Shopper’s Paradise

Creating synergy with player agency and reward presentation

In my time at Big fish Casino and Jackpot Magic Slots, we ran 4-5 timed events a month to keep players engaged. We wanted to create an event where players “bought” items they cared about with their progress in the event.

These wireframes were made for a hackathon project that eventually became a feature for the game.

Product team approached me with a prompt to create an event where players pay for items in a shop with currency they earn through the event. Players would play in slots and the slots play would “randomly” provide them with points that could be used to purchase items in the shop.

Early on in discussions we realized we needed 1 currency (tags) that players would gain during slots play, and a 2nd currency that would be accrued by exchanging the slots accrued currency. The second currency (diamonds) would be used to purchase items in the event. This was done because, we did not want to build a completely new way to present and progress in events. Wanted to maintain engineered systems that already existed.

From this point forward, we’ll call the slots currency “tags” and the the purchasing currency “diamonds.”

Prompt

It was discussed that every time the player spun in slots, that the player would have a chance to get these tags. We had similar mechanics in other features where, the reward was attached to the reel which wasn’t possible in this event but we wanted to mimic similar design language. We had the tags come out of the center of the slot reels and they would travel toward the tray where this event would be housed. The event would then react and show the progress they made when they got those tags.

How do players get the tags?

This was a moment where the engineering team had some reservations that we adeptly navigated through.

Problem 1: we could not mimic the way we presented rewards on the particular reels because that was built on a completely different back end system, and also our slot partners would probably not be fond of us adding them to the reels.
Solution 1: We had the badge appear from the middle of the screen as that is probably going to be where the reels were going to be at any screen size.

Problem 2: we couldn’t accurately target the tags motion toward the particular event in the tray we kept all of our events.
Solution 2: we had it move generally toward the tray and the mission itself would have a reaction to make sure that correlation was still made from the viewer’s point of view, without making a complicated solution to this problem.

Event popup requirements

Below are some requirements that were nailed down as we progressed through the design process.

Show the rewards players could purchase,
present an event description and messaging for how players could proceed through the event.
Have a progress bar that tracks tag collection progress to diamond rewards.
Have a wallet for your diamonds so players could save up for things they wanted.
Have sold out states for the items to make sure players could only get a certain number of that reward during the event.

Anatomy of the Popup

Single item sold out states would have the prices under items flip over to prevent players from buying that item anymore. Eventually this mission would become an infinitely playable mission so the completely sold out state was never used, as players could always play for coins or consumable rewards.

When the player returns from playing slots and enters the event’s screen, our standard reward sequence for the minor objective would happen, around, filling the progress bar at the bottom. Then the diamonds at the end of the progress bar would travel to the diamond’s wallet. This would also reset the progress bar for the next tag collection goal.

Converting tags to diamonds

With their now filled wallet, players can either wait to save up for an item, or purchase an item. Players taps on an item, a confirmation popup shows up to let the player know they are about to use their diamonds on said item. The item has an effect occur on it, and then the normal reward animation happens.

Purchasing with diamonds

In order to prevent players from accidentally buying something they didn’t want a confirmation popup was also added to the flow.

Players return with the balance at the level it would be subtracted the cost of the item. If the item is now sold out, the item is not on the “shelf” anymore, and the price sign is replaced with a “sold” sign.

Normal Return

Sold Out Return