Slashdot Mirror
How Much Money Do Free-To-Play MMOs Make?
simoniker writes "Over at Gamasutra, a new feature article discusses how much money free-to-play MMO games make, with specific real-world stats from game developers willing to discuss how they make money with microtransaction-based PC games. In particular, Puzzle Pirates co-creator Daniel James reveals that 'the average revenue per user (ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month.' It's obviously quite a different model from the regular $15/month for World Of Warcraft, but it evidently works for some companies."
Wow, when did $46 become a micro payment?
From when you RTFA:
Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions.
I lost my sig.
if the average user gives an average of 1-2 dollars per month, how can 5000 users generate 230,000 dollars?
I believe that the average per user is $1-2 per month.
However, the average per paying user was something along the lines of $50. So the math would go something like:
($50/paying user)(5000 users) = $250,000
or
($1.50/user)(160,000 users) = $240,000
Puzzle Pirates is written in cross platform Java. Works on every major OS.
"(ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue"
So 10% of the player base is paying him and that player base equals 5,000 people. So there are 50,000 people a month playing - nice.
But wait a sec...ARPU is only $2 on the top end and 5,000 people pay this, so that's $10,000 a month - where is the other $220,000 coming from!!!!! Even if all 50k people were spending $2 a month that's be $100k - Where did I miss something?
OH I GET IT NOW - From the actual article....
"Indeed, James reveals that Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions."
This is different than what the blurb mentioned - I guess it did get me to read, but only this time - you're tactics won't always work on me!
Ave Molech Setting
Some of us are browser based. I play www.KingdomofLoathing.com all the time, and it's platform independent. I also run my own game at www.Twilightheroes.com.
With just under 30k accounts, maybe 2,000 of them active in a given month, I'm not really quite "massive" yet but my own experience is that I pull in on average less than $0.50 per account per month, with some fair bit of fluctuation. I'd be jumping for joy at an average of $2/player.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Proper sleep support is really important. For a while I owned a PowerBook and a ThinkPad (well, I still do, I just don't use them much now). To take my ThinkPad somewhere, I needed to shut it down, then when I got there reboot and reopen all of my applications in their last state. With the Mac, I shut the lid and opened it when I got there, with all of my applications in exactly the same state I left them. I theory I could do the same with my ThinkPad, but it only had an 80-90% chance of coming out of sleep mode correctly, and I didn't think even a 10% chance of data loss was acceptable every time I closed the lid. The battery on the PowerBook also lasted about twice as long. Guess which machine I took with me, and which I left at home...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, that's fifty cents per active account. People who don't log in or play generally don't donate.
Server costs are about half of my income for two dedicated servers (one file server, one database server). Doesn't leave a lot of profit (especially if I want to do any advertising or hire out any services), so at this point it's still more of a minimum-wage hobby. On the other hand, that beats the hell out of hobbies that *cost* money and it's still fantastically fun, educational, and rewarding.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay