Guess who’s back, back again. ZED RUNdown’s back, tell a friend.

Yes, that song is now stuck in your head. No, we’re not sorry about it.

With another week in the books, it’s time to flip back and throw some highlights on a few important pages you may have missed in the last chapter of ZED RUN. Let’s get into what you need to know as we wave goodbye to the first month of 2022.

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Rewind

Earlier this week, we announced the completed airdrop of special edition racehorse skins for the participating stable owners in ZED RUN’s millionth race. These rare, commemorative beauties represent a piece of ZED RUN history, and we envision excitedly spotting them on the racetrack for many more milestones to come. To commemorate the celebration, professional broadcaster Anthony Manton provided a call of the historic race.

Congratulations to all twelve stable owners! You’re a part of ZED RUN history.

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Tournament Tracker

Congratulations to the Maiden Cup 2.0 tournament champions! Winners took home a combined $106,000 prize pool, with Tournament A awarded $74,000 USD, and Tournament B pulling in $32,000 USD. In addition to being a Tournament A bracket champion, Back 2 Shuffle also took home the community-led Side Bet 2.0 tournament prize pool. Congrats on a big week at ZED RUN, GVG Genetics!

Following the Maiden Stakes 2.0, there will be a short break in tournament action as the team works to roll out new updates in February.

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Humans of VHS

Did you know Virtually Human Studio has a blog? On Medium, you can find company-related news, deep dives into thought leadership topics, and our Humans of VHS series where we highlight members of our team.

This past week the subject of the series was Rick Pearce and Mark Grentell, co-founders of Spectre Studios, a leading virtual reality production studio recently acquired by VHS. The duo gave us a glimpse into how they fell in love with the art of storytelling, and how their expertise will elevate ZED RUN to the next level. Give it a read!

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New: UX Roundup

Your experience playing ZED RUN is always captured by our UX team, so it only made sense for us to add a fortnightly update directly from the UX team members.

The UX Roundup series is a sibling to our Product Roundup, alternating each week in an effort to keep the community updated on the team’s progress and overall direction.  If you missed the first edition of our UX Roundup, click here to check it out.

In related news, Researcher Rebecca Harvey recently reached out to the community in search of BETA testers for the soon-to-be-reality racehorse retirement features. In other words, your racehorses are so close to retirement, they’re already looking for homes in Florida.

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User Feedback

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions on 3D racing! We learned the following:

• 3D racing is popular and well-liked in the racing community
• Users appreciate having control over their viewing environment
• On-screen displays can be intrusive, especially on mobile
• Variety is appreciated and helps racing events feel less repetitive
• Some would find additional data useful in the 3D racing view
• Users want more emotional connection with the viewing and winning experience

Below are a few infographics our team put together using your survey responses:

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To our community members who participated in this survey, we thank you. Your responses are vital in allowing us to consistently improve the user experience in a targeted and meaningful way.

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Creative Corner

Timewarp is here! Last week we revealed that you’d soon be able to rewind, replay, and otherwise obsess over your favourite 3D moments. The feature is now live and ready to use, so get out there, race, and relive the fun!

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New: Jockey Mode

Good news for all you adventure seekers of there — Jockey Mode is here, it’s real, and it’s spectacular. Just select the option, and you can view ZED RUN racing events from the best seat in the house: the POV of a jockey! Well, if we had jockeys. Which we don’t. But now you can visualise what it’d be like if you were one.

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Roadmap & Product Update

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• Daily tournaments are on schedule to debut next week. This marks a big step towards the Ultimate Tournament Experience outlined in our roadmap.
• Updates to race scheduling and a detailed look at improvements on the way and outlined in our latest community blog.
• Racehorse retirement is in advanced stages of development, with our team rolling out BETA testing of some features to community members this past week.
• Racehorse reclassification and discovery will launch in early February. These represent the first step towards our long term goal of revamping the ZED RUN class system.
• The ZED RUN token design phase is complete, and we’ll be sharing a glimpse of it in the coming weeks. Plans are underway for allocation and distribution. As the timeline in our roadmap indicates this is scheduled for Q1.

NOTE: The function of any token integrated into ZED RUN is subject to change. If you intend to acquire the token(s) on a secondary market, we hold no responsibility for the increase or decrease in the token(s) value. By nature, cryptocurrencies represent inherent risk and you should seek independent advice.

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NASCAR Announcement

The 2022 NASCAR Cup season begins February 6th with the Busch Light Clash exhibition race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. With that in mind, we’re excited to confirm we’ll be hosting a sample of the NASCAR events at ZED RUN in the coming weeks, including some NASCAR ZED PASS utility.

Like a battle on the racetrack, NASCAR and ZED RUN will be swapping paint all race season. Check back next week for some detailed partnership announcements.

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Community Tools

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Longtime ZED RUN users will tell you to a stable that community analytics savant MJ Gaming and the tools he’s created are one of the best places to start if you’re looking to discover your racehorse and create a racing gameplan.

Check out MJ’s newest update that has added a slew of new options that will undoubtedly help the community better inform themselves on their racehorse’s strengths and weaknesses.

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Content Creators

Zombie Racing was joined this week by our very own Mr. Product Comms himself Dan Steeden, to discuss a variety of ZED RUN product-related topics, what the changes mean, what’s up next, and a multitude of other topics. In case you missed it, check out the replay.

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The Community Cup

Our team is incredibly humbled by the generosity and kindness of the ZED RUN community, who have come together to run a special event supporting a fellow community member. The Community Cup begins Friday, January 28th starting at 7 PM EST with all proceeds going to Bryce from Sangudo Stables in support of his son Cameron’s battle with Leukemia.

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Bryce and Cameron recently joined the PonyPlug247 Twitch channel to talk more about the tournament. A list of rules and more information on The Community Cup can be found here.

Here at ZED RUN, we’re all #TeamCameron.

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