Currency distribution together with currency spending is a key aspect of a healthy ecosystem. The core of healthly currency is its safety and stability. That's why distribution and spending of the currency must go through GameArter SDK. This article explains how it is made.
In-game currency distribution
In-game currency distribution is made via achieving events. An event is an action made by user. It can be a kill in a shooter game, good time of a lap in a racing game, or any action your game is about. Events are unique for every game - defined by developer.
SDK is written generally and allows creating any event a developer wants. For safety reasons, events can be only updated in one direction. There is no way to re-write the value or return the value back. This is what a developer needs to have in mind during creating a plan for working with events.
Every event holds its best value. It is e.g. a total number of user's kills. This number can only grow in a time. By every increase of the value, SDK emits certain amount of currency to user's wallet.
Besides a currency, SDK can also reward badges (achievements), or create leaderboards on a basis of the event value. A developer can easily assign unlimited number of badges for the event. He can say, that if value of the event "kills" is >= 10, a user will receive a badge "10 kills". Together with the badge, there can be extra currency rewards. Creating leaderboards is yet more simple - there is only a need to switch leaderboards for the event to be in position.
What if a developer wants to give a reward or a badge on a basis of a property whose value increases as well as decreases at the same time? That's possible as well. This property cannot be saved as an event, but, a developer can create a special event for this property. Example: there is a local currency in a game and its developer wants to give a badge "earned 1,000,000 coins" to a player once amount of his local currency exceeds 1,000,000. To make it happen, this developer must create an event "maximumEarnedMoney" and assign a badge "1,000,000 money earned", when value of event will be 1,000,000. Then, everytime, the real value of user's local money will be higher than value of event "maximumEarnedMoney", a developer updates the value of event. Once the event value exceeds the needed value for badge, the badge will be released automatically.
Out of game currency distribution
Out of game currency distribution is being made via GameArter web services. There is no way a game developer can affect it.
Same as in the games, currency is being emited and distributed by the SDK on basis of user's actions. There is a list of user actions which will be tracked by the SDK. This list will be updated in a time.
Basic events are returned visits of websites, writing comments with good rating, sending quality feedbacks about bugs, providing good ideas to further development, inviting friends, doing promotions - posting videos from games on youtube, bringing users via referral links, helping other people informing about their problems in a discussion, and so on.