Zappware is the first company (in Belgium) to use a game as a ‘red-button’ application for an interactive tv case. The interactive chapter is added to VT4’s Temptation Island and it’s in fact a strip poker game to keep people on the channel instead of zapping away during commercial breaks. Last year the iDTV company from Hasselt launched a romance test where the participants could find their own personalized ‘romantic profile’ at the end of the program. This year, they opted for a game to keep the digital viewer chained to the VT4 channel. A game with the same depth and profundity as the show: strip poker. Every Monday and Thursday night around 10.15 PM, during the commercial breaks of Temptation Island, you can play strip poker for free… 8 weeks in a row. When the show’s over you can still play again through VT4’s ‘DigiText’ section. Players get 30 (fictional) Euros to start with and once they’ve reached 100 Euros, Melissa (on Mondays) and Amina (on Thursdays) will start to strip. Every time you win you get to see a picture on which the two bachelorettes from Temptation island will wear fewer and fewer clothes. Every 100 Euros the player wins, a new pic is shown.
If you think it won’t work, you can guess again. About 5% of the digital viewers already tried to play during the first episode. Not bad if you keep in mind there hasn’t been any advertising for it (yet), apart from a mention on the digital ‘interactive landing page’. Reminds me of the good old days in 1995 where you could play strip-tetris on your 386 and all that. Totally pointless but hey, sex still sells. Even through digital tv games during a commercial break.