Push The Button - playing sink the battleship for real.

Down in New Zealand the nutters at TOUCH/CAST actually came up with an idea that included sinking a battlesip the old fashioned way - with one hell of an explosion! An SMS version of the game battleship, with the objective being to locate the ‘virtual’ former HMNZS Wellington (F69). The overall winner would have the honor to single-handedly push the button to trigger explosions that would sink the real F69 - read more to see the event (quicktime).

The lucky winner was the 22-year-old student, Jo Smith and as you can see in the clip above, she pushed the button that sank the F69 on November 13th 2005 in front of an estimated spectator audience of over 100,00 on land, and over 220 vessels on the water.

This campaign also went on to become the biggest TXT game event in NZ’s history - I'm not in the least bit suprised I'd play to get a chance to blow up a ship, wouldn't you? End results; over 90,000 registered players - in an 8 day sign-up period and 2.5 million text messages sent from players to the game. Impressive!

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