On Innovation

The future of news. Right now.

March 14, 2011

By Whitney Shefte, Video Journalist, @whitneyshefte

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is not working on innovations in journalism, but he is part of an innovative approach to mobile gaming. And since Tyson made an appearance at South by Southwest (SXSW) Sunday, that seemed to be reason enough to post about him on the blog.

Tyson came to promote an iPhone game, “Mike Tyson’s Main Event,” that mobile game developers at RockLive are launching later this month. RockLive president and CEO John Shahidi and chief product officer Sam Shahidi plan for Tyson to actively engage with players on Twitter and Facebook. Tyson says he is on board for the social networking, but it may take him a while to spell out all of his tweets. The plan is to use this crowdsourcing method to keep the game evolving. Fans will be able to suggest what celebrity characters they want in the boxing ring as RockLive makes updates. The Shahidi brothers smartly hope to use Tyson’s fame and fan engagement to fuel growth and ideas.

John and Sam Shahidi also hinted they may have something in the works for the sequel to “The Hangover,” the blockbuster movie where Tyson played himself. “We’re working on something really cool,” Sam said. John followed up by saying, “There will be involvement with ‘The Hangover’ and Warner Brothers.”

When asked why he wanted to be part of a game made exclusively for mobile platforms, Tyson went on a rant about money and strippers. Watch him explain this logic in the video.