Most people assume a "gaming activation" only makes sense for a gaming brand. Two of the projects Vertex is proudest of prove otherwise: an interactive trial-play experience for one of the world's biggest entertainment IP owners, and a reading campaign for a book franchise, both built on the same underlying idea — that the fastest way to get someone invested in a piece of IP is to let them play inside it, not just look at it.
Pokopia Trial Play, for The Pokémon Company
Vertex runs Pokopia Trial Play experiences for The Pokémon Company — hands-on sessions where Vertex's own trained gaming consultants guide players through a customised build of the Pokopia software, walking them through a series of milestones designed to build familiarity and interest in the game rather than simply letting people wander through it unassisted.
The role of a gaming consultant here is easy to underestimate. Anyone can hand someone a controller. What makes a trial-play station actually convert curiosity into genuine interest is a person standing next to the player who knows exactly which milestone to point them towards next, when to let them figure something out themselves, and when to step in — the difference between a demo station nobody quite understands and one that sends people away actually wanting to play more.
The Hunger Games Reading Marathon, for Scholastic Asia
For Scholastic Asia's launch of The Tribute Trials and its accompanying Hunger Games Reading Marathon, the brief was almost the opposite problem: turn a book campaign into something physical and competitive. Vertex built this on its own PickleMaster system — a screen projecting the client's own IP and imagery, paired with custom targets built specifically for the campaign — so visitors weren't just handed a book to flip through, they were playing a game that was visually and thematically built entirely out of the campaign's own world.
The brands that get the most out of a gaming activation aren't gaming brands at all — they're brands with a world worth stepping into.
Why non-gaming brands keep coming back to this format
Across more than 200 custom digital assets built to date, the pattern Vertex keeps seeing is the same: a static display — a poster, a cover, a trailer on a loop — asks an audience to pay attention. An interactive station, built out of the same IP, asks them to participate, and participation is what people actually remember and talk about afterwards. A reading campaign competing for a teenager's attention against a phone screen needed to feel like play, not homework. A trading card and video game franchise introducing a new title to a trial audience needed hands-on time, not another trailer.
What goes into building one
Every branded gaming activation Vertex builds starts the same way a motorsport or esports project does: understand the client's existing world first — its characters, its visual language, its tone — then build custom software, projection or targeting hardware, and (where it matters, as with Pokopia Trial Play) trained staff around that world, rather than retrofitting the brand onto an off-the-shelf arcade game. It's a more involved build than renting a generic console station, but it's also the difference between an activation people walk past and one they queue for.
Have an IP you want people to experience, not just see?
Custom game builds, projection-based activations and guided play experiences — designed around your content, not a generic arcade cabinet.
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