Free Realms Approaches the Five-Million-Player Mark

A few days ago at Comic-Con, Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley spoke about the success of Free Realms, their free-to-play MMORPG that relies on microtransactions for a business model. The game was released at the end of April, and by mid-June there were upwards of three million registered users. Now that total is approaching five million, with no sign of slowing down. Min Kim, another panelist at the discussion, said, "When people started talking about it back in 2003 or 2004, people said Western games would never want to do this, to play a game for free and then buy items. And now everybody is saying, 'We're going to have microtransactions as part of our business model.'"

Comments

5m players or registered users?

[Lazy Jones]

I find such claims dubious, then again I don't know whether the pay-to-play games producers include people who take the free 14-day trials in their claimed player numbers...

Re:5m players or registered users?

[fractoid]

It's easy to get registrations for a free game, most of those require you to register to even download the client. Average concurrent users is a much better measure of a game's popularity. Then again I guess you could consider WoW China's business model to be microtransaction based (they pay a very small fee per hour instead of paying a larger fee per month), and that's responsible for a large part of WoW's playerbase. Numbers like that are always inflated as much as they can to make the game look better anyway.

I'm willing to buy stuff in those games.

[anomnomnomymous]

Well done to them.
If the game(s) are executed well, and you still can play the same game when -not- paying for it (or not get a severe advantage), I'll be playing it... and I might even buy some virtual stuff.

I've recently started playing Battlefield Heroes, and whereas I thought I wouldn't be fooled into buying silly virtual clothes, I've recently -did- do that, if not only because I think giving back five pounds of my money is a reasonable amount for the enjoyable content they delivered.
So yeah, let more free games come along, and I might try to compensate a company for their work (my main motivation for buying those items).

Great name!

[DNS-and-BIND]

What a break from the usual parade of poorly-named free software products. "Free Realms" says it all. Free has that double meaning, and Realms tags it immediately as a swords-and-sorcery type thing. Makers of "the GIMP" and other unfortunate backronyms take note.

Re:Great name!

[MistrBlank]

No silly, Photo Image Manipulation Program... or:

P.I.M.P.

They should also make a "lite edition" to make it much easier for the simple edits people would like to do without all the crazy effects.

P.I.M.P.L.E.

Re:So if I were to jump off the cliff...

[Jurily]

It seems a wiser idea would be to give the users a chance to love your game THEN introduce microtransactions, perhaps to allow users gain an edge during endgame.

Fuck no. Nobody wants to play with someone who constantly tries to bribe the DM. And nobody wants to play with a DM who can be bribed.

You already have a working business model out there, follow that: in WoW everyone is equal.

Depends on the game

[Sycraft-fu]

In the case of WoW the way the count a subscriber is a person who paid too play the game in the last 30 days. In the case of most of the world, that means someone who has an active monthly subscription. In the case of some Asian countries, it means someone who paid for some play time last month.

Sony Hit A Homerun With Free Realms

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time Free Realms crosses another million player milestone the same thing always gets implied.

The totals are always stated to be the unique number of players who have signed up for the game and actually played the game.

Anyone who has tried the game can easily see why Free Realms is such a massive hit. It appeals to three different demographics very well:

1. Burnt out hardcore MMORPG players who love being part of an online world but need a break from the hours of hardcore raiding or grinding they are use to

2. Kids and parents

3. Casual first time players who don't want to invent the insane time required for a standard MMORGP

Beyond that Sony's years of experience making MMORPGs really shows. The game is the most bug free and polished MMORPG I've ever seen. Everything is streamed from the very start. You can be playing live withing a few minutes of signing up. A tiny loader program is downloaded and you are good to go. No 10 gig all day downloading and patching just to try out the game like most MMORPGs require you to go through.

You can jump in and out at any time without worrying about dying or losing your stuff.

And the free versus pay is pretty much evenly divided so that you can easily play a half of the game without every paying a single penny.

The artwork is beautiful but it runs on just about any computer that someone would have at home today.

And it is just plain fun and relaxing. Sony absolutely nailed it with Free Realms. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people playing gets into the 10-20 million range once the game hits the millions of PS3s already on the market.

Re:Sony Hit A Homerun With Free Realms

[Tridus]

"Every time Free Realms crosses another million player milestone the same thing always gets implied.

The totals are always stated to be the unique number of players who have signed up for the game and actually played the game."

Yeah, because these numbers are meaningless. Sign up and play once, then quit? You still count as a "player" until the end of time. Comparing the numbers to anything other then another game with the same model is meaningless.

How many people spent money on it in the last month? That's the number that REALLY matters. You'll notice they don't release that one.

This is the (sad) future

[physburn]

In the future a major proportion of the world economy will be lived in MMO style worlds. People with spend much of there time there, because in a polluted, expensive, miserable rule world, just doesn't have anything for them. Some people, like chinese gold farmers now, will slave in artificial game jobs, finding magic swords and a like for the spoiled teenagers of the richer classes. Gambling on gameplay might all spring up as a mini industry for the denizens of the MMO environments. It will be so much fun, that many people will neglect there real lives, usually spent alone in VR environment in dirty bed sits and ever smaller flats.

---

MUD Games Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Winders Only, of course....

[Kratisto]

Now Slashdot that's a browser game. The entire website is in the browser and can be read as long as you have the most up to date javascript. Even on linux.

iTunes users rescue Sony

[foniksonik]

iTunes really got people used to micro-transactions... unafraid really. Yes people got a few shocks when they went on a binge and grabbed whatever they felt like for a week or two but then they sobered up and realized that they could easily just get a few new songs a week and they'd be really happy.

Now with the iPhone even more people are used to paying $0.99 for a wide selection of content while getting a lot of value for "free" (they did pay for the phone and mobile account).

All this adds up to a growing population of people who feel very comfortable paying on demand via micro-transactions for bonus entertainment. It's like going to Disneyland or [your local amusement park] - it's not the entrance fee that get you. It's the snacks, toys, shows, lunch, dinner, clothes, etc. The entrance fee is just to weed out those who have money from those who would clog the lines for paying customers.

How Many Buyers?

[Bieeanda]

Five million users, whether they just be one-time registrants or not, is pretty impressive. The thing is, Smed is implying a connection between those users and the cash shop, which just isn't necessarily there. The game is free-to-play. You don't need to subscribe, or to buy gear in the cash shop. I doubt many really have, beyond using the free 100 Store Cash they got from the first or second million milestone celebration.

Cash store games work, but claiming 'five million people spend money at ours!' is disingenuous.