Liveblogging Worlds in Motion: Adrian Crook on "The Power of Free to Play"

Adrian Crook has a background in design, and has returned to freelance game design, but he spends a fair amount of his time running the Free to Play blog. With more games shifting toward free-to-play instead of pay-to-play models, Crook looks at how those producers can make money.

Before talking about the free-to-play model in games, Crook took a look at how the idea is affecting the real world. Radiohead is giving its music away; discount carriers in Europe let passengers fly for virtually free and charge for incidentals.

In games, there’s no particular genre that the model needs to work at. Many are in casual MMOs, but the model itself works across any different genre and platform. They’re popping up on consoles and iPhones now as well as PCs.

“What is free-to-play?” asked Crook. “It describes numerous revenue models that monetize attention. Increased traffic allows you to monetize that traffic in different factors.”

Games like KartRider, a lightweight racing game from Nexon, to RuneScape, a heavier MMORPG run on selling items and advertising instead of charging subscription. Only World of Warcraft can compete in terms of numbers with the free-to-play games.  IT makes sense, 91% of kids under 18 are playing free-to-play games instead of subscription properties.

Models
1. Items: “I like it because it’s a potentially unlimited amount of revenue per user. In a virtual item model, you have some users, like in Daniel James’ Puzzle Pirates, putting in $10,000 over their life of play.” In a traditional console game, companies get $40-70 only once.

When it comes time to value an item, price and visibility drive value. The higher a price, the more likely users are to see value in it, likewise with how visible the items are to other users.

It helps to have two currencies. One can be earned simply with time, the other purchased with money. 90% of users won’t buy items with real money, said Crook, but they will continue to invest time to earn the virtual currency.

2. Merchandise: Barbie Girls released use numbers recently and saw 9.5 million users in as many months. By selling a toy with a free online tie-in, the company can drive engagement and, well, make lot’s of money. The same thing goes with Webkinz. In a different direction, Nexon released a collectible card game for its already item-supported game MapleStory.

3. Information sale: Food Fight offers surveys for virtual ash. At the height of its popularity, the game saw 36k users daily, each of whom would have to fill out two surveys per day to buy even the cheapest goods. Surveys sell for about $.25 each.

4. Advertising. More traditional.

5. Item trades allow users to trade their goods or purchase from each other, with a percentage being taken for the company.

6. Subscription tiers allow many user to play for free and then charge some users for premium costs.

7. Event/ tournament fees.

8. Land fees, as in Second Life or Entropia.

9. Donations, as in Kingdom of Loathing [ed: which is fantastic.]

Going forward

1. You have to respect the free players, They make the game worth playng for all everyone who wants to pay.

2. Integrated graphics support: Nexon’s Min Kim has said that if the company required a graphics card for any of its games, they would lose 80% of their players. Aiming low tech helps keep the numbers up.

3. Be browser-based or at least a small download. There are plenty of client games, but even WoW has a try WoW feature that streams the content, letting users play the game after only a few minutes of download. Get users in quickly.

4. Regional payment systems: GoPets offers about 90 different payment systems worldwide,  including PayPal, credit card, phone lines, sms, etc. Make it easy to get money.

5. Keep people in for quick levels and let them get out. Consoles have long, long levels, but if you finish a level and want to replay it, the incremental investment is close to an hour. In a game like Puzzle Pirates, the incremental investment is a few minutes, but the average user spends 2.5 hours/day. Let users play little by little.

6. Defer user sign-up as much as possible. Long forms make it hard to get started and stop users from playing. “Allow people to get in and get a taste of your product and then incrementally grab pieces of information.”

Growth Challenges

1. Virtual Property Law: With Linden v. Bragg, the question has been raised of who owns what.
2. Quality of items will need to increase as they become more and more common.
3. Second Life growth slowdown may take some investors with it.
4. Secondary markets. When a user buys a sword from another player on the black market, that’s money not in your pocket.
5. Kids only games. It seems like many games are only for kids. The NPD study that saw 91% of under 18 kids in free-to-play games saw boys graduate to consoles and girls just stop.

Opportunities (and signs of growth)
1. Networks. Games on myspace or Bebo or Facebook.
2. iPhone
3. Super cash, something developers can insert in Facebook apps to monetize the platform
4. EA just launched a social division

“I think even the walled gardens will begin to see an impetus to break the subscription barrier down and get more players in there,” said Crook. WoW is letting users get access to characters on the Web, already making it more available.

“I’ve already seen a lot of this with developers and publishers looking at the NPD charts of the last few years and start to look at free-to-play games,” Crook explained. “Games that five years ago weren’t technologically able to make the ship are now looking very compelling.”

The question then came up, "What comes after free?"

After free sees the ability to share content becoming important, moving characters between games, etc.