2019 — 2020
Turbulent · Star Citizen
Full-Stack Developer
- Industry
- Video games · E-commerce
- Team
- 150 people
- Location
- Montréal, Canada
Star Citizen — Pledge Store: redesign of the store of a game crowdfunded with over $250M by its players, with sales peaks during events. GraphQL API on the PHP framework, React/Apollo front end, AWS.
At a glance
- Pledge Store and cart redesign, launched in October 2020, for a game crowdfunded with over $250M
- Legacy PHP framework data exposed via GraphQL for a decoupled React/Apollo front end
- Full-stack from data model to UI, AWS deployment
- Architecture decisions documented in architecture records
Montreal company specializing in web technology solutions and video game development. Digital experiences for entertainment, finance and education. Around 150 employees.
Context
Star Citizen — Pledge Store: the online store of a player-funded game, which passed $250M raised in December 2019 and $300M in June 2020. Sales concentrate around events: in November 2019 (CitizenCon and the IAE expo), $9.6M in one month, against $1.7M to $3.5M in each previous month. Full-stack developer in Turbulent’s web teams, in Montreal.
Starting point: a store rendered by Turbulent’s legacy PHP framework, with data and presentation tightly coupled.
Goal: modernize the buying experience with a decoupled React front end fed by a GraphQL API, without rewriting the legacy core that holds accounts and orders.
Stack: React front end with Apollo (and Vue.js), GraphQL API, PHP and Node.js (Express) back end, MySQL, Memcached, Redis, GitLab and Jenkins CI, AWS cloud.
Achievements
- Pledge Store redesign: a new buying experience for the game’s spaceships
- GraphQL API: exposed data from the PHP framework through GraphQL to feed a React front end with Apollo
- Full-stack development, from data model to user interface
- Deployment and CI: production on AWS, continuous integration on GitLab
- Scoping: needs broken down into user stories, workshops with the PO
- Code review and architecture documentation
Results
- New store and cart launched in October 2020, replacing the previous buying experience, for over 1.1 million paying accounts (end of 2020)
- Legacy PHP framework data exposed via GraphQL: the React/Apollo front end evolves without touching the legacy core
- Architecture decisions documented in architecture records shared with the team
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