Foundations of Hope - The Referral System

Game Name: Foundations of Hope Online
Technology: TGE + MoM Kit
Genre: Christian Fantasy MMORPG
Company: Lethal Games Corporation
Game Website: Foundations of Hope Online

I decided to take a break from modelling and finally tried implementing a referral system that I have been really wanting to do. What I thought would take a couple days, has taken a couple weeks. We also had a new baby boy three weeks ago, so a bunch of time has been there as well.

But finally the referral system is completed and I am pretty pleased with the results. The long journey was very educational in that it took me into php territories that I had never been to. Definitely alot of knowledge I will be able to use later.

The Foundations of Hope website is built on top of an osCommerce base. The forums are phpBB but it is tied into osCommerce so that there is only one login. So what I ended up having to do was splice together an osCommerce referral system and phpBB referral system so they both worked in conjuction with each other. Wow. What a task. There were even a couple times I ended up doing a "I did it " dance after spending a couple days stuck on certain parts. Thankfully my office is in the basement and nobody was able to witness this horendous sight.

So what I ended up having is a Referral Center in the forums that a user can use to send out referral e-mails and see stats of who they have referred and who is the top referrer at the site. When a friend creates a new account and enters the referrer's e-mail address, both phpBB and osCommerce will pull that information. Although I am still undecided on the payment system of the game, my current idea is to have a monthly charge for those players that want to play over 20 hours per month. Although it sounds odd, I want to reward those players that do not lose focus on real life. 20 hours will give them time to play, but not feel like they 'have' to play because they are paying a monthly fee.

So even though there might be a monthly charge for those players that want to play more than 20 hours, it is low enough that I am trying to offer ways for players to not have to pay. Players will receive 10% worth of reward points in the store from sales of people they have referred. I am rounding everything up, so a minimum is 1 point for any sale over $0.00. I am also going to offer referral points for other curricular activities. The whole point of the referral system is to help market the books and game. So I plan on creating book/game brochures and giving referral points to players that take the brochure to libraries. I plan to have contests, and other fun activities on ways to also recieve store points that can be used toward purchasing the unlimited online game play or even toward books, or anything else I might have in the store. So why even have a monthly charge? To have the users help market the game. People are more likely to do a little marketing if they will get something in real world cash value out of it. As most here know, as an indie, you have to be creative in marketing methods.

For the forums, what I have setup is that when a user signs up, the person that referred them will receive forum cash. I have a forum store(not yet visible) that I will bring out later so that users can purchase clothes and accessories for their avatars.

And hopefully, once I get further into the MoM technology, I will be able to make it that a user will receive in game cash for referring friends. The goal is to hit the users at multiple levels(real world, in game, forums) so no matter what their primary interest, they have a reason for referring people to the website.

The store part of the website has always been hidden, but now I have opened it up and also have it linked to PayPal. That was a small, but nice task to finally get achieved as well. I have been wanting away to sell personal signed books for those interested. Now I can. I also have the full version of the eBook now available for download in the store for free for people to test out the store. Again more marketing. Read the eBook, and hopefully people will have an understanding and want to play the game.

This unfortunately cut two weeks into my modelling time. I have to finish up two more Saurian(Lizard Creature) models by the end of July to stay on my projected modelling goal dates, then next month get ready for the dragons! Somewhere in there, my next website addition will be to implement a Help Desk ticketing system for the game. Whoosh, no time to sleep.