- 05/31/2012
MMOs and other game genres started having challenging discussions when free-to-play came to the market to decide if they would move to a free-to-play model with micro-transactions. With City of Heroes on its last legs, it was clear it would need to convert to a free-to-play model to stay competitive. Even though it did not save COH, it was a financial improvement over the monthly subscription model.
When the IP converted to free-to-play, we made a few changes to our marketing and game sites.
- Add authentication to any marketing or game sites.
- Allow users to sign up for game accounts on site.
- Provide a micro-transaction storefront on site.
A separate development team handled the billing controls for players in Austin, TX. We had to create micro-transaction storefronts when the business model changed to free-to-play. There wasn't much interaction between the billing team and studio marketing teams, so they wanted the front-end development to move to our team (Interactive Services) rather than being managed by the billing team. To create storefronts, we worked with the billing team to create an API that exposes cart and checkout controls.
It was a big project, but we managed to create a user-friendly storefront while maintaining the game's aesthetic that was used on the site as well as in-game.
