning algorithms. Extension users also earn points for engaging inside Complexity’s streams, which levels them up to achieve higher scores in the Whack-A-Gnoll game and a better chance at topping the community leaderboards. BALANCED’s innovative Sponster® promotion system has also garnered millions of views to showcase channel sponsors, promote calls to action, and keep viewers entertained.

Complexity-Limit, the reigning World of Warcraft Race to World First champions, launches their bid for a third consecutive Race to World First title on July 13th. GameSquare has also recently announced acquisition of Complexity to combine their winning track record in competitive esports with the Toronto-based company’s sales and branding expertise to build a new global esports powerhouse. BALANCED partners with Complexity Gaming again this year to feature our esports interactive on Complexity-Limit’s streams again as Complexity-Limit defends their title.

“Returning partners will also contribute to various aspects of Complexity-Limit’s RWF broadcast and production… To make for an immersive and professional viewing experience, Texas-based Balanced Media Technology (BMT) will streamline asset creation with Raider.io from World of Warcraft’s API to seamlessly inject real-time game stats, including boss kills, position rank, and instance class compilation, into the broadcast.”

New Features

The extension now comes in a brand-new color scheme, along with the following new features:

• An improved player roster that allows streamers to dynamically load in information of Limit’s player characters linked to World of Warcraft’s Armory that viewers can access
• A video gallery for streamers to feature clips

The extension retains all the features of the past raid, including a command center to view stats and follow up on raid progress, a leaderboard showing the place and progress of top guilds worldwide, a lineup of caster talent that will be heading up the event broadcast with links to interact with them on their Twitter feeds, and activities to engage with alongside the stream. Learn more about BALANCED’s first release of the extension here.

Go Mobile on the Twitch Mobile app

• The extension also works on the mobile version of Twitch. Follow the action on your phone or mobile device, play trivia, earn XP, and manage your player profile on a second screen or on the go.
• Whack-A-Gnoll is a desktop exclusive activity

For charity, Complexity-Limit and other guilds are supporting Rise Above the Disorder (RAD), a non-profit organization dedicated to removing the barriers of access and affordability for mental health care.

COMPLEXITY-LIMIT SETS SIGHTS ON THIRD CONSECUTIVE RACE TO WORLD FIRST TITLE

 

One of BALANCED’s software engineers, Cameron Ferguson, who is also a professional streamer who broadcasts as GhostFromTexas was recently highlighted in high-profile online outlets Wired magazine and Buzzfeed when a stream of him being forced to switch from the suddenly shuttered Mixer platform to Twitch went viral.

We’re sorry Ghost (Cameron) had to go through losing the streaming platform he had put so much of his heart and effort into building and evangelizing, but it’s cool to see one of our BALANCED team get this kind of attention and we wish him success on his new streaming platform, Twitch.

Check out Cameron’s quote in the Wired’s full article

BALANCED partnered with Complexity Gaming, the Jerry Jones co-owned esports gaming team, to create an interactive experience (known as an extension) that delivered up to date progress and player updates right inside Complexity’s Twitch stream. This extension also incorporated a HEWMEN™-enabled game, The Omega Cluster, which allowed esports event viewers to interact with a data science problem related to SMU cancer treatment research. The extension also connected the viewing audience with an easy way to respond to Complexity’s donation drive benefitting Extra Life, the gaming-centric fundraising arm of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and the extension helped Complexity to raise over $10,ooo for Extra Life during the event.

Complexity-Limit was ultimately able to take the World First title, breaking the 10 year drought for North American teams. The Complexity-Limit team took 10 days to progress through the entire raid, needing 274 attempts to defeat the final boss. The most popular Complexity stream was watched for over 2.4 million combined hours and BALANCED was there to keep those viewers informed and engaged. BALANCED’s extension received 6.7 million views and nearly 13 thousand rounds of Omega Race were played.

Background

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) introduced by Activision Blizzard in 2004.  WoW has been played by over 100 million people in 244 countries and territories.

Complexity-Limit is the world’s top ranked World of Warcraft guild and a division of Complexity Gaming, one of North America’s longest standing and most successful esports organizations. Owned by Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and investor John Goff, Complexity’s esports teams have won more than 140 championships in nearly 30 game titles over its 15+ year history.