FreeToPlay.biz The Business and Design of Free-To-Play Games

Challenges In Designing A Casual MMO (Free Realms) – GDC Austin 2009

Laralyn McWilliams (Creative Director, Sony Online Entertainment)

Designing for a casual MMO.

• Differences in designing a casual MMO
• Play sessions are shorter - as short as 5 mins
• Competition - lots of distractions... new games for this group every single day
• Skill set and skill level - way different from traditional players... don't spend hours playing games like we do

Change the way you think

• Keep the focus on the players
• Think outside the box
• Don't base everything on what you like or prefer
• Don't rely on your own judgment over UX testing
• Question the "way things have to be"
• Understand your audience well enough that you can speak your audience's voice. I am speaking as the player here, not what I think - what I think doesn't matter.

Theory, Practice, Results

• Design team would have been better off if we had this process from the beginning.
• Drivers and passengers - analogy of a tour bus experience. You have a captive audience that you want to entertain.
• Designers are drivers. We are planning where people go. Plan the route, equip bus, pick stops and sights, determnine cost, provide entertainment along the way.
• Passenger is in control. It's his trip, money and time. He can get out of the car anytime he wants. He can blog about how your trip sucks. He can never ride with you again. Enough unhappy players will shut you donw.

Focus on passengers:

• Identify who the passengers are
• Set guideposts - how do I know I'm on track
• Look at competing tours
• Clear the path - get rid of your assumptions
• Design the passenger's experience - control exp start to finish
• Head out on open road

Identify the passengers

• Who are we trying to attract and entertain
• How do they spend money: Pre-planned vs impulse (boxed vs online), small increments vs large purchases - determines pricing bundles, retail vs download - assumption is retail is higher value... people may buy online because they saw it in store, convenience vs function vs vanity (maple story has nailed this distinction)
• What are they interested in?
• What are they watching on TV?
• Understand your passengers
• Don't base decisions on yourself or your own family
• No matter how normal or typical you feel, you probably aren't - we like BSG, general populace likes Desperate Housewives

How to get info

• Zandl Group Hotlists
• Iconoculture
• Others

Identify the passengers

• Free Realms player is boys and girls equally
• 10-15 years old
• Secondary is casual players and parents and family
• Example of Zandl Hotlist - provides demographic insight into what they are doing, wearing, etc.
• Pets in Free Realms can wear outfits. For every bionic dog there is a princess cat. Enough options and people feel welcome in your game.

Set Guideposts

• Short set of goals - guideposts or landmarks. Team goals.
• Check them with every decision you make
• Include development goals, when it's good for players - ex need really robust tools for designers to build content - good for players... equals lots of new content for players. Making content for impulsive players could be key for you.

Free Realms Guideposts

• Virtual world for teens, tweens, and casual players
• Support four play styles: Adventure, mini-games, simulation gameplay (housing, pets), Socialization
• Quick to start - get into game very quickly as first time and returning user
• Easy to understand
• Rewarding to play - a lot of online games have you working toward longer term goal
• Never assumes based on age or gender - won't assume your girl character will start as a cook... can alienate ppl and close off market

Free Realms Key Design Decision

• Create a game with a wide variety of activities that are all optional but all equally rewarding
• Players do what they want to do and feel like they are playing a game made just for them

Free Realms Interaction Reward Cycle

1. Player Need (Wealth, relationship, personal skill, etc)
2. Interaction (NPC, object, Mini-game, etc)
3. Reward (money, friendship, leaderboard, pet level up, etc)

Assess competing tours

• Tours that explore similar landscapes in terms of demographics
• Free Realms competing tours are: Runescape, Maple Story, Habbo, etc
• Other games: EQ, WoW, Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, WCIII, DotA, Viva Pinata, The Sims, Gears of War, Cooking Mama, Puzzle Quest, Gears of War (reload mechanic will show up as a part of housing)
• Inspiration comes from anywhere

Clear the Path

• Discard assumptions you may have about how to make game your making
• Look at assumptions from passengers POV
• Analyze each feature
• Challenge every assumption
• "In writing you must kill your darlings" - William Faulkner

Flow Chart

• Is it fun?
• No? Is it essential? - No, Get Rid of it; Yes, Improve it!

Shot of Disneyland theme park map - they are the best at controlling experience. Lot to learn from that.

Design the Passenger's Experience

• We use SCRUM on Free Realms
• Traditonal view of user story: written desc used for planning, conversations about the story, etc
• Should be written from player perspective ("don't want to run out of inventory space")
• User stories as the foundation
• Orient design docs toward user stories... inventory design doc could start with user story
• USer stories + solutions + implementation details + game design
• Design the passengers experience

Servers

• Assumption: a character is locked to a server
• Sucks for my friends on different server - sucks when server is down
• USer story: want to play with friends on diff servers
• User story: want to play when server is down
• Other games, Runescape, Wizard101
• Solution: Play on any server, any time
• Hindsight: should have included server transfer while in-game before launch
• All languages + all servers = new problems (great from player perspective... but lots of delay in translation)
• Need server recommendation logic - take server select out of experience... to do that you need a system that recommends a server based on where their friends already are
• Jumping to a friend may mean a long download - if you stream your content... if you haven't been to your friend's part of the world, you will spend time waiting for it

Classes

• Assumption: a character is locked into a class at character create
• Problem: I can't understand the choice before  play
• User stories: As a player, I don't want to make a long term choice before I play
• User story: As a player, I want to try different classes
• Solution: jobs
• Hindsight: too many choices, all at once
• Making a job cool = lots of investment in that job = expectation that subsequent jobs will be that robust
• Putting job choice up front in new player experience
• Create a stronger link between fave jobs and identity
• Gleam and Gloam are really important to give a sense of purpose

Inventory

• Assumption: have to limit inventory space... buy additional space.. inventory tetris is good
• Problem: I have to decide what to throw away, I have to spend money to carry things I earned
• User story: don't want to have to choose to destroy something to pick up something else
• Other games: none
• Solution: unlimited inventory
• Going to buy items in Free Realms is like going to target - shields, swords, but also housewares and automotive
• Hindsight: unlimited inventory + no delete? ooops; single char is 2mb and growing, before housing... a lot to xfer to and from client;
• Implementing a super high inventory limit... as well as a way for players to sort inventory and give players a closet in their house where they can store inventory items

The Fun

• Assumptions: MMOs are about systems and rewards and not gameplay
• Problem: audience expects moment to moment fun, so I expect more polish
• User story: want to have fun ACTUALLY playing your game; all play styles need to be available to me
• Other games: puzzle pirates, puzzle quest, etc
• Solution: emphasize interaction and reward equally; For each min--game target a specific gender and age with the mechanics... mining (boys), harvesting (girls)
• Solution: have a sense of humour... anything is more fun if it's funny
• Hindsight: Game developers are not normal... what we thought was fun was not; inveting more in 2D games, improving 3d games so they are easier to play, improving camera, exploration should have been optional - will change it to be a playstyle not mandatory, activities need to be clearly marked;
• All play styles and mini-games need reward and progression... our tower defense game had no rewards and wasn't being played... once we added rewards it went through the roof
• Players want to make their own fun. Parties are very popular in Free Realms.  Always a party going on. Need to give players tools to make their own fun and just hang out.

Stats

• Assumption: MMOs have to have stats.
• Problem: how do I choose between items with lots of confusing stats?
• Problem: I don't want to have to use a calcuator
• User story: I want to understand my choices without having to learn these stats
• Solutions: Only derived result stats - all explicit about what they do for you, very few stats, shard system
• Hindsight: Stick to only derived stats, but add more depth; find ways to better separate appearance from stats, enhance "walking leaderboard" variables (need to look at someone and know what they've done)
• Players who walk around in banana or hotdog suit get challenged to more duels.

Look & Feel

• Assumption: high fantasy is cool
• Problem: fantasy is not cool, it is for nerds; embarassed to talk about; I want a player that looks like me
• Free Realms has to appeal to the guy who beats up the kid who plays WoW
• Smedley's kid decided he wasn't going to talk about WoW anymore at school because he wanted to get dates
• User story: As a player, I want the choice to look cool and wear real clothing that looks cool to my friends -
• Solution: FR is a mix of real world and fantasy and player can look the way they want to look
• Matrix: Costume, Freestyle vs Combat, Non-combat
• Critical shift to go from fantasy to real
• Hindsight: Need more clothing choices in character create for girls; need more bad ass appearances for boys; need more elaborate outfits for high character progression

Progression

• Assumption: characters level up only by playing combat
• Problem: game looks cool, but I don't want to fight; things I like (crafting) aren't important enough to level up on
• User story: As a player, I want to level up for what I do - don't tell me what I like isn't important)
• Solution: level up for multiple things
• Hindsight: Need more meaningful items; need more robust and accurate leaderboards, achievements will be really significant in progression when they come online in a week; need more consistency across jobs
• Figuring out how a postman and a ninja level up in a consistent way was designer hell. If you are considering a game that has multiple play styles that are equally rewarded, think of it a lot up front otherwise your game will feel like a carnival.

Sessions

• Assumption: Should take many hours to get the best rewards in the game
• Problem: I like this game, but I don't get anywhere playing it 2 hours a week; Why won't you let me spend more money on your game?
• User stories: Don't want to commit all my time to one game; want to decide whether or not I want to buy game changing items
• Solution: Gameplay is in 15 min chunks, interactions give frequent rewards; game-changing items avail in store - add exp, etc
• Hindsight: we shipped the game too easy... will make combat harder; will change game to make sure best gear is dropped not bought, putting more limited time items on marketplace, adding a wheel of prizes... helps short sessions

The Open Road

• How do you know if any of your ideas will work? You don't. Get to the point where you can try it on people outside of your live audience... really key.

Solutions lead to new problems

• How do leaderboards work if you char is not linked to a server?
• How do you set difficulty when your char progression is so shallow? There will be more diff between level 10 and 20 character in the future.
• How do you deal with hackers when everyone can create a free account? Player char dressed as referee. All our C/S agents wear this outfit when are in game - only our GMs can wear these. Players know they can trust this person. Guy in police outfit is the enforcer... you know you are going to get hit with a ban stick - players will stop doing something when they see him. Only 1 enforcer per server - they are a real person the GM needs to "check out"
• How do you help players understand unlimited inventory.
• How do you keep stats light and meaningful? Majority of our audience is level 5.
• How do you satisfy casual and dedicated players?
• How do you balance earning coins as postman vs pet trainer, etc? Best you can do is to try to do things in a way that doesn't alienate people. Boots for postman were way overpowered. Designers nerfed it, we patched it, players freaked out. We unnerfed it - let the 100 players who had the boots keep them, but made new boots fixed.

Design Cycle

• Identify passengers: who is actually playing? Are the ppl we wanted to play, playing? Do we need to retarget?
• Set guideposts: What now is important to players? What are they asking for?
• Competing tours: Never stop looking. After we released, several competitors changed web flows. No we are changing.
• Clear Path: What of our assumptions were wrong.
• Design passengers experience: 3 levels of data: Stats (how many ppl play Postman), Trend (are more people playing postman now), Correlation data (most important: how many ppl who play postman now but didn't before are now buying items?)

Parting thoughts

• Stay focused on goals
• Find creative solutions
• Understand that each solution creates new probs
• Play game in your head and look for edge cases (what happens if bought a job but my membership lapsed and I tried to interact with something)
• Evaluate each decision against your guideposts
• Design every system to be as flexible as you can - easy to make changes without people noticing
• Be willing to take risks - but be willing to cull it early if it looks like it will fail
• Be willing to kill your darlings
• Stay in touch with your passengers
• Keep focus testing! Ends guesswork and arguments.

Developing Licensed Games: Doing It Successfully in Tough Economic Times – GDC Austin 2009

Feargus Urquhart, Obsidian Entertainment
Jean Marcel Nicolai, Disney
Leo, Bioware
Eugene Evans (Moderator), EA Mythic

As a developer, what is your bias/approach when you're pitching your own products vs opportunity to do a publisher's IP?

Feargus: Pubs are more willing to take risks when there is money. When we are looking at what we will pitch, we consider the climate - i.e. if publishers are willing to take risks. Normally we put together 2-3 pitches, hand them over, then we get the word on what they would really like us to work on (i.e. a license). We will often look at a publisher's catalog to see what they have - sometimes what they offer doesn't make sense for the platform or genre - we try to figure out what would a license that works for us look like as a game. That's where we focus our efforts. If we pitch a license they already have and it blends with what we do, then you've gotten past step 1.

Jean Marcel: Different pubs have different priorities. Some are heavily driven by their slate. For me it's all a question of quality. It's all about what a developer can deliver. Sometime the brand you are working with will define the boundaries and you'll ask the dev to stay within those boundaries. But sometimes you want the dev to bring their own ideas and see how they fit within your brand. Can be dangerous for a creative org to take directly what the publisher wants and not bring their own creativity.

Question for Leo: You've worked on titles like Matrix Online and Star Wars Old Republic. What are challenges of producing online vs standalone?

Leo: Couple challenges... from a user's perspective, you have a bunch of passionate people. When you are making a single player game that is more scripted you can have a better understanding of how they will interact with your IP. In an MMO, users may find a bunch of different areas fun - combat, harvesting, etc. Working on an online game, you have to make sure that all parts of the IP are well thought out so that any way a person comes at the experience is unique and well done.

Feargus: The licenses we've worked with a lot (D&D, Star Trek, LOTR), when you are making a big game with a license you are usually expanding the license. So we need to ask lots of questions... when we wanted to use some iconic characters from within D&D, we had to ask what the IP holder cared about - can we change colours, etc. We didn't wait for them to tell us. Can we blow this city up or can't we? Need to bring the question of boundaries up ASAP. We did a little design work, but not much, just to find out these boundaries up front with tons of questions.

Jean Marcel: Great point. Most of the company may be risk-averse, but the role of the developer is to push the boundaries, otherwise you will end up with a copycat product and no one will be happy in the end.

Feargus - do you feel more or less secure as a developer because it is based on an IP or not?
Feargus: I would feel much more secure about working on a licensed property in times like this or not. From time to time, we're living in the minutiae of making a game and the publisher is looking at ROI. It is easier for non-gamers to understand a game if it is a license than if it is not. Licenses are something we pursue more in these economic times because the org would understand the product more due to license.

Jean Marcel: I understand this point of view. Right now movie license games have bad perception among consumers. Sometimes they don't make sense to greenlight. That's why I go back to quality. When you have an IP holder who has a big vault of IP, it is good for the developer to come back to the publisher with what they would like to do - regardless of whether there is an upcoming movie tied to it. More secure for developer because the amount of promotion that needs to get done for this type of product is less than original IP.

Arkham Asylum doing incredibly well without being released with a movie. Dev times getting longer and longer. What's your POV on this approach on not tying a game to a movie launch?

Feargus: That's interesting. Talking to my neighbour... he knew WoW and the name of the company I worked for. And he didn't dress like a gamer. Acceptance of games as a whole by everyone. Led to an understanding that games are a part of a brand as a whole. Now when we are approached for a movie game it's no longer a 6 or 9 month dev schedule, now they are calling 24 and 36 months out. Great to see that there is an acknowledgement of how making a great game can push the whole brand. Also seen a lot lately that people are open to not following the plot of the movie. We can now add in more creativity. Great business decision too.

Leo: Lot of things come into play when considering this issue. What does a coordinated entertainment launch due in terms of a multiplier effect. Does that drive concurrent movie/game releases. How does this corrolate to kids games? Do you have to make a 95% game? Or is it more important to hit at the same time as the big movie? My experience is that it's a balancing act between associating a game with a movie release or delivering a well reviewed adult-oriented product.

Jean Marcel: I agree. Let's take the big movies - $50-100M marketing investment. If you position yourself very differently from the movie, your game may be lost in translation. But it's important to understand the world, but not re-tell the same movie they just saw. Need to have a deep dive on how we build the product from a dev perspective and how we can create more synergies with movie and its director, right from the beginning. If there is a better synergy from scratch - the game guys have good dialog with movie director - then movie director can get cool weapons in film, etc. But in the past, we were struggling with the lead time. Movie script takes lots of time. For developer, takes a long time to create tech and pipeline. But if we can match the 2 schedules together, then the result all around is better.

Do you think the market is more fickle? As dev times have become longer, how do you forecast status of an IP that far out?

Jean Marcel: No risk, no business. We are trying to protect the companies with a different level of risk. What is the trend of this property - invest early enough to capitalize on that. But there is a level of uncertainty still. Market has changed dramatically lately. Dev community is trying to change processes but there are some timeframes which cannot be compressed. It will always be an issue we have to fight with. But if we have a great product, I still believe the product will find its consumer at the end. Biggest mismatch can be platform - if there is a big change there, that can be the biggest error.

I was surprised by Lego Stars' success. Two disparate brands, now they've defined their own genre. Do you guys have an example of surprising brands in games?

Feargus: We're going through all the failures in our head... Superman, Ironman, etc. Telling... there are so few of these licenses that have done well.

Jean Marcel: That's interesting, because Lego was not in great shape when developer went in with that license. They had to rejuvenate the brand. The quality of the product with drop in drop out play, etc elevated it. Kingdom Hearts is another example - taking a lot of characters and putting them in a world no one expect. Wound up a good matchup.

Eugene: Many industry types were surprised Kingdom Hearts succeeded... throwing all those IPs together usually regarded as crazy.

With a Star Wars Lego title, is that an example of a game contributing to the brand?

Jean Marcel: Definitely. Where Lego was before and the tremendous job they did extending that brand to a different medium. Now around the world you see Lego stores, attractions, etc.

Leo: The game reinforced both. I can see through my kids how they react to these things. They hadn't watch Star Wars but only wanted to after playing these games. By bringing those two things together, it helped expand and solidify the love of Star Wars in another generation.

Jean Marcel: Interesting to devs and pubs is that it is a broad offering - dads playing with their kids - and I know a lot of people at my age who are playing those games. Key challenges for dev community to emulate that success. How do we touch the massive audience rather than just the core. How do we create these titles that create a fissure in the business to expand it.

Eugene: Developer was incredibly passionate about both IPs. Rock Band Beatles was driven by Harmonix - it is now part of big worldwide event - the re-release of these albums - and now this dev is part of a huge event. Says a lot about games' relevancy. The reverse of that for developers is that devs can get so passionate about the IP, but they may not want to work with IP holder.

Feargus: We all have the things we love. You get a chance to make a game about it and the opportunity is weird. When I got to be in charge of D&D games, it was bizarre. My part in it was great opportunity. It can jade your vision in terms of what is important from a business perspective. Now with the big budgets if you are too enamored you are at risk of making the wrong decision. On the flip side, it can be a positive if you are that into it. Can be a good decision, but it's a risky decision. As a developer we've tried to focus on the business so we can stay in business. By bringing yourself back and making the judgment call about ROI versus passion... you are better off. I.e. our $9500 per man month vs the $11K we're getting paid - we can't put any extra man months into it.

Leo: You can't let your passion drive insanity and feature creep. Have to be cognizant of your passion driving you away from business necessities. From a marketing perspective, I can be passionate about something but I too have to be conscious that my approach may not be the right one for introducing the product to the consumer. Take it back to business perspective so you don't go crazy.

Q&A

With iPhone and webplatforms and quick turnaround, how does that affect relationships with IP holders, etc?

Feargus: It will probably go back to overall goal of using the license. iPhone games can get done quickly, but the goal may not be met. It may not be synergistic with release of a movie - an iPhone game can have SOME impact, but probably not big enough to build on what's happening with the movie. No magazine covers unless it's a AAA game.

Jean Marcel: All those approaches are always good for the business. Especially as you can plant more seeds and see what you get out of it. But the massive hype is only going to come from something big. There is probably a mix of products to do, but ultimately you have to hit the date with a big product. A small product won't help you. Perhaps a smaller product can serve as a focus test for a larger one.

Eugene: Very difficult to market mobile and web games - they are more viral. Games usually try to ride on coattails of big movie releases. Breakout iPhone and web games may be helped by being tied into movie releases.

How has dealing with license holders changed over time? What is it like for a developer to go out there approaching them now?

Feargus: I can speak to my experience. Very dependent on the people you are working with at the licensor. We've worked with D&D... from 95 until just recently. When you're dealing with a licensing group that is incentivized to work with you, it's more likely to be successful. At one point the licensing $ went to Wizard of the Coast, but then at one point it did not. When that happened the relationship changed. Might be a question to ask at the outset. We always look at it as "it's their license, not yours" and when you treat it that way, you get on their side. When we ran into trouble with Wizards of the Coast, we'd fly up there to help us stay in touch and keep it together. As to how I think it is now, I think there's more of an understanding about games. But it really depends on who you're working with at the licensor.

Jean Marcel: Licensor really understands the value of their IP or brand. So they are much more careful about doing poor products... need to product their franchises and be careful in selecting their partner. We are still fighting with the perception in our business - especially related to movie games - that it is enough to slap the image on the front of the box and the game can be poor.

Often the publishers and licensors are people who don't know games. Why not hire someone who has dev experience? Are you seeing a change in that?

Eugene: 15 years ago you were working with licensing, not interactive groups.

Leo: Just quick, 10 years ago, what would happen is companies would recognize they don't know games so they'd find one person in the department who was a game player. That was detrimental to process. Now most IP holders have departments of people with real experience.

Feargus: You are still going to run into licensor reps that do not understand games. I also was that guy once - who didn't know anything. I was telling people how to make games (when I shouldn't have). All you can do is help them understand how games are made and don't talk down to them. Ultimately they are going to believe or not believe you.

Jean Marcel: Question of skills and talent among guys on licensing front. They should recognize who they need to bring in and what they don't know. If they don't, then it's probably the beginning of a bad relationship. As soon as you touch the creative side, everyone wants to be involved. This can be a very slippery road. This is the role of the developer that they need to make sure the creative stays with the people who know what they're doing. The role of the licensor is to translate the brand. People need to stick with their responsibilities.

As media companies come into business (again), how are these companies newly approaching their re-entry into gaming business?

Jean Marcel: Culture, Talent, Processes. Culture because game space has a different culture than toy space or movie space. So you need to deal with that and make sure the two can work together. Talent because you need right skills and people to do the job. Processes because you need the right tools to get things done. Companies that are born and raised in games - i.e. 25 years in the business - have this as their DNA.

What advantages do media companies have over EA, Activision, etc?

Feargus: Deep pockets and diversified businesses.

How to Make the Free-to-Play Model Work for You – GDC Austin 2009

Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia
David Georgeson, Producer ZOMG

• Gaia been around for 5 years
• 10M uniques/month
• #1 time spent in social media - avg 51 mins/visit
• Gaia feels like a mix of a socnet and an MMO like WoW
• Dig into user experience or talk to ppl using it and they describe it differently - feels like 21st century version of the mall or downtown or summer camp
• Place you go to hang out with friends and do a dozen different activities

At this point, Craig is talking and flipping through slides SO fast that I'm not sure he wants anyone to really take this stuff in (later confirmed as he says slides won't be avail online - it's a management slide deck). So I stopped taking notes for this segment.

ZOMG producer comes up

Be Both Accessible and Engaging

• Need to be accessible and engaging
• Gaia started out engaging, but lost accessibility for a while - fixed it with better UI and user analysis
• But we do "engaged" with authority - largely due to our 20 ring circus, retention is very high
• Another positive example: Facebook - You lose hours without realizing, there's always one more thing to do, lots of flavours for lots of different user types

Three Key Lesssons

• Make it fun
• Get users to buy
• Make it easy to buy

MAKING IT FUN

Identify your Audience, then own it

• You can't satisfy everyone, so design features to satisfy a niche
• Understand your niche - identify key features by talking to fans; get the core right before taking on more tasks
• Good things happen when you nail the niche - great reputation, word of mouth increases, once you have more users you can get diverse
• Gaia example: started as anime lovers forum catering to artists, forums to talk about it all, bragged to others and it grew
• Gaia focus has expanded over 5 years, adding features slowly - went to housing (ppl who do housing aren't necessarily the ppl who do the dress up doll stuff - diversifying), rally cars
• Also provide custom mini-games, attract the most casual of gamers, they have social aspects within them allowing chat, etc
• Eventually expanded to a full-fledged MMO, ZOMG (video doesn't play - Craig working on bringing it up)

Keep your Audience Involved

• Internal marketing for both present and future features
• Players want to be excited, so make it happen
• Schedule of events to keep players looking forward, so they never want to quit
• If players ever get bored, there are a million other net destinations to go look at - never let them get bored

Talk to your Users

• Your ideas may not be what players want
• Find out
• Implement after you figure out how it makes business sense - either soft or hard returns
• Don't come up with a money making scheme then foist it on your players

Bite Sized Content

• Frequent rewards
• Smaller time commitments
• Early accomplishments
• WoW reward schedule is way too long for web world
• Random events system in ZOMG has world constantly changing around you so it's never the same - lots of different experiences so every time you go in there is something new and different

Keep New Features Coming

• Keep evolving, refining, adding
• Stay flexible
• Never stop
• ZOMG rolls out stuff every two weeks or less
• Always make sure players are fully aware of what's coming up

Build a 20 Ring Circus

• No single idea appeals to everyone
• Satisfy more of your core audience by creating new ways to interface with your site - dress up vs marketplace vs games vs hangouts etc
• MMOs multiple kinds of gameplay within the game

Create a variety of experiences
Cater to many different player types with features such as:

• Forums, guilds
• Collectibles
• Gathering, crafting
• Social community
• Social gaming
• Combat, PVE, PVP
• Mini-games

Gaia invited fans to meet employees after a company softball game in San Jose. Fans travelled from Florida, Washington state, etc to meet them. Very passionate.

ZOMG is Engaging Users

• Extremely high retention over 10 months since open beta launch
• Avg play time 2.5 hours
• ZOMG players 4x more likely to purchase than main site players
• Incredibly easy to try, free, no download, four click entry
• Achieves its goal as fly paper for the main site

Get them to stick, then you win

• The more entertained, the longer they stay
• Longer they stay, more likely they are to buy something
• More likely they are to make a friend
• Once they've made a friend and bought something, very unlikely they will go away
• Cultivate, nurture and entertain your users

Get Users to Want to Buy

• Accept it! Most users won't buy from you - but those that won't buy are still critical to your business, they will keep the community alive and exciting for those that will buy
• Build things that entertain everyone - then enable ways for buyers to participate or get ahead via purchases

What do they buy?

• Anything that promotes self expression
• Anything that promotes sense of belonging to the community or friends
• Anything that lets users get to an end goal faster or easier
• Anything that looks like it can be turned for profit

How Does Community Affect Revenue?

• Community provides the venue where users can brag by displaying their earned/purchased items and abilities - forums, profiles, guilds, marketplace, games, UGC, town area, post artwork, get ratings - hot or not, etc
• If they can't brag, they don't want it and the items and features are worthless

Are items entertaining? You bet they are?

• Gaia makes all their money off sponsorship or microtrans items
• Item types are a form of entertainment - decorative, functional, and/or collectible - but they don't satisfy 100% of your audience
• Have to keep coming up with new stuff
• Items that evolve - i.e. the egg that hatches into a Phoenix are very cool... people speculate on how it will evolve, gains value over time

Non-Item Revenue Examples

• Shout outs (Maple Story)
• Time shortcuts (powerup in ZOMG, points in Zynga games)
• Name changes/server changes (Everquest, WoW and traditional MMOs)
• Premium features (features or areas avail only to members - Club Penguin, Runescape, etc)

Make Buying Easy

• Utilize every payment option
• Mobile payments
• Game cards
• Credit cards
• Cash
• If you can use ALL the available payment systems, use them all. They don't cannibalize each other
• Habbo Hotel has over 170 payment methods

Recap

• Make it fun for everyone, but focus on your niche first
• Get users to want to buy, make it exciting, let them know what's coming up, features oriented toward core
• Make buying easy - if you can make it 1-click, make it 1-click
• Customers win, you win, everyone wins

Q&A

Any mobile plans?
Craig: great evidence you can be successful in this area. GREE and DNA (Mobile Game Town) in Asia are both doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue

Average age of Gaian?
Craig: Median age is 18 years old, 60/40 girls; doesn't work for a 10 year old - sweet spot is 19-20 girls.

Sponsorships - can you talk about it?
Craig: Sponsorships work well for us. We had no ads 3 years ago, now we've done a ton of deals with big brands. Skittles is on our site - they funded the creation of a variety of virtual spaces that had some game mechanics in them or custom mini-games or cooperative experiences in site where if you did these experiences you would earn Skittles and the community's goal was to collect as many skittles as possile and build a rainbow. When it was done, there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that rained gold (Currency) down on all users. We partner with a brand to build something that adds value to the user experience. They fund it, but we build it. As a result, turns out you get better response rates for advertisers.

Have you found a sweet spot for price?
We are still experimenting with that. We don't have a lot of items over $7.5. Many other companies say there is no price insensitivity between pennies and $7.5. The real issue is the penny gap - charging anything more than $0. Anytime we raise a price, revenue goes up. The sales of the item do not go down.

How do you value sponsorships?
We have to tie it to CPMs as there is no other way an agency can value a deal. Otherwise they can't show metrics the way they are used to. We get over 2B page views a month, so it's easy to offer impressions.

How do you QA new content without breaking old stuff?
It gets harder and harder. Make thorough checklists and resist tendency to just get it out because "you know it's good" - gets to be a certain size of an MMO where you try to compartmentalize your code so things are less likely to break, but ultimately good QA processes will make or break you.

Along the QA lines, how much do you use automated QA or is it all manual?
It's all manual in our case. We have some process checks (scripts compile, etc) but in general most of our stuff is manual and we rely on checklists. All our QA is in-house. We only did a hardware compatibility test externally.

How big is the development side of the organization?
105 people in whole company. 40+ of whom are developers. Include QA and backend operations, then maybe 50 dev. ZOMG team is impressive... 15 people (5 artists, 10 devs) on ZOMG MMO (draws laughter from crowd).

Is Membership Suitable for Gaia?
Craig: I think you have to choose Runescape or Maple Story model. Pogo has pulled off both though... you can buy sub that gives you a collection of virtual goods. I think you have to decide up front what you want to be. One gives you more users, but less revenue per user. Sub models give you more predictable revenue stream, but microtrans have potential to blow that out of the water due to uncapped ceiling on ARPU.

Do you have a mix of time-based vs consumables vs permanent items?
Most of our stuff is permanent. Then there is time-based stuff (fish only live for 90 days in an acquarium) and then we have consumables. Just did deal with Vivix - you can modify your voice, but it only lasts for a few weeks.

Is 60/40 split for Gaia the same within ZOMG?
Yes it is. 90% of our users have never played an MMO before. Game has a lot of combat - worried that we would only attract guys. But that hasn't been the case at all. 60/40 girls, just like main site.

Demographic among national boundaries?
North America is 85% of the player base.

What were your advertising efforts to get your name out when you launched?
No money was spent. Even still, we spend almost no money on marketing. Almost all word of mouth. Tools within Facebook and their invite loop systems are probably the easiest and cheapest way to acquire users. That said, we haven't used that yet - most of our growth is word of mouth at school. We have started to test online ads and we've got it so we pay less for the ad than we get from that user lifetime.