A smart mobile in-app purchasing solution for gaming community

Abstract

In the current society, mobile games are often used by numerous individuals. It is a well-known fact that in-app purchases are required for many gamers, in order to improve the gaming success and gain competitive advantage among the other players. In the perspective of the developers, in-app purchasing done by the gaming individuals is the main revenue stream, but in the developing countries including the Sri Lankan context, the players do not tend to purchase these, since there is no financial benefit other than succeeding in the game. The other reason for the reluctance of using In-app Purchases is that the credit card details should be provided to purchase them. This is an issue faced by the players by not being able to utilize the total advantages provided by the game. If these purchasing by the players is increased, Mobile Game Developers will be able to gain the opportunity to expand their market and increase their revenues. The solution is to use Virtual Coins instead of Actual Coins, which includes three parties to use the system developed by the organization i.e. the players, the game developers and retail distributors. The process involves a few steps. The retail distributor could assign a discount to the relatively low demanded products, in order to make the sales high. Instead of giving them the monetary discounts, the owner could purchase virtual coins from the portal, and assign those coins instead of the discount, which will be received by the customers who are registered in system. This will increase the sales of the grocery item rather than just giving a discount. The customers could use those coins he/she earned by buying a day-to-day item, to purchase the Gaming Objects (Usually provided by In-app Purchases). This will give the customer to use the money he spent to buy a good/service to purchase gaming benefits, without exposing the credit card. The game developers who use portal API to develop games will be gaining a revenue via the purchases done by the players. The system was developed using the programming languages PHP, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Javascript, C# and technologies such as XAMPP, MySQL, Visual Studio and Unity 3D. This system would undoubtedly be a unique solution facilitated to three arenas of business.