duh
Latest
Superdata CEO: F2P audience has 'reached its limits'
SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen spoke yesterday at the GameON: Finance conference in Toronto. He posited that the F2P monetization model is declining in popularity. "So I think what's really happening is on the one hand you have the free-to-play audience, and I think that's reached its limits, to some degree," van Dreunen said. "And then there's the premium audience saying, 'Yes, I want to buy a game. I don't want to deal with the ads and in-game items. I want premium.' While in the mobile market, three-quarters of stuff is built with free-to-play as its dominant monetization model, you see somewhat of a backlash." He cited Apple's recent decision to remove the word "free" from F2P App Store titles, and he also mentioned Warlords of Draenor's success as an indicator of healthy demand for paid titles.
GDC Online 2012: CCP on keeping players cheaply
Sandboxes get a lot of flak in today's themepark-dominated MMO industry. That said, sandbox developers who do it right will be laughing all the way to bank, according to CCP senior designer Matthew Woodward. Woodward recently gave a talk at GDC Online titled The Other White Meat: Design Architecture for Sandbox Games. The presentation focused on the three pillars used by the firm to power its long-running EVE Online MMORPG. Woodward stressed social aspects, goals and goal-driven players, and most importantly, emergent gameplay. "The big win is that emergence is cheap. A lot of emergent gameplay discussion is about the One Big Moment. In EVE, the big heist that happened six years ago, in Ultima Online, the assassination of Lord British," Woodward explained. "If you do this well, people will play your game forever. People will pay for it forever." Massively sent two plucky game journalists -- Beau Hindman and Karen Bryan -- to Austin, Texas, for this year's GDC Online, where they'll be reporting back on MMO trends, community theory, old favorites, and new classics. Stay tuned for even more highlights from the show!
Industry execs conclude that gamers like free games
The latest declaration regarding the validity of the freemium business model comes to us from MCV. "It turns out free is the price point people want to pay for games," BBC Worldwide executive Robert Nashak told the website. Nashak goes on to say that freemium raises the quality bar by virtue of putting the power in the hands of the consumer. "If you're not hooking people in you can't monetize," he says. BioWare-Mythic's Eugene Evans agrees, and he says that the model has its roots in the games rental business. "For me that really did start when I saw the retailer Blockbuster started renting out games. I'm convinced that probably put some studios out of business," Evans explains. "There [were] a lot of people [who] complained about game rentals at the time, but they were often the people whose product was just bad."
Nexon grows in Korea and China, 'underwhelms' in America
Free-to-play is generating big bucks for Nexon. Who knew, right? The Korean gaming giant's profitability is profiled in a brief blurb at Gamasutra that focuses on Q1 2012 results. Nexon exceeded its first-quarter performance projections on the strength of F2P growth in the Korean and Chinese gaming markets. These gains were "slightly offset by an underwhelming performance for its games [in] North America," which was blamed on "certain operational challenges." Though Nexon's monthly active user count declined from 86.2 million to 82.8 million, its paying user rate increased (from 8.3 to 10.9 percent in year-over-year comparisons).
Dear Aunt TUAW: Is this a Verizon iPhone?
Dear Aunt TUAW, Dunno if you've seen this before! Is it a Verizon iPhone leaked screaanshot? Hugs, Francis Dear Francis, Auntie isn't sure if this falls under the basic rule of "Don't teach Auntie to suck eggs -- or change carrier names," but given Auntie's general familiarity with the subject matter, she's leaning towards "fake." What do you other nieces and nephews think? Let Auntie know in the comments. Love, Auntie T.
