Game Overview
Protect the Pot is a prediction game where players are given a starting balance, or pot, and try to hold on to as much of it as possible across a fixed sequence of questions. Unlike other Xtremepush games, there is no Prizes section to configure. The starting balance is gifted to every player when they join, and whatever balance they have left when the last question is settled is the amount they win.
Each question presents two competing outcomes, for example, two teams in a match. Instead of picking a single winner, players split their current balance between the two options. For example, a player with a £100 pot could place it all on one team, split it evenly, or weight it however they like, such as £87.50 on Arsenal and £12.50 on Manchester City.
Once you enter a result, each player's pot changes based on how they split their bet:
Winner: The player placed the larger share of their pot on the winning side. They keep that share and only lose the smaller amount they placed on the other side.
Incorrect: The player placed the larger share of their pot on the losing side. They lose that larger amount and keep the smaller share placed on the winning side.
Eliminated: The amount a player loses is their entire remaining pot. The player takes no further part in the campaign.
Bet Missed
If a player does not make a selection before answering the first question of the campaign, they are excluded (treated as if they never entered the campaign).
If for any successive question they miss the selection deadline, they will lose 50% of their remaining pot for every question they miss.
Players can review their past questions and results at any point during the campaign, and refer to an in-game FAQ for common questions about how the pot works.
Prerequisites
Send your Figma file of your designs to your account manager at Xtremepush. We will use this to create an asset pack for you to upload, which includes all the required images. This asset pack forms the front-end of your game. To get you started, we can also provide a standard Figma file of the game design.
User Segments: To target your game to specific players, you'll need pre-configured segments. These must be created on the Xtremepush platform before you start. For more information, see Before You Create a Game Campaign.
Game Setup
Create Game Campaign
A campaign is the container for a single run of Protect the Pot. It defines how much every player starts with, how many questions they will face, and who is eligible to play.
In the Campaigns tab, click Create campaign and provide the following:
Name: A unique and descriptive name for the campaign. This is used to generate the campaign's slug, which forms part of the game's embed URL.
Timezone: The timezone that applies to the campaign's dates, including its Starts At and Ends At values and any time slots you configure.
Starts At and Ends At: The period during which the campaign is active. The Starts At date is also used as the visible from date for the campaign's first question.
Balance: The starting pot every player receives the first time they access the game, for example,
100. This value uses whichever currency you configure below.Number of Questions: The total number of questions in the campaign. This sets the overall length of the game. It works alongside the Locked From and Visible Until dates on each individual question, described below, to control the pace at which questions are released, whether that is several times a day, once a week, or spread across an entire season.
Use Segments: Turn this on to target the campaign at specific players. When enabled, two additional fields appear: Customer Segment, the segment of players who are eligible to play, and Excludes Segment, a segment you want to block from playing, for example, bonus abusers. Both must be created on the Xtremepush platform beforehand, see Prerequisites above.
Currency Format, Currency Code, and Currency Symbol: Together these define how balances are displayed to players, for example,
en-GB,GBP, and£.
Xtremepush admin access to the Games Hub, including who can create and edit campaigns, is managed through user roles. For more information, see Roles and Permissions for Games Hub.
A campaign also has its own Time Slots, which restrict the game to specific windows within each calendar day. Xtremepush creates one full-day time slot for each day of your campaign automatically, which you can edit if you need to restrict access further. For more information, see Manage Time Slots (Optional).
Create Game Questions
Question Configuration
Each question in Protect the Pot represents a single binary outcome, for example, which of two teams will win a match. Questions are created in two steps: first you set when the question is available, then you configure how it appears to players once it has been saved.
In the Questions tab, click Create Question and provide the following:
Title (Internal): An internal name for the question. This is not shown to players.
Locked From: The date and time players can no longer submit or change their split.
Visible Until: The date and time the question is removed from the main game screen. Players can still view it in their history after this point.
Questions run in a fixed sequence, one after another, for the entire campaign:
A question becomes available for wagering as soon as the previous question is no longer visible. For the first question in a campaign, the campaign's Starts At date is used as the visible from date.
If you do not enter a result for a question before the next question's visible window begins, the game pauses until you do. Any question with fewer than 12 hours left in its visible window when this happens is skipped automatically. For example, if question B is visible from 9:00 to 23:00 and question A's result is entered at or after 11:00, question B is skipped and players move straight from question A to question C.
Question Layout References
Once a question has been saved, click the edit icon to configure how it appears to players. These Layout References fields only appear once a layout asset pack has been uploaded to the campaign's Assets tab, see Customise Game Design below.
Question: The question text shown to players, for example, Will Arsenal or Manchester City win?
Left Label and Right Label: The names of the two competing outcomes, for example, the two team names.
Left Image and Right Image: The images shown for each competing outcome, for example, team logos.
Score: The final score, entered once the result is known, for example, 2 - 3. If you leave this blank, the game displays VS instead.
Question Result
When editing an existing question an additional field is available in the Modify Question section.
Result: The outcome of the question, Left, Right, or Cancelled. Once a value is entered the balance changes described in Game Overview above are triggered immediately for every player who made a pick.
Score: When setting the result make sure to also enter the final score. If you leave this blank, the game displays VS instead.
Customise Game Design
Upload Assets
In the Assets tab, upload the asset pack provided to you by Xtremepush. This file contains the game's images and a .pkg layout file that sets the overall appearance of the game, including which Layout References fields are available on each question. If required, you can replace any of the image assets provided to you. For more information, see Replace Assets.
Replace Texts
In the Texts tab, you can update the messages shown to players in specific scenarios:
Message | Trigger condition |
|---|---|
Player not eligible | The player is not in the campaign's configured Customer Segment, or is in its Excludes Segment. |
Campaign not available | The player attempts to access the campaign outside of its active time slot, or accesses a question that is no longer live. |
Campaign not started | The campaign's Starts At date is in the future. |
Campaign ended | The campaign's Ends At date has passed. |
Please try again later | A temporary error occurred. The player should try accessing the game again shortly. |
Some Parameters Missing | Required parameters are missing from the game URL, or the player's authentication token is missing or invalid. |
Multiple segment assigned | The player matches more than one of the campaign's configured segments. |
Launch and Monitor
Launch Game
To launch your game, you must embed it on your website. For added security, you can also use a JWT token to ensure that only authenticated users are able to play.
For more information, see the following pages:
Monitor Game
The Answers tab gives you a full log of every pick made in the campaign:
Id: The unique identifier for the answer.
Player: The customer ID of the player who made the pick.
Question: The question the pick relates to.
Answer: The side the player placed the larger part of their pot on, Left or Right, Skipped if they made no pick, or 50% if their pot was split evenly.
Bet: The amount the player placed on the side shown in the Answer column.
Initial Balance: The player's pot before this question was resolved.
Correct: Whether the player's pick for this question was correct.
Updated At: When this record was last updated, for example, when the result was processed.
The Players tab lists every player who has accessed the campaign:
Account: The customer ID of the player.
Balance: The player's current pot.
Last Question: The most recent question the player has a recorded answer for.
Created At: When the player first accessed the campaign.
Both tabs can be filtered and exported as a CSV file using Export Filtered Data.