Cross-app, Universal Currency with WildFire Coins

The case for a cross-app currency system

What is Cross-app Universal Currency?

Most every game today, rewards its users for achievements in a “game currency” that is local and specific to the app. This could be earning gems, coins and other virtual currency that can be used to buy power-ups, inventory, you name it. But what if the currency you earned in one game could be used in another? That is the idea of cross-app currency.

As a player, why would I want that?

As a game player, the advantage to having a cross-app currency is obvious — currency that I earn in one game can benefit me in another game I may be playing. And because the games share the same currency, they feel connected, even though they are published by different companies. This creates a better experience for the user, which is always a good thing.

Players that understand the power of their earnings and their cross-app potential will seek to find and play other games that accept that currency. Here in lies the value to developers.

As a developer, why would I want that?

One of the most difficult aspects of developing and publishing a great app is getting it discovered by users. Over the years, developers have tried all kinds of things to various levels of success (and failure).

A cross-app currency stimulates players to seek out other games that can accept that currency. In doing so, they will discover apps that they would likely have otherwise never found in the App Stores. And when they do, those apps (and developers) will be the beneficiaries.

Does this exist today?

The folks at WildFire Software have produced a system that does just this, in addition to a few other things. Once you integrate the API in to your app, the app becomes WildFire Enabled — meaning, your apps users can now earn and spend their earnings, from your app or others, inside your app! And whatever you decide to offer for sale within your app is completely up to you and at what virtual price.

Each WildFire enabled app also includes an App Gallery that showcases other enabled apps, so users don’t have to travel far to find them. WildFire even incentivizes users to try new apps found in the App Gallery by awarding them coins when they do so.

So where do the earning go?

Currency collected from purchases within an app credits the app developers WildFire account. Those can later be spent on the “paid” WildFire accounts, account enhancements, developer funded rewards (more on that shortly) and more.

How does it work?

In order for a user to have cross-app currency, the user must be known across those apps. WildFire accomplishes this by introducing a user management system that not only manages the users account balance, but provides API for signing up and authenticating users from your app.

As part of your app setup process within WildFire, you are able to define a set of rewards or user achievements that you feel warrant a reward and define the value. Then, when you detect the user has accomplished the achievement, you call the API to award it.

WildFire Funded vs Developer Funded Rewards

WildFire provides two reward types: WildFire funded and Developer funded. Lets look at WildFire funded first.

Every WildFire enabled app is capable of defining system funded rewards. The payout for these rewards comes from the WildFire system itself. Meaning, you are able to award something of value to your user without any cost to you. The system funded rewards do have their limitations though. While you are able to define any number of rewards you want, the sum of all of the reward values cannot exceed 100 coins. In addition, a specific reward may only be applied to the same user once. This means that each player of your game can earn a maximum of 100 coins from your app. This style of reward is great for achievements that are monumental in nature, like completing a level.

Developer funded awards, as its name implies, are funded directly from the the developers WildFire account. It has really only one limitation — you must have the funds in your developer account at the time of awarding. This style of reward is very powerful. Not only can you define the amount, but unlike WildFire funded, you can award these to the same user as many times as you wish. This effectively removes any maximum earning limit. These are great for reoccurring achievements, like watching an in-app-ad video or running your app three days in a row. You should also note that developer funded rewards require a Pro account to be used.

What does it cost?

Nothing! You can WildFire enable your games for free. While that will satisfy a large number of apps, WildFire does offer paid accounts that provide additional “Pro” features that may be of interest.

Is it just for games?

No. While in-app currencies are natural to games, rewarding users and allowing for an app to be upgraded by in-app currency, is not category specific. I can certainly see a host of app categories that could benefit equally.

How do I get started?

Head over to the WildFire site, signup and take a look at the API documentation. You can make direct calls to their REST based API, or you can choose to embed one of the platform specific SDK’s they make available for download. At the time of this writing, they have an SDK for iOS, Android and Unity (C#).

I plan to write additional articles on our experience integrating WildFire as well as how it affects the growth of the soon to be (re)released game of ours called squares2. Stay tuned…