New E-Commerce Features
June 24, 2020
Most of today’s updates for Boxel 3D have been website related. Believe it or not, I am also working on the first 10 levels, and boy they are feelin’ fresh!
Like all things in life, nothing is free (except for Boxel 3D of course). But realistically, all things require resources to stay alive, and that includes game development.
When I first launched Boxel Rebound on the Android, the game was sold for $1.99 (maybe a dollar, but I forget). I did this because I believed the product was worth that much, and I needed the extra cash. Turns out, the market was already saturated with similar games, and I walked away with less than $50 after the first year.
In an attempt to reach more players, I decided to launch the game on the Chrome Web Store as a free popup extension. Within 2 years, it managed to climb up to the top as one of the “Editors Picks”, and had almost 2 million active users. Players began requesting features that were outside my ability to produce (I was working full-time at a corporation as a web developer). Lots of people were even willing to pay for features, so I felt compelled to monetize the game.
Later that year, I added new features to Boxel Rebound such as 8 skins, cloud backups, a community browser, and sold the upgrade for $1. With millions of players, you’d think I hit the jackpot right?! Nope, but I happily make about $30 per month, and that basically covers the fees for hosting a website.
Although I am very thankful for Google’s payment gateway, the entire platform has many issues with my current workflow. As of now, it takes about 1 week for Google to review (and occasionally deny) each software update. If I break the game with a new feature, that’s 7 days that my customers have to wait… In addition, Google only supports a handful of locations (36) for purchase.
To make the shop more available, I decided to build my own platform using WordPress and Woocommerce (an eCommerce plugin). This gives me the option to easily create and manage digital products with more flexibility. This also allows customers to manage their own orders within the website
I will now switch gears back to level development. Thanks for reading!
