CASE STUDIES : MindGammon - Online Game Development

MindGammon Inc the company that patented a new board game “Mindgammon” promotes it by selling game boards and accessories online as well as conducting national and international Mindgammon Championships. The important aspect of the marketing strategy is unique online game that was developed by us.

Challenge

The purpose of the project was to provide Mindgammon Inc. with the online Mindgammon game. The game had to be based on the real game invented by our client’s company. The online version of the game had to have manifold features and possibilities for the online players: registration on the site, ability to buy any number of points players like, opportunity to invite online players and to be joined to them, etc.

The main objective of the project was to create online game itself and introduce ecommerce solution for selling products (game boards, T-shirts, accessories) manufactured by Mindgammon Inc taking into consideration all the requirements and client’s preferences.

There were a number of major challenges that we faced as we started work on the project:

Detailed Functional Specification: The work out of the detailed specification taking into consideration the specific character, originality and game logic of Mindgammon board game;

Time constraints: The demo version of the game had to be delivered within a month of starting date to be presented on the International Toy Fair in New York. Our team accomplished this mini challenge successfully without any quantity deterioration;

Compatibility of flash animation and PHP: Introduction of flash animated parts on the front-end of the game and PHP in back-end and xml package files to connect them.

Solution

The scope of the whole project predetermined its duration and exhausting but exciting work on the Game. The team of our experienced PHP and Action Script developers managed to successfully deploy online version of the Mindgammon within 4 months. Our Content Management System allowed administrator of the site view all statistics on the site, edit text information with the help of built-in WYSIWYG text editor, charge fees from the people registered on the site with the help of Paypal integration introduced on the site, access any player’s account and contact information to let them know what on-line tournaments will be held in future, organize and run online tournaments. Forum implementation helped new members to learn a lot of information about “enigmatic” world of Mindgammon game.

Technologies Utilized

PHP 4.1.2;

Smarty, AJAX, Java Script;

MySQL 4.1;

Flash 8;

PHPBB Forum.

Results

We met all the initial requirements and moreover suggested and implemented extra features that would facilitate the management of the game process both for players and the administrator of the site. User-friendly graphic interface and a bunch of necessary options for the player to enjoy the game, integration of flash animated parts and sounds has liven up the site and made this game “a pleasure to play”. The administrator of the site could also enjoy opportunities to manage the game with the help of tools introduced in back-end. The client was so impressed by the professionalism shown by our team that decided to continue our productive cooperation and introduce “played VS computer” game mode introducing artificial intellect.

Customer benefits

Cost and Time Advantage. The system was developed fully offshore and total costs of the project are 5-6 times lower compared with the onsite model;

Efficient technical support of the game application and its further development without stopping current game running;

Unique design and user-friendly graphic interface that incorporates all necessary functions both for the players and administrator of the site.

Categories: Offshore Development Center, Web Development, E-commerce, Marketing/PR, Media and Entertainment, Flash Server, PHP, PERL, Content Management System, E-commerce