Primesoft and the MU MMOG Billing Systems: Taking Online Gaming to the Next Level

The business challenge:

Digital Media Exchange, Inc. (DME) is the first company in the Philippines to integrate leading digital content, technology, operational expertise, and youth marketing savvy to provide an unparalleled socially interactive entertainment experience. By licensing some of the best online content available anywhere in the world, and by recruiting multi-cultural world class talent in the IT, marketing, and customer service fields, dme has been able to capitalize on business opportunities in the emerging world of converged digital infocommunications and media space.

Mobius.ph, DMEs game publishing and distribution arm in the Philippines , is primarily focused on marketing / distributing? interactive, visually arresting Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). One such game that has taken the Philippine market by storm is MU, a three-dimensional fantasy role-playing game (RPG) based on the legendary continent of Mu. The first game of its kind developed in Korea, MU had been running in the Philippines for six months already—and for free—when Mobius.ph sought Primesoft's services.

In order to move MU from demo mode to a full-blown commercial operation, Mobius.ph asked Primesoft to complete the development of the game's billing system. This was a central component of Mobius.ph's business operations and was to be tightly integrated with both the MU game systems and with Mobius.ph's other business systems.

Primesoft was given four weeks to complete the project—with no possibility of an extension. The commercial launch date and its related marketing events and materials had already been set, and the clock was ticking.

The Primesoft solution:

Our first step was to learn as much as we could about the inner workings of the game. To do this, we conducted an in-depth assessment of the MU Game system in collaboration with project team members from the game's publisher, WebZen (Korea). Once this was done, we spent two weeks developing MU's billing system applications, and some more time developing the middleware components that enabled us to integrate MU's game systems with the new, Web-based billing applications.

Then, we developed the required business integration components that allowed us to integrate the “top-up” pages for MU subscribers with the new billing systems. This allowed MU game subscribers to “load” their accounts with game credits that could be purchased via pre-paid game cards.

Aside from all these, Primesoft also developed a Web-based reporting module that provided Mobius.ph's various departments with different reports on the billing system data. This was especially useful to the company's Finance, Operations, and Executive Departments.

In the midst of a tight schedule and a highly anticipated launch, Primesoft completed MU's billing system within the four-week timeframe. This allowed Mobius.ph to proceed with their commercial operations as planned, and to launch a new and exciting game that was to take the Philippine online gaming scene to a whole new level.

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