Monetizing games with In-App Payments
This guest post was written by Beau Harrington,
Senior Development Director, Kabam Cross-posted
with the Google
Commerce BlogKabam was part of the initial launch of Google+
Games with two game titles,
Dragons
of Atlantis and
Edgeworld, and we recently
added
Global Warfare. For
these games, we integrated
Google
In-App Payments and we’re pleased with our games’ monetization to date. There are a
couple things we learned along the way that we’re happy to share with the community.
Integrating In-App PaymentsIntegrating In-App Payments in our games was very simple, especially when compared to
other payment platforms. There is excellent
documentation available,
complete with examples for each step of the purchase flow. We also used open-source libraries
such as
ruby-jwt to generate
the tokens required for each purchase option.
We designed our games and
purchase pages around the expectation of instant feedback, making sure to incorporate page
loads or refreshes wherever possible. For example, in Edgeworld, a player attacking an enemy
base can load the list of Platinum options instantly, without waiting for the list of payment
options to load. After their Platinum purchase, the player is immediately brought back to the
game, with their new currency and items waiting for them.
Pro
tip: strive to reduce purchaser frictionOne of the keys to
maximizing revenue is to remove as much friction as possible from the purchase flow, making
sure as many people as possible get from one step of the flow to the next. Many payment
platforms send players to their own website and multi-page checkout flow. The Google In-App
Payments approach allows us to keep players on our game page for the entire flow, making sure
we can manage more of the process and reduce abandonment.
Additionally,
the player's credit card information is stored securely, so once a player has made a purchase
anywhere using In-App Payments, their information is available for future purchases without
additional data entry. Finally, JavaScript callbacks provided by In-App Payments allow us to
show the effects of the purchase immediately, improving customer satisfaction.
General recommendationsFor those
experienced in this space, the following may seem rudimentary. At the same time, I’d be remiss
not to include these recommendations as they are important to developing a successful game
payments system:
- Make sure your payment flow is as seamless as
possible, never giving the player the opportunity to get bored waiting for something to
load.
- Record and monitor each step of the payment flow in order
to identify potential problems.
- Run A/B tests on your purchase
option page to optimize the number of players who make a purchase, as well as the amount of
the average purchase.
We are proud to be among the first
companies on Google’s exciting new monetization platform, and we look forward to the
continuing growth in features, functionality and developer tools.
Beau Harrington is Senior Development Director of Kabam Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
