Stash and Snowprint enhance player experiences with Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus web shop

Snowprint Studios was founded in 2015 with the motto “rich experiences for the everyday gamer”. To that end, the team spent five years developing Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, setting a new standard for great experiences on mobile. Tacticus quickly became a hit - and after some time, Snowprint started searching for ways to give their players even more value and even better experiences for them to enjoy. 

That’s when Snowprint approached us to build them a direct-to-consumer strategy. Immediately, we knew we were aligned on providing the best possible experience for their players since building experiences is what Stash is all about - from how they play to how they pay. We knew that Snowprint’s D2C channels needed to provide players with a truly valuable experience that matched both the IP’s pedigree and Snowprint’s quality. 

"Stash loves our game as much as we do. Their ecommerce know-how and bespoke approach take D2C to the next level" - Alexander Ekvall, CEO at Snowprint

Stash proposed building a fully custom web experience for Snowprint, tailored to the Tacticus gameplay experience, which would shift and retain spend, create more value for players, and increase LTV. To kick off the partnership, our two teams agreed on a comprehensive direct-to-consumer strategy, broken into four stages: 

1. Web shop V1: Snowprint wanted the initial store experience to be identical to the game, in order to set a baseline incremental improvements
2. Web shop V2: Then we would start introducing more channel incentives, roll out a loyalty program, and continue optimizing according to ecommerce best practices 
3. Launcher: As another part of the D2C strategy, we’d build a desktop launcher to distribute the game cross-platform - with the goal of expanding player engagement 
4. Player engagement: In the final phase, we’d introduce the cross-platform player hub, integrate content from Tacticus, and supplement social features

In this article, we’re focusing on the first stage and how we designed a fully custom web shop (see it here!) that stayed true to the core design of Tacticus, replicated 1:1 the in-game experience, and gave the game’s highest-value players a reason to visit, convert, and return. In just two months since launching, we achieved: 

• 75% repeat purchase rate
• Payments captured from 64 different countries and in 21 different currencies
• Refund rate under 0.1%

Here’s how we did it. 

Recreating the in-game experience

To truly recreate the in-game experience from the bottom up, we needed a way to easily pull Tacticus’ existing in-game data and deploy it on the web. The basis of the entire web shop backend is a feature we call the “unified product catalog”, which pulls the web catalog from the same source as the existing in-game version. That includes the product contents, as well as the creatives associated with the offer - like images, localized language, prices, and more. 

This let us create an exact replica of the in-game products’ graphics and metadata, all updated in real time with Snowprint’s live ops. It’s the main reason why the Tacticus web shop feels like a true extension of the game. 

“We had specific requirements that the web shop be similar to the in-game experience. Stash did a great job ensuring that everything - the layout, order, section headers, etc. - felt very familiar to players.” - Alexander Ekvall, CEO at Snowprint Studios

With the unified catalog, there are a few specific benefits Snowprint enjoyed: 

Seamless player experience

It’s important to reduce friction in the player’s journey to the store and keep them immersed in Tacticus. For example, each of Snowprint’s players have a personalized catalog based on a complex list of factors: player progress, recent actions, champion ownership etc. They gray-out champions for in-game bundles when players already own them - and because Stash’s unified product catalog pulls directly from the game, we gray out the champion on the web shop, too. That way, the webshop feels like an extension of the game, rather than an entirely different storefront. 

Fitting into existing operations

Snowprint is a professional studio with an impressive set of tools, workflows, and practices for shipping content, operating their games at scale, and iterating on new creative for their assets. Part of this includes a highly active live ops schedule like a new battle pass every six weeks, for example.

The Stash product team wanted to take full advantage of Snowprint’s existing infrastructure while minimizing any disruption - and our unified catalog was a perfect fit for this. Stash built custom APIs to ensure that Snowprint could update both their web store and in-game store catalogs simultaneously with minimal additional work, meaning: no uploading assets to a separate web portal, no new product lists, and no separate interfaces. The Snowprint team can continue pushing updates to the catalog they’re used to, and the web shop catalog automatically refreshes accordingly. 

Shared purchase limits

Many of the best selling offers in Tacticus - and in most games - are limited offers (limited by time or purchase number). So it’s essential for both the player experience and the game economy that a web shop supports limited offers, and that these limits are enforced no matter which device or platform the product is bought on.

That’s why Stash’s APIs check purchase validity with Snowprint’s servers automatically - which keeps Snowprint’s central database as the single source of truth for item availability. So when players redeem an offer in-game, the unified catalog ensures that it’s automatically redeemed on the web, too. This lets Snowprint enforce purchase limits without having to manually update two separate catalogs - and makes sure that players always see the most accurate information about their accounts/inventory. 

User-level segmentation

Whenever a player logs into or refreshes the Tacticus web shop, Stash pulls the latest list of offers from Snowprint’s servers for that specific player. As a result, players are only shown the offers that are relevant and available to them.

Snowprint didn’t need to create an additional player segmentation strategy for the web shop and when they wanted to update a product for a specific segment, they could automatically push it without waiting on Stash first - the unified catalog automatically pulls directly from the same source as the in-game catalog. Based on that player’s user-level information, the catalog then automatically updates on the web to ensure every player gets a unique browsing experience. 

IP and brand accuracy

The IP Snowprint uses is beloved within gaming - Snowprint needed a D2C partner who would safeguard it. Stash made it clear from the outset that we understood and agreed: IP considerations were fundamental requirements, from how the characters were presented to what language we used, etc. Automatically syncing the in-game and web catalogs was a surefire way to maintain the accuracy of the IP.

Because Snowprint’s in-game assets are programmatically fed to the web shop and the single source for those assets comes directly from Tacticus, there’s no chance of misrepresenting the characters, UI, etc. - and the control always remains in the hands of the Snowprint team. Compare this to pre-existing templates, which would force Snowprint to compromise on maintaining brand fidelity. 

Refining the web design and development 

What works in the app environment in terms of design and formatting doesn’t always work for the web medium. While replicating the game experience is one part of the puzzle, a web shop also needs to look and feel right for the web environment - and give players a great browsing experience. This requires subtle web design and development tweaks that all add up to create a truly seamless web UX. 

To give Tacticus users an intuitive shopping experience on the web, the Stash team adapted in-game offers and accounted for how users browse on the web: purchase intent is higher than in-game, but the need to make a purchase is less urgent. (For example, while playing through a campaign, users feel more urgency to purchase a power-up that can help them in that specific level - compared to the more casual experience of visiting a web shop outside of gameplay). Essentially, users visit the webshop to browse, not play, so the user experience and interface need to be designed to account for these new use cases and motivations. Similarly, browsers differ from native mobile devices in important ways: screen sizes, browser versions, mouse and keyboard controls, file format handling, etc. Stash’s technology is built bottom-up to adapt native app in-game design seamlessly for a web environment. 

“We’ve been impressed with Stash’s suggestions for making our offers more legible for a web browsing environment”  - Alexander Ekvall, CEO at Snowprint Studios

Applying ecommerce and web expertise

‍In-game, players tap on a small “i” button on an offer to expand its details. The Stash team knew it was essential to display the information included in these tooltips because they contained important context and drop tables. However, on the web - and especially on desktop - the tooltip interface is unfamiliar and awkward (especially when clicking on it with a mouse).

From our expertise in ecommerce, we knew that product pages could offer the solution to displaying this information. So our web development team re-formatted the offers and tooltips to appear like ecommerce product pages: when players click one, another page opens up with all of its details laid out clearly - creating a much more natural browsing experience. 

Designing for different aspect ratios

‍Unlike in-game, which has a fixed and known screen size, designing for the web requires adapting to different aspect ratios because browsers are dynamic and resizable. To solve this, most web shop providers use screenshots of a product’s assets and lock the scaling to a fixed aspect ratio - or even worse, stretch and distort the images. The problem is, the images don’t resize dynamically to the players’ screen sizes and it can be difficult to properly see the product.

That’s why the Stash web design team chose to separate the asset layers (e.g. background, image in foreground, frame) so the product card adapts to different screen sizes without any distortion - the background and frame crops, but the sprites in the foreground stay unchanged. Not only does this preserve the Tacticus brand and ensure all assets are rendered correctly, but it also improves the shopping experience. Since all assets on the webshop appear accurately, players know exactly what they’re buying and how it will appear in-game.

(Take an ecommerce example here: let’s say a user is shopping for clothes online on mobile and they find the perfect pair of jeans. They wait until they get home to complete the purchase and head back to the site on their desktop. But wait: those jeans all of a sudden look cropped - and distorted! No, thank you. This is what happens if web design isn’t carefully implemented and thought through).

Achieving a 75% repeat purchase rate and continuing the momentum

Developing the Tacticus web shop from scratch was a test in adhering to complex IP rules, working with a highly sophisticated developer like Snowprint, and recreating the in-game experience on the web - while applying ecommerce logic and adapting offers for a different medium. In just two months since launching, the Tacticus web shop has achieved impressive results, already providing real value for players and driving incremental value for Snowprint: 

• 75% repeat purchase rate
• Payments captured from 64 different countries and in 21 different currencies
• Refund rate under 0.1%

“We’re so pleased with Stash’s customer support. We’re very protective of players, so handing over a part of our CS operations to Stash was nerve-racking - but we haven’t received any complaints from the community. In fact, many haven’t realized there’s a difference at all! The Stash level of service is what I expect from my internal agents.” - Sanya Weathers, Senior Community Manager at Snowprint Studios

Next, we’re continuing to work closely with the Snowprint team to implement player feedback, polish the UX/UI,and add new features to the web shop. This is just the beginning of our D2C journey together - stay tuned for many more updates and achievements as we move into the next stage. With lots of exciting improvements in the pipeline, we can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together in the future.