Filed under: Research, Trends by Digado

Lets face it. Web applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail spoiled us. Major services who are absolutely free to a vast majority of its users. Even advertising is almost frowned upon unless its very unobtrusive. The ‘we want it all, we want it now, and we want it free‘ mentality is something we wont get rid of anytime soon. In fact, our insatiable hunger for free services only seems to grow. Thats why I wrote part 2 of my ‘How games show Virtual Worlds the way‘ posting on the next step: 10 facts on Free to Play models for social online games:

1. The most popular free online games include Kartrider (160 million sign-ups), Habbo Hotel (84 million sign-ups) and Maple Story (50 million sign-ups)
2. Big threats for the free 2 play formula are: Branded worlds with poor game formulas, Games with poor advertising formulas, higher gaming standards and expectations - and thus increased development costs.
3. 91% of kids PC online games are free to play
4. The next book of best selling author (The Long Tail) and WIRED magazine editor Chris Anderson will be called ‘Free’ - how the $0,00 economy changed the world.
5. The revenue models for free to play are: Virtual Item Economy, Real life Merchandise, Crowdmining, Advertising, Premium accounts (Subscription Fees), Event Tournament Fees, Real Estate/Land Use Fees, Affiliate Programs, Donations. (more detailed over on freetoplay.biz)
6. Free games online have an 80% market share in China
7. We’ve seen a vast number of free2play games being developed by brands such as Cokestudios, Barbieworld, Legoworld, Hello Kitty.
8. EA CEO John Riccitiello predicts the ‘$60′ per game model “will be obsolete in the next decade.”
9. Free games are no longer the domain of game company start-ups with big names such as Electronic Arts, NCsoft and Sony getting involved.
10. A free game developed for the popular social network Facebook called foodfight estimated at running $18.000 profit a day!

From free2play’s to Virtual Worlds

As gaming worlds got more and more of a social focus over the past years, we see the lines between these free2play online games and Virtual Worlds are blur really fast. Habbot Hotel, Gaia Online, World of Warcraft, generally seen as gaming worlds, but have huge social networks inside them. Interaction is a key element in these games. In Social Worlds (or Networks) such as Second Life, There and Kaneva, Facebook we see this happening the other way around, games being developed inside this non-gaming world, and eventually the truly mixed worlds of Mulitverse, Entropia and Metaplace - Free 2 play Virtual Worlds able to adopt any purpose.

(Hat Tip: @Swords of the ESC for linking to the excellent freetoplay.biz blog)

Posted on: February 19, 2008 | Share on: