Helveticans Builds a Secure, Scalable Website for KRAFTON, Tailored to India

KRAFTON, the South Korean video game publishing powerhouse behind BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India)—a game widely recognized as PUBG or Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds in India, is known for pushing the boundaries of gaming technology.

A Key Growth Market

KRAFTON considers India a vital growth market and seeks to establish a web presence that resonates with the essence of India. The goal was to craft a digital identity that not only reflects India’s core personality but also captures the aspirations and ambitions of its gaming community.

Amplify India-Focused Initiatives

With an increasing presence in India, KRAFTON has been proactive in launching a variety of India-specific games and programs. These efforts are not just about market expansion—they’re about contributing to the growth of a thriving gaming community in India. A prime example is the KRAFTON INDIA Gaming Incubator (KIGI), an initiative designed to help young and ambitious Indian game developers transform their innovative ideas into successful games. The company wanted to make its India presence more visible to a wider Indian audience.

Enhance Community Engagement

KRAFTON’s commitment to India goes beyond product launches. The company actively hosts local gaming events and frequently makes India-centric announcements. These efforts are aimed at fostering a deep connection with the Indian gaming community, and the website had to let the target audience know that KRAFTON was India for the long haul.

Creating Opportunities: Job Creation in a Growing Industry

KRAFTON also positions itself as a key job creator in India’s evolving gaming industry. While the gaming sector is well-established in many other countries, it is still in its growth phase in India. KRAFTON sees this as an opportunity to contribute to the industry’s development by creating new job opportunities and supporting the local talent pool. This positioning had to be underscored by the KRAFTON INDIA website.

Leading the Charge: BGMI and Esports Tournaments

Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) already holds a leadership position in India’s mobile gaming arena. Beyond this, KRAFTON has been part of over 2,000 plus Esports tournaments, directly and indirectly, and hosts some of the largest Esports events in the country. These tournaments provide a platform for Indian gamers to compete against peers both nationally and internationally, further solidifying KRAFTON’s influence in the Indian gaming ecosystem. The KRAFTON INDIA website sought to amplify noise around these tournaments, driving improved participation.

These key factors prompted the decision to build a new website for KRAFTON, designed to enhance the company’s visibility among the Indian audience. This website had to serve as a central hub, not only showcasing KRAFTON’s commitment to expanding its presence in India but also highlighting its efforts to nurture and support the local gaming community. Ultimately, the website had to reinforce KRAFTON’s vision of becoming a cornerstone in India’s gaming industry, driving both innovation and opportunity.

Not long ago, key members of the Helveticans team played a pivotal role in helping launch BGMI’s first Esports tournament in India. These members were deeply involved in every aspect of the project, from developing a scalable, on-brand website to creating impactful promotional materials such as broadcast and radio ads that boosted the tournament’s visibility. Their involvement was not just limited to one area, but spanned across the project, showcasing their comprehensive approach. Today, this initiative attracts 20 million gaming enthusiasts.

This solidified our reputation and left no doubt about our experience and expertise. Our proven track record of building websites that seamlessly integrate advanced technologies, like SSG (Static Site Generation), further strengthened our case for leading the website development efforts, and ensure robust security and on-demand scalability. These capabilities align perfectly with the needs of a brand like KRAFTON and this high stakes project.

What sealed the deal was not just our extensive experience and expertise but also our proven track record of collaborating with global enterprises on their website design and development needs. This was crucial for the project, as our team was tasked with creating a website that was both closely aligned with KRAFTON's global corporate site regarding technology and security, yet tailored specifically for the Indian market. This required a custom approach to address the unique challenges intrinsic to India, ensuring the website met both global standards and local requirements.

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While KRAFTON trusted our skill sets, we still had to go through an exhaustive RFP process, wherein we competed with other reputed agencies to pursue the project.

The RFP underlined key expectations from the website, including:

Alignment with Global Website

As a leading global gaming powerhouse, KRAFTON is committed to maintaining a cohesive brand identity across its digital identities. The goal for the India website was to ensure it harmonizes with KRAFTON's global website in terms of aesthetics, technology, and overall design. However, this alignment must be carefully balanced with the core objective of striking a chord with the Indian audience.

While mirroring the global site’s visual and functional elements to maintain brand consistency, the India website had to be uniquely tailored to engage and appeal to local users. This involved incorporating cultural nuances, addressing regional preferences, and overcoming specific market challenges while preserving the integrity of KRAFTON's global brand identity.

High Availability and Performance (Zero Compromise with Speed)

India is a rapidly developing country with high internet penetration; however, internet connectivity speeds vary significantly across its diverse regions. Even within urban areas, internet speeds can fluctuate, especially outside of Wi-Fi networks. In rural regions, where users primarily access the internet via mobile data, speeds are often less optimal.

The challenge was to design a website that, despite being rich in graphics, videos and animations, remains easily accessible even under low-speed internet conditions. Ensuring seamless performance across varying connectivity levels was a primary requirement, addressing urban and rural users effectively, thus ensuring deeper penetration of the KRAFTON brand.

Highest Standards of Security

Websites are increasingly targeted by hackers, and KRAFTON is committed to upholding the highest digital security standards for its assets. In addition to adhering to global security best practices, KRAFTON's India website had to comply with India's stringent data protection regulations. Recognizing that today’s cybercriminals employ sophisticated hacking techniques to breach websites and access corporate resources, KRAFTON prioritized uncompromising security measures. The goal was to ensure rock-solid, impenetrable protection against any potential threats.

Ease of Management

A core requirement was ease of management, including efficient publishing and updates, to ensure the website remains relevant and current. This functionality supports KRAFTON’s commitment to simplicity and user-centric design by making content management straightforward and intuitive. By enabling timely updates and seamless adjustments, the website had to align with KRAFTON's focus on delivering a clean and user-friendly experience. The focus was on empowering the KRAFTON team to maintain dynamic and relevant content, further supporting KRAFTON’s overarching goals of simplicity and efficiency.

Criticality of Hyper Personalization

Gamers, like all users, have a low tolerance for delays and demand a highly user-centered experience that transcends basic personalization. For KRAFTON hyper-personalization was the key to meeting these expectations and ensuring that the website stands out amidst the competition. In a competitive landscape, hyper-personalization ensures that the website remains engaging and relevant, cutting through the noise and making a significant impact in the crowded gaming market.

Developing a website for KRAFTON INDIA presented a unique set of challenges:

Accommodating a High Volume of Visitors

India, with its vast population, is one of the most populous countries in the world. With over 50% internet penetration, this represents a substantial online user base for any website. For KRAFTON, this meant that the India website needed to accommodate a high volume of visitors, a challenge that demanded more than just surface-level solutions. The website's infrastructure had to be robust and scalable, capable of handling large traffic volumes seamlessly. This required a backend system designed for high performance and on-demand scalability to ensure smooth user experiences even during peak traffic periods. Implementing such a scalable infrastructure was crucial for maintaining website stability and responsiveness, thereby supporting KRAFTON’s goal of providing a top-notch digital experience to its extensive audience.

Meeting High Standards of Compliance and Security

Another significant challenge was meeting the exceptionally high standards for legal, data security, and development compliance. The focus had to be on achieving rigorous global standards of excellence while ensuring that the website was also configured to address local needs. The website had to adhere to international best practices and also tailored to meet specific regional requirements, ensuring a robust and compliant digital platform.

Optimising for Diverse Mobile Devices

Another challenge we faced was that a significant portion of visitors to the KRAFTON INDIA website would be using mobile devices. Mobile devices are highly diverse, ranging from high-end smartphones to more basic models, each with varying capabilities and performance levels. This diversity means that the website had to be optimised for a wide range of devices and user demographics, ensuring a seamless and responsive experience across all models.

Designing for a Broad Demographic Spectrum

The design and development of this website also had to be approached with a keen understanding of the diverse demographics of its users. Gamers range in age from the very young to those over 55, making it essential that both functionality and visual aesthetics resonate across all age groups. The challenge was to create a cohesive and engaging user experience that appeals to everyone, with a unifying central theme that connects gamers regardless of their age. This approach ensures that the website is accessible, visually appealing, and relevant to the entire gaming community.

Ensuring Seamless Performance Across Internet Speeds

The website also had to cater to the lowest common denominator in terms of internet speeds, ensuring that it rendered seamlessly across all user devices, whether connected via 5G, 4G, 3G, or even 2G. The goal was to ensure that internet connectivity would never be a barrier to delivering a delightful user experience, regardless of the user's network quality.

The Helveticans team began by thoroughly analyzing the visual aesthetics and messaging framework of KRAFTON's global corporate website. With this foundation in place, we then identified key design and messaging elements that could be infused with an authentic Indian look and feel. Our goal was to seamlessly blend KRAFTON’s global identity with an identity that was quintessentially Indian.

More importantly, all aspects had to come together in a website that was absolutely cutting-edge and accessible across a range of internet speeds, from high-speed 5G to rural EDGE connections.

Infusing Indian Context

We took a bespoke approach to designing the website, recognizing that truly capturing the essence of India required more than just selecting stock images or generic visuals. To ensure that every visual element spoke to the Indian audience, we harnessed KRAFTON’s creative team’s support on Indinised gaming creatives along with our filming and video production expertise. This process allowed us to create original content deeply rooted in the local culture.

Our commitment to authenticity led us to conduct on-location shoots, capturing genuine scenes and corporate moments that resonate with the diverse Indian audience. Our filming efforts were dedicated to highlighting the vibrancy, energy, and uniqueness of KRAFTON INDIA office, providing a rich tapestry of visuals that could be seamlessly integrated into the website.

Video production was instrumental in crafting animations that seamlessly blended cultural narratives meaningful to the Indian audience with elements from KRAFTON’s gaming portfolio. This approach ensured that the visuals were engaging and resonated deeply with local users, enhancing the overall experience.

By carefully selecting images and animations that resonated with the local audience, we ensured that the website unmistakably catered to India. Additionally, the website copy was meticulously crafted to emphasise KRAFTON’s commitment to India, clearly conveying that the country is a vital part of the company’s growth strategy.

Ensuring Robust Security and Optimised Performance

Security was paramount, given KRAFTON's stringent compliance requirements. Our team implemented a robust three-layer authentication system for backend access, including user credentials, IP whitelisting, and key file verification. Additionally, we developed a private deployment system, ensuring that only KRAFTON's internal team could access the backend.

We partnered with a highly reputed U.S.-based cybersecurity consultant, renowned for their work on U.S. government projects, to identify and eliminate vulnerabilities. This collaboration ensured that the website architecture remained secure, closing existing security loopholes and addressing any potential security issues that could be exploited in the future.

We also utilized our proprietary custom made hybrid Static Site Generation (SSG) system, inspired by the NEXT.js framework. This approach allowed us to transform the dynamic website into static HTML pages, significantly enhancing both security and performance. By disconnecting the site from the database post-deployment, we reduced potential security risks and ensured faster load times, even on slow networks.

The Scalability Parameter

By adopting a modular microservices architecture and integrating REST APIs, we ensured the website could scale seamlessly as KRAFTON's needs evolve and also keep pace with the increasing number of visitors. This architecture allows for easy management of individual components, giving KRAFTON the flexibility to update and expand the site as required. Regular stress tests and monthly security audits further solidify the site's robustness, ensuring it remains secure and efficient.

Achieving Hyper Personalization

We implemented a dynamic system that tailors website content in real-time based on user interests, creating a personalized browsing experience. This system tracks user choices, ensuring that the content adapts as they navigate through the site. Even when users return after a few days, the website continues to serve customized content reflecting their earlier preferences. This advanced level of personalization not only enhances engagement but also ensures that the website stays top-of-mind for the target audience.

In our pursuit of excellence, the KRAFTON INDIA corporate website has, in many respects, surpassed the performance of the existing global site.

KRAFTON’s satisfaction with our website design and development endeavor is exemplified by the fact that we continue our association with KRAFTON INDIA as part of the AMC, and we continue to optimize website performance and keep an eagle eye on security metrics to ensure there are no chinks in the armor.

The success of this project is a testament to the unique capabilities of the Helveticans team. Our developers are not just coders; they are problem solvers with a deep understanding of the latest web technologies and a passion for delivering top-tier solutions. This blend of expertise and innovation enabled us to meet KRAFTON INDIA's high standards, creating a secure and scalable website with performance that rivals the best in the industry.