Twofish, Inc. today launched Twofish Elements™, the game industry’s first turnkey solution for powering a dynamic and realistic in-game economy. A true Economic Engine, Twofish Elements integrates seamlessly into games, provides a flexible and secure banking and retail infrastructure, and puts complex economic analytics at a game operator’s fingertips.
The technology solves core problems with an emerging business model for the video game industry, in which games are distributed for free and players “pay-as-they-play,” making small in-game purchases called micro-transactions.
“Micro-transactions are here and now. But they require a whole new level of sophistication for the games industry,” said Lee Crawford, founder and CEO of Twofish. “Developers understand storytelling and character development, but most lack experience with financial markets and retail optimization. Twofish Elements fills in the knowledge gap, giving developers a robust solution that they can implement in weeks, rather than spending a year and millions of dollars to develop a partial solution on their own.”
Analysts from Pacific Crest believe the burgeoning online casual gaming space will continue its rapid growth, reaching $725 million in 2008 with 15% of the revenue being driven by in-game, item-based, real money purchases. To deal with the market shift, game publishers are in dire need of a dedicated system designed with levels of security and fidelity that are typically found within the banking community.
Twofish Elements is Twofish’s answer to high development costs and steep learning curves for developers who want to compete in the future of online gaming. By empowering game publishers who use Twofish Elements with the ability to simply and easily control real world economic features, such as inventory logic, account management policies, complex pricing models, flexible types of transactions, and a multicurrency system, Twofish ensures that in-game economies will thrive and game makers will profit.
The features provided by Twofish Elements represent a significant time investment from Crawford and his in-house team, which includes a unique set of expertise across game design, financial markets and consumer Internet.
“As a plug-and-play Economic Engine, our technology easily integrates with any title, at any stage of development, and goes well beyond the limited after-market solutions currently being offered to developers and publishers,” Crawford added. “Twofish Elements is much more than just a point of sale solution or Band-Aid fix – it’s the elemental core of a game’s economy.”
Twofish Elements was conceived by Twofish founder and CEO Crawford, whose unique expertise across game engineering (at Yahoo! Games, Shockwave.com, and Segasoft Networks) and transaction processing (Trintech, Inc.) has translated into industry-changing insights and technology.