•• Pre-Order Bonus's for your game release (using Send/Receive Table URL)

StormyStudioStormyStudio United KingdomMember Posts: 3,989
edited March 2014 in Business and Marketing Theory

I've been thinking of other ways to make use of the super powerful Send/Receive Table URL.

To build buzz for an upcoming release along with a promo video and announcements on forums we could'nt do much more... well not for free anyway. Adding Pre-order bonus's has always been tricky as we lacked a controlled was of doing this. But now we can use our own server and the Send/Receive Table URL behaviors to control pre-orders and enable codes with user accounts.

Pre-orders are obviously nothing new, Batman Arkham Origins, did it very well with the limited edition Batman skins. Plus now everyone including my Mum seems to have pre-orders available. (*Edit: Turns out my Mum does'nt offer Pre-orders, limited edition has run out).

The game I'm creating will hopefully include a cartoon character creation setup, so it would be great to have some unique outfit packs available for those that pre-ordered.

It would also work really well if you were running your own crowd funded project (ie. kickstarter) for the game.

To try and do it before you'd have to email out a code that they could enter it into your game which would unlock the bonus. The problem before is the the code could then be shared around and anyone could use it so the bonus would not be at all limited.

Now we can use our own server, we could create 10, 100 or 100,000 unique codes for a limited edition bonus.

People that purchase it (or choose it on Kickstarter) are then emailed their unique code for the bonus (once the game is out). Once they enter the code it is check on there server and activated in the game, the code is saved to their user profile on your server (so they keep the bonus across devices/platforms) and the code is registered as 'used' on the server, and can no longer be re-used by another player.

There are some really interesting articles out there about pre-orders and what incentives to offer players to get them to put down some cash. It hasn't got to be limited to customisable outfits. You could obviously offer anything i.e. bundles of game credits for more than half there final app store retail price, access to extra levels of the game a month before the rest of the world (like a closed beta), weapons, vehicles, limited edition 'founder' badges, custom game interface skin.

Here's a great talk from Gabriel Hacker part from the studio 'Perfect World' makers of 'Dungeons and Dragons, Never Winter', 'Star Trek Online' and 'Forsaken'..discussing their pre-order packs and their surprising results.

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