A friend introduced me to a gaming platform with a unique challenge. They were running a legacy Java API backend and serving millions of users through an HTML jQuery-based frontend. The backend was solid, albeit costly to scale, but the frontend? Let’s just say it looked as old as it felt, with inconsistent jQuery styles and modules that lacked a cohesive development approach.

The company didn’t want a full revamp—after all, the platform was functional, and the enterprise couldn’t afford the risk of a ground-up rebuild. My role was to find a way to modernize the user experience without disrupting the backend, and ideally, introduce a new rule-based promotional engine for marketing flexibility.

At first, the lack of a full revamp felt like a constraint, but after a day or two of brainstorming at home, I stumbled upon WunderGraph. It was the perfect solution—a gateway that could map their existing API and power a modern frontend without touching the backend.

Excited, I built a prototype to test the idea. Thankfully, the client had a swagger.json, which made API mapping seamless. Using Next.js 14, I developed a clean, modern frontend and successfully connected it to the backend via WunderGraph. The prototype worked like a charm. Suddenly, the old, clunky frontend was reimagined with a fresh interface that provided a far better user experience.

With the frontend problem solved, I turned my attention to the promotional engine. This was a whole new ball game for me—a rule-based marketing system in the gaming industry. It took time to understand their workflows and ideate solutions. Eventually, I designed and implemented a new micro-service for the promotional engine, complete with trigger-based workflows to handle dynamic rules and scenarios.

The impact was immediate. The frontend not only delighted users but also gave the company the confidence to explore more modern marketing strategies. Meanwhile, the new promotional engine empowered their marketing team with tools to create dynamic campaigns, driving user engagement and retention.

What started as a consultative gig turned into a transformative journey, proving that even legacy platforms can shine with the right solutions. Sometimes, all it takes is a little creativity and the right tools.