Corona Native and Former Football Star Creates Gaming App

It has been a year of ups and downs for Corona, Calif., native and former University of Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Taylor Martinez.

The 23-year-old star football player made news when his contract with the Philadelphia Eagles was voided due to a failed physical, likely attributed to a plate tear injury in his foot that also impacted Martinez’s senior year of play. Family and friends publicly expressed how disappointed the talented player was, especially in light of how perfect of a match they viewed his pairing to be with the team.

After the heartbreak of the voided NFL contract, he set his eyes on one of his lesser-known talents: app development.

Martinez began crafting websites in high school for fun after his father bought him Adobe Dreamweaver, a software for creating digital content and platforms. He continued to play around with engineering digital content during his time at Nebraska, creating a game app called Follow-the-Pattern in his sophomore year.

He created several game apps through his company, TTM3 Inc., although these days Martinez outsources the actual app engineering and design to third-party builders. Previous games include Tiny Ninja Jump and Wobble Wobble, but his previous ideas were forerunners to the app Martinez believes will change the business model: Stupid FAST.

Stupid FAST, which debuted in September, is a simplified football game in app form that essentially gives the user control over a pixelated running back. As the character progresses quickly across the moving landscape, the user must increase his speed to outpace an opposing player while also timing jumps to avoid oncoming obstacles.

Given Martinez’s background, it’s no surprise the game he created reflects his own passions.

“I worked for months building a football app that I hoped would share my love for the sport with other people,” Martinez said in the app’s press release. “I thought of what motivated me to play football. A big ten championship, a bowl victory, being the best were all things that pushed me.”

At the heart of Martinez’s pursuit, his sports past spilled into his future ventures.

“I created Stupid FAST because I miss football,” the former quarterback said.

The app is a simple game, but the truly special aspect of Stupid FAST is its “reward system” model, according to Martinez.

The reward system offers players entry into a raffle for real prizes – the likes of Cutters football gloves up to GoPro cameras – after completing high scores, usually after every few tries. The raffle resets every day, and the prizes change at the creators’ discretion.

Similarly, says Martinez, the software offers “instant rewards” randomly hidden in the game that can activate and inform users they have won smaller prizes, like headphones.

“There’s no other app that has this concept. It’s the future for apps,” Martinez said.

It seems that users agree. Recent analytics showed that up to 55 percent of the game’s players are seeing the rewards and accepting them, which is an exceptional interaction rate for apps, according to Martinez. The app – which is free – already has 4.5 out of 5 stars on Apple’s app store, and that’s with only 16 reviews.

The game has followed suit with other popular modern games in linking with social media, allowing players to share their scores and prizes on their Facebook and Twitter pages. It also offers in-app purchases for services like extra lives and bonus abilities for the character.

“Hopefully people like it and it can spread. Once it spreads, it’s going to catch on fast,” Martinez said. “It’s only going to keep on growing once people figure it out.”

When asked about future app ventures, Martinez said he’s just focusing on promoting Stupid FAST for now.

“[I’m] excited to see where this goes,” he said.

Photos courtesy of Taylor Martinez via Instagram.