CASE STUDY FREE FIRE PRO SERIES
How we helped mobile gaming behemoth Garena Free Fire create a pick'em web application for their North America Pro Series tournament in under 2 weeks.
Requirement Analysis
Free Fire is an industry leading mobile game with 80 million daily active players, colossal partnership deals (such as the one with k-pop band BTS), and a thriving pro scene.
Torchlight Productions, the company operating the scene of their North America Pro Series tournament, reached out to us to create a pick'em web application in a very short timeframe.
After analyzing the project's needs, we created picks.ffna.gg.
The web appication allows users to login using their Discord account, register their predictions for the tournament grand finals and claim in-game prizes.
Key Points
- We had to move fast and be decisive. The timeframe to deliver the project and go live was two weeks.
- The game has a huge player base and the project was planned to be advertised on stream, so we had to prepare for large traffic spikes.
Mobile First
We expected most users would visit the web application by clicking in-stream links. Since Free Fire is an exclusively mobile game and the game's main audience would watch the streams from mobile devices, a mobile-first approach was the only way to go.
Furthermore, many users would be using their mobile data, so we had to make every byte count.
We emphasized on keeping our frontend code performant to ensure that the web application would run smoothly on even low-end mobile devices and poor internet connections.
Of course, the web application is fully responsive, so it works for all players, no matter what device they use.
Effective Communication
To deliver high quality results in such a limited timeframe, excellent communication was essential. We worked around timezone differences by adjusting our work schedule to match the contact person on the client's side.
We put a strong focus on well written, clear messages, and whenever there was risk of misinterpretation, we were quick to jump in a short call and clarify.
Making effective communication a priority allowed us to work without being held back by waiting for client feedback or website material.
Performance & Scalability
To ensure the web application would be able to handle large amounts of requests and traffic spikes, we optimized our application taking advantage of cutting edge static generation techniques.
On top of that, we kept bundle sizes as low as possible, by minifying all assets and loading only the necessary assets on each page.
We used Vercel's Edge Network to have a powerful, globally distributed network of servers that could easily handle the load.
Aftermath
Hard work on both sides paid off and we are thrilled with the end result!
The web application and server setup managed to handle the incoming traffic and allowed players from all over the world to lock their predictions.
The tournament itself was extremely exciting to watch and concluded with a massive upset.
As gamers ourselves we are ecstatic to create tools that add value to esports and help the gaming community grow.
We are looking forward to working with Torchlight again in future cool projects!
