Sleepy Giant Helps Take CrimeCraft free to play

When Vogster Entertainment decided to transition CrimeCraft from a traditional retail/subscription model to Free To Play, Sleepy Giant was a critical partner in quickly adapting to the new approach.The change required a shift from a single subscription level to three, each entitling the player to a different set of permissions and options both in the game and on the community website. Both parties collaborated on an approach that would yield greater flexibility while not disrupting the experience for the growing base of retail customers. Sleepy Giant took the opportunity to radically expand the capabilities and flexibility of our Account and Subscriptions applications, both of which are now easily adapted to any scenario involving multiple subscription levels, an exchange of virtual currency for game time, and the integration of more payment methods than most top-tier subscription games.

The success of Free To Play games is dependent upon players seeing value in the benefits of paid membership and being in control of how they spend on the game. Sleepy Giant developed an intuitive subscription management application to support these ambitions and this has resulted in a measurable conversion of free to standard to premium accounts.

Customer Support represents a real cost to running any game, but is a critical point of contact for building a positive repor with the community. As part of the transition, we updated our support procedures to bring an appropriate level of support to players at different subscription levels while ensuring that all players had the best possible interactions with our representatives. This approach has aided the free to paid conversion and yielded many messages of thanks from satisfied customers.

Moving away from the retail/subscription model is not right for all games, but the process doesn’t have to be painful or drawn out. Sleepy Giant is proud of the work we’ve done on this project, and looks forward to bringing the benefits of the experience to several upcoming (still top secret!) projects.