Has anyone (or know of anyone) who has implemented a free to play, micropayment item sales game with Unity?
Or has anyone implemented an ecommerce system with Unity as a front end?
Would love to have a discussion about this…
I designed one for a project, but the project never took off. I’d be happy to share what I know, if that helps. What specifically did you want to know?
Thanks,
Galen
Thanks Galen.
First questions are regarding the interaction between the Unity Player and the back end.
Were the credits, items, and cart displayed inside the Unity player?
Or were all transactions done in the browser with purchased items only showing up in the player as a usable object?
How often did you have to call from the Unity player to check for purchases?
I guess I’m trying to find a basic architecture to start with.
Well, first, you need a “backend” solution, something you can interact with using basic web requests, I personally like web services, but it’s up to you. The Unity client is just the presentation layer. There isn’t, to my knowledge, any Unity e-commerce client packages (but if there’s enough interest I could be persuaded to write one 
). The shopping cart, purchase process, orders, etc… are all custom work you need to add. You also need a strategy for handling game elements (if that’s what you’re selling). For example, if you let players buy temporary items, then need to time out, if it’s permanent, how do they get the items back if they change computers, etc… Oh, and in that case how do you prevent theft (within reason)? There are a number of considerations just on the client side.
Micropayments are a separate topic. Credit cards, most often used in e-commerce, do charge you a fee per transaction, so very small purchases (which have the greatest appeal to this market) may not be very profitable if you try to bolt on a traditional e-commerce system. What I designed was much like iTunes, where you allow players to put “money” into an account and let them use that up. You may also want to partner with someone who has “game play” cards out in stores. There is a company in South Korea that has made a fantastic success of free games that use micropayment strategy for profit, I can’t remember their name right now, but they were profiled in Game Developer Magazine back in Sept/Oct. As always, there are the usual e-commerce considerations, like legal issues, security, privacy, theft, etc…
It’s a pretty big set of topics to sum up.
I hope this helps,
Galen
In regards to your credit card comment,
most of these micropayment games have you buy tokens, or coins, or whatever, in bulk via credit card purchases. Typically people buy them once a month. For example, 200 tokens for $10.
Then, using these tokens, they make as many micropayment purchases with your game store as they want in that month. Items in your store range from 5 tokens to 25 tokens, so someone can make a handful of micropayments throughout the month, but only have to pay “real” money once a month.
Nexon? (Nexon - Wikipedia)
Yes, that’s them!
True, actual money is converted to some form of in game money. In the example of Nexon, most of their items sell for below a dollar (as I understand it), with many below 50 cents equivalent in game money. The ability to purchase cash cards in any local store seems to dramatically increase the volume of impulse buyers, who have no where to spend that money except in your game(s). Apple, of course, uses the same strategy with iTunes.
Cheers,
Galen