Free To Play

The job market seems as hot as ever. As a result, I’ve had a few interesting free-to-play related jobs flitter through my inbox this week.

David Perry, Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim (in that company’s new, F2P-only format) and Kyra Reppen, SVP of Nickelodeon, send word of very compelling vacancies in their respective companies. Nickelodeon’s posting is based in LA whereas Acclaim seems open to remote-work scenarios. Kudos to Acclaim!

I promised I’d post their opps on freetoplay.biz. Click through for the full text of each posting.

(more…)

Is there a season for conferences? If so, it feels like it’s upon us.

GDC and SXSW went well. Here are some links to coverage of my talk at GDC and my panel at SXSW.

GDC

• Kotaku
• Gamasutra
• Bret Terrill
• Coobico

SXSW

• VentureBeat
• Virtual Worlds News
• Tony Walsh’s Liveblog
• New Media Buzz

Random local press

• WestEnder magazine

Next up for me is ICE 08 in Toronto.

I’m on a panel there called “Worlds @ Play” moderated by Lucie Lalumière (VP Interactive, Earth Rangers) in discussion with Leigh Alexander (Editor, Worlds in Motion / Staff, Gamasutra.com), Matt Daly (Cofounder, Metaversatility.com) and Barbara Lippe (Art Director & VP International Relations, Avaloop). I’m only in Toronto from Wednesday afternoon to Friday afternoon, but if you want to grab coffee at the conference, let me know!

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In the interest of playing devil’s advocate, I thought I’d throw out 10 reasons why free to play might be slower to succeed in the Western world as it has been in Asia.

While I don’t necessarily believe all of these will inhibit F2P’s growth, one of the slides in my GDC presentation this year is to do with the challenges F2P faces - so this should help fulfill that requirement.

1. Virtual Property “Ownership”

The term ‘virtual’ may not have a strict legal interpretation, but if anything it means that the thing being described is NOT whatever comes after the word ‘virtual.

- Ginsu Yoong, Second Life’s legal counsel, Linden v Bragg

Despite virtual property’s ill-defined legal status, developers have had no qualms about starting byzantine in-game economies driven by the exchange of real money for virtual land, clothing, furniture and much more.

Some developers, like GoPets CEO Eric Bethke, have attempted to get out in front of the virtual property legal issue by defining their own “Avatar Bill of Rights.” But most of us have not been as proactive and instead seem content to leave it up to the courts to decide how to define and deal with our users’ virtual property.

As precedents regarding virtual ownership are set, the growth of some F2P products may be curtailed as the legal burden of dispensing virtual property increases.

2. Slow Broadband
On the issue of net speed, there remains a huge disparity between North America’s broadband ISPs and Korea’s military-grade internet provision.

The net effect is that free to play games like Maple Story can take 1-3 hours or more to download in North America, while Korea’s 45mbps network cuts the same download to a paltry 10 minutes or less.

It’s fair to say that we won’t soon be getting such high download speeds - but the North American market might have already found a way around the issue. With the launch of streaming game services like InstantAction and the proliferation of Flash as a full-blown development platform, downloading entire game clients become less and less the norm.

3. Poor Advertising Strategies
Some products in the F2P sector have come to rely heavily on advertiser support in order to keep their offerings free for the majority of players.

A recent OMMA article that claims advertisers are taking the wrong approach when handling virtual worlds. And as the populations of virtual worlds appear to be prematurely plateauing, advertisers may be starting to sweat.

But there is hope if advertisers change their strategies to suit the unique challenges virtual worlds present. As Worlds In Motion put it:

…themed events, branded avatar clothing, and representative personality appearances are finding success and opportunity in worlds like There, Habbo and vSide.

4. MMO Overload
From Maple Story to Silkroad Online, there is no shortage of MMOs in the free to play space. In the same vein, there is an abundance of virtual worlds such as Second Life or Kaneva. It seems as though the vast majority of new free to play game since 2005 have been virtual worlds or MMOs.

Perhaps it’s the very reason that these games have proliferated in the free to play market; MMOs and virtual worlds are inherently more inclusive than an FPS. Still, it would be a shame to see the free to play space flounder due to constant reiteration of the same genres and themes, turning away players seeking a different experience.

Of course, games like Kwari are looking to change that, but it’s too early to tell just how well they will catch on.

5. Rising Development Costs
With more prominent developers announcing plans to take advantage of the free to play model, the days of games fueled by ramen noodles and nights in the basement could, once again, be history. EA’s upcoming Battlefield Heroes is the latest big budget free to play game, signaling that the big publishers aren’t content to sit back and let Far East imports eat their lunch.

If the consumer makes the jump from 2D to more advanced 3D graphics, it could mean the end of the visually rudimentary worlds and Flash-based free to play games as market leaders, making way for the mainstream big budget games.

6. Second Life Slowdown
Second Life is the Apple Newton of virtual worlds. It was here first, but isn’t the best representation of the potential of virtual worlds. However, it still occupies a place in investors’ minds - akin to a coal mine canary, warning of impending danger.

And while investors took note as Second Life soared to the top, they’re noticing its decline as well (active user hours were down 5% in November). There is concern among some that Second Life’s time might be up, and that’s not a good sign for potential investors in the free to play space.

7. Watered Down AdverWorlds
With their lower barrier to entry and great potential to spin money, an slew of less innovative products are beginning to hit the market. Hardest to ignore are adverworlds like Build-A-Bear, Rush Zone, BeBratz, BarbieGirls and their ilk - marketing spend thinly disguised as entertainment.

The consumer’s willingness to pay money for virtual items in a world where their avatar is little more than a target for advertising will be tested by products like these.

8. Unsanctioned Secondary Markets
Then there’s the issue of gold farming. With websites like IGE operating independently of game developers and establishing secondary markets for game currency and items, it’s not just traditional MMOs that are being subjected to this kind of treatment anymore.

What’s worse, while gold farming might fuddle with World of Warcraft’s player-driven economy, some developers believe a secondary market allows players to skip the middleman altogether - a potentially fatal issue for free to play games who survive on item-based revenue streams.

The recent launch of publisher-sanctioned Live Gamer is a step in the right direction for devs and pubs looking to reclaim lost revenue.

9. Limited Payment Methods

We have hanging on our wall a user who sent a $5 bill in a $15 fedEx package.

- Craig Sherman, Gaia Online

While other territories enjoy a plethora of tailored-to-the-consumer payment methods, North America has embraced relatively few.

SMS would surely be nearly as popular a payment method here as it is in Europe if our carrier surcharges weren’t in the range of 50% a transaction. Landlines - an expensive but very secure payment option in China - might also be popular with some services.

GoPets has 90 different payment systems worldwide, catering excellently to foreign payment preferences. Nonetheless, consumers still have trouble getting money into their favorite North American games.

10. Kids Only Games
The current offering of free to play games caters nearly exclusively to the under-25 set. An NPD study released last year showed that while 91% of online gaming among kids aged 2-17 is free to play, by the time those kids graduated high school, the boys had moved to sixty-dollar console games and the girls dropped out of gaming entirely.

In the core gaming arena, Nintendo has found a way to appeal to young and old alike. Free to play’s appeal among adults relies on the proliferation of products that do a Nintendo-quality job of bridging the age gap or target older demographics only.

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I spent a couple hours today pretending I had infinite time and money to attend free to play-relevant conferences the world over. The result is this list of the top 10 conferences for those who want a crash course on F2P development and a slew of contacts in the sector.

Over the last year, there’s been a deluge of new virtual worlds conferences, but not all are created equal. So in addition to sorting on quality, I decided to sort for those that were at least partially geared toward English speakers.

Some of the following conferences occurred in the past, but have been included in the hopes that they become annual affairs.

1) Virtual Goods Summit
June 22, 2007 - Palo Alto, California

The Virtual Goods Summit is a one day conference focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets.

The Virtual Goods Summit was a one day affair at the Annenberg Auditorium featuring a series of one hour panel discussions and presentations. Notable speakers included the CEO’s of Gaia Online, Three Rings, Kongregate, GoPets and K2 as well as the Director of Business Development at Nexon. The topics discussed included virtual goods as the next big business model, industry success stories and the forces driving user adoption.

Check out F2P.biz’s summary of the Virtual Goods Summit.

2) Virtual Worlds Forum
October 23 - 27, 2007 - London, England

Our pan-European virtual worlds confex connected brands, major corporations, digital and virtual worlds agencies, media and entertainment players and games companies, technology suppliers, analysts and commentators, lawyers, regulators and venture capitalists and all those harnessing the power of virtual worlds to engage with clients, suppliers or customers.

The Virtual Worlds Forum lasted two days and was by no means focused just on games. The keynotes and panel discussions we’re about many things including brand recognition, corporate opportunity and revenue possibilities. Panelists included Paul Hemp- Senior Editor, Harvard Business Review; Ginsu Yoon- SVP International, Linden Lab and Thomas Bidaux- Director of Product Development, NCSoft Europe.

Check out Wonderland’s summary of the Virtual Worlds Forum.

3) Virtual Worlds Conference
April 3-4 2008 - New York; Autumn 2008 - West Coast

Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo helps businesses harness the power of virtual worlds to engage with their customers, partners and employees. The event follows our sold out Virtual Worlds Spring New York conference.

Speakers from this year’s conference included Paul Yanover, VP and Managing Director at Disney and Anthony Zuicker- creator of CSI. The event featured hundreds of speakers overall and some major corporate support. This year six streams will be available with an emphasis on the financial and operational aspects of virtual worlds. Where as some of the conferences on this list are art or design orientated the Virtual World Conference seems to be strait business.

4) Game Developers Conference
February 18 - 22 2008 - San Fransisco, California

If you are going to attend one industry event in 2008, this is the one. The core objective of this year’s conference is to promote Learning, Networking, and Inspiration. The GDC team has been working hard to create the most exciting and compelling conference yet. Most notably, we have adjusted the timing for the call for papers forward to ensure that we’re presenting you with the most up-to-date topics facing game developers today. You won’t be disappointed.

The GDC isn’t exclusively interesting to free to play followers but in the wake of E3’s fall from grace this is the game industry’s flagship event.

Also at GDC is the Worlds in Motion Summit debuting this year, an event focused on virtual worlds. FreeToPlay.biz was asked to speak at the Worlds in Motion Summit and as a result, Adrian Crook will be presenting a primer on the F2P revenue model at the event. Also giving talks are Raph Koster, Nabeel Hyatt, Eric Bethke, Min Kim, Chris Romero and others - making this a great conference for the F2P sector.

5) Indie MMO Game Developers Conference
March 29 - 30, 2008 - Minniapolis, Minnesota

IMGDC is a venue for Independent designers and developers to come together to share ideas and learn in all areas related to MMOGs. IMGDC 2.0 has positioned itself to be an even larger venue with three fantastic tracks covering design, development and business aspects of Indie MMOGs. The present is a time of MMOG giants, but the future lies in the hands of the passionate Indie developers. Do you have the passion?

2008 will be the second year for the IMGDC featuring presentations from Richard Bartle author of Designing Virtual Worlds, Raph Koster and Gordon Walton who was previously VP/Exec Producer at Sony Online Entertainment, Maxis, Origin Systems and Kesmai Corporation.

Check out Gamasutra’s summary of the Indie MMO Conference.

6) South by South West Interactive
March 7-11 2008 - Austin, Texas

The SXSW Interactive Festival features five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties. Attracting digital creatives as well as visionary technology entrepreneurs, the event celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology. Whether you are a hard-core geek, a dedicated content creator, a new media entrepreneur, or just someone who likes being around an extremely creative community, SXSW Interactive is for you!

Though SXSW doesn’t provide a ton of events catering specifically to the free to play crowd, it is a phenomenal collection of creative people working in emergent digital entertainment fields. Couple this with the fact that the event is part of North America’s largest music festival and party and attendance seems like more than a good idea.

Check out Throwspace’s summary of SXSW.

7) Austin Game Developers Conference
September 5-7 2007 - Austin, Texas

The Austin Game Developers Conference attracts over 1,100 attendees and provides educational, networking, and business opportunities for game development professionals driving the $11 billion videogame industry. It is the a global forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas, network, and shape the future of the industry.

Austin GDC has become synonymous with MMO design due primarily to the city’s deep MMO development scene. The conference features talks and panels focused on free to play, “Web 2.o,” MMO development and micro-transactional revenue models.

8 ) Online Game Developers Conference
May 13 -15 2008 - Seattle, Washington

Building on the great success of the 2007 conference, OGDC 2008 will expand the plenary sessions from two to three days, and feature a wide range of keynotes, sessions, and panels, giving attendees new views of the online game universe—everything from an overview of the latest business, product, and legal developments to in-depth looks at scalability, player psychology, and in-game economic systems.

This event features Erik Bethke, founder and CEO of GoPets; Alan Crosby director of global community relations at Sony Online and Steve Goldstein of Flagships Studios. 2007’s OGDC was a good start - hopefully 2008 is a big step forward.

Check out MMORPG’s summary of the OGDC.

9) Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008
April 6-10 2008 - Las Vegas

Each year, Symposium/ITxpo: Emerging Trends is founded on a framework of six megatrends that Gartner sees as critical to how business and technology will evolve in the near and long term.

A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:

• User Generated Content
• Social Networking
• Community Source
• The Metaverse
• Relationship Assets
• Hyperconnected Enterprise
• Collective Intelligence

Gartner attracts a different crowd from the game-centric conferences listed here. Typically, Gartner attendees come from the IT or VC worlds. The value of Gartner attendance lies not in the curriculum, but in your fellow attendees.

10) DigiWorld Summit
November 14-15 2007 - Montpellier, France

The 6th Video Game seminar as part of IDATE’s DigiWorld Summit 2007, is organised with financial support from the City of Montpellier. A host of opportunities have opened up over the past two years: the development of serious games, Massively Multiplayer Games and persistent universes, online capabilities incorporated as standard features in home consoles, the emergence and growth of mobile gaming, the development of online poker that’s been as swift as it has been surprising… All constituting innovative technologies and ways to play which, in this era of growing convergence, involve or induce an overhaul of business models.

I’m sure I missed some relevant conferences, so if you can think of any leave a comment for our other readers.

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Tech Digest has a writeup from a panel discussion at Virtual Worlds Forum Europe. In it, Jessica Mulligan, Executive Director of Player Relations at Cyber Sports, provides several interesting-but-unattributed stats and a couple quotes that support what F2P.biz is about.

Stats

• Just 10% crossover between online games and social spaces (e.g. World of Warcraft vs Second Life)
• 60 million active players of virtual world games (people who are paying money on a monthly basis).
• Virtual worlds generated $4.5 billion in revenues last year. WoW, Westward Journey and Runescape are in this group.
• Social spaces (Habbo, Webkinz, Club Penguin, etc) generated $400M last year.
• Asia accounts for 50% of all virtual world revenues.

Quotes

We’re going to see more games under that business model [f2p, vis] than under the premium model.

In social spaces, web-based worlds are growing, while those that rely on you downloading a client are “stagnating”.

Interesting stuff, but without any sources to back up the stats or quotes, it’s tough to view this as anything more than cheerleading for the sector. For instance, I believe browser-based is a smarter choice than downloadable client, but I’ve heard little evidence to support Jessica’s notion that downloadable client games are stagnating.

Virtual Worlds Forum Europe is on now in London, England until tomorrow.

Editors Note: Since this article was posted, Jessica has been kind enough to reply (in the comments of this post) with the source for her stats and observations. Thanks, Jessica!

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For those of you who read F2P.biz regularly, you might recall an article I wrote about Asia’s virtual goods lead. In it, I talked about Brad and Kyle, my cousins aged 7 and 13 years old from the Southern Ontario city of London.

During a visit, I chatted them up about their gaming habits and watched them play for a while. It was clear that free to play PC games had almost entirely usurped retail, pay-to-play products in their personal gaming library. Their favourite games were titles like Puzzle Pirates, Habbo Hotel and Runescape.

Well check out the latest NPD study, “Kids and Gaming,” as reported over at Worlds in Motion. The most relevant stats for me were:

• 91% of online gaming among kids ages 2 to 17 is free
• 9% pay to play - these are primarily kids from higher income households
• The likelihood of a child paying increases with their age and time spent gaming
• Half of all kid gamers are “light users,” clocking five hours a week or less
• The other half were medium, heavy or “super” users, at 6-16 or more hours/week
• The average time spent playing online was statistically higher among females

Look at that first stat.

That is so incredible that it has to be wrong or misinterpreted by me. If that’s true, where is the retail, pay-to-play gaming industry headed as the next generation of kids comes of age? The study does say that eventually kids (males, mostly) graduate to consoles in their late teens, but as new free to play games start catering to a “new adult” demographic, fewer and fewer teenagers will make the jump from free to $59.95.

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Here’s a great opportunity for a Colorado-based (or relocation-willing) Producer to work in the Virtual World/Casual MMO field.

This position is as the lead producer behind a new child-themed casual MMO backed by Barry Diller’s IAC. Diller is one of the last true media moguls, in the vein of Murdoch, Eisner and formerly Martha Stewart and Conrad Black. Sidebar: A salacious read is Autumn of the Moguls by Michael Wolff.

IAC has been on a gaming industry spending spree lately, with their most recent acquisition being Garage Games in Eugene, Oregon. But this particular opportunity is in Boulder, Colorado.

The Game / Virtual World Producer drives the product vision and development of a MMOG and sub games for kids, from concept through release, and is responsible for the definition and execution of future releases. Manage third party developers and migration to, and management of, an internal development team.

• Oversight of the design of MMOG and all games - including interactivity, UI, inventory management, AI, NPCs, social networking and community features, and point systems.
• Maintain an ongoing understanding of youth market trends and emerging technologies in the on-line gaming space. Primary focus is on kid-oriented games.
• Strong desire to make a difference in the lives of children and a passion for games/MMOGs.
• Flexibility for some travel.”

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First myspace conquered the world. In its wake came Facebook. Now, even your best friend’s mom has a Facebook account.

But what’s next? For some it will be Koinup.

Koinup is the first social networking site for your virtual life. Not exclusive to Sims gamers, Second Life devotees or WoW weekend warriors, KoinUp is a place where you can give your multiple virtual world identities their own social network.

Koinup was founded in March 2007 and has thus far chosen to focus on Second life, Imvu, WoW and Sims 2 - but are not exclusive to these worlds. The most powerful feature - some sort of integration with these games - hasn’t happened yet, so Koinup instead pledges to be a place to document all your virtual world activities.

I signed up for an account and was very impressed with the ease of registration. I think it tool a minute and a half total with no frustrating or invasive queries for personal information. It was also fun to get the user name I always try and grab on new sites - without resorting to a 36 letter mutation of an English word or a numeric sequence after the handle of choice.

Koinup’s design is fairly straight forward, although not as intuitive as it could be. Where Koinup stumbles is the English language. It doesn’t have the easy colloquialism of most Web 2.0 sites. A couple snippets:

It’s very easy to use and it allow to anyone who have some ideas to tell stories.

Koinup takes your privacy very seriously. For more info, give a look to our Privacy Policy.

But the founders, Italians Pierluigi Casolari (CEO) and Edoardo Turelli (CTO), likely speak their native language better than I. Casolari pulls double duty as the site’s content creator, but there’s room for a translator or English editor on their team.

Koinup allows users to upload videos such as Machinima and tutorials, associated still images and still image series referred to as storyboards. One of the great features Koinup has incorporated is CrossPosting, or the ability to load pictures onto Flickr and other photo sharing sites from within the Koinup uploading system. At this point, CrossPosting doesn’t work with video or storyboards but perhaps that will come next.

One aspect of Koinup that stood out was the site’s emphasis on “Coolness” (their word). Obviously the idea of karma or kudos or cred has been present in social networking sites almost from day 1, but never has it been tacked on quite so blatantly. Site members themselves in addition to the media they uploaded are ranked on coolness. The coolness of media is determined using the usual vectors like views and comments, but member coolness is determined with a “unique” metric.

Members are ranked on coolness based on the popularity of their work (naturally) but also by the number of times that member has flagged offensive material in other people’s profiles.

This is a bit of a head scratcher. It’s akin to incentivizing programmers for finding bugs. Obviously peer moderation is crucial in a user created content environment, but such a direct rewarding for overzealous policing seems destined to backfire.

Ideas like Koinup are inevitable, but Koinup is in need of much refinement before it serves its audience well. I’m looking forward to the next iteration of an avatar social network - whether it’s Koinup or not - as we’re certain to hear a lot more about social networking for the metaverse.

Three questions, a couple that Koinup might answer:

1. Do people use similar avatar personalities in different worlds?
2. How many people use multiple virtual worlds concurrently?
3. Couldn’t Facebook or myspace easily incorporate avatar profiles - either on their own or as a section of your primary profile - thereby eroding the market for standalone avatar social networks?

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Last month my family traveled to London, a city of less than 500,000 in Southwestern Ontario. While there, I watched my 7 and 13 year old cousins, Brad and Kyle, play games on their family computer.

Somewhat surprisingly, Brad and Kyle had just one retail PC game between them (Settlers). Instead, their favorite games were Puzzle Pirates, Habbo Hotel, and Runescape - all free to play, virtual item sales games (with the exception of Runescape, which uses tiered subs rather than virtual items for its revenue).

What does this say about where the North American PC market is headed?

Based on overwhelming anecdotal evidence, it’s clear to me that the younger set (under 20) is embracing free to play and virtual goods games because the budget and engagement model is tailored made for for them. And as the younger set is further weened on the same virtual goods business model that’s already dominating Asia, retail only pay-to-play PC games will be ignored en masse.

In some respects, North American companies have begun adjusting to the F2P/virtual goods wave. With gifting sites like Facebook and HotorNot.com, microtransaction services like Xbox Live and casual MMOGs like Puzzle Pirates, one might argue that we’re at least keeping up with the pack in this emerging space.

But what are traditional North American game publishers (EA, Activision, etc) doing to adjust to this new, non-retail, online-centric business model? Are they seeding their own internal virtual goods projects? Building virtual goods into their existing or upcoming products? Acquiring early movers in the space?

At least right now, the answer appears to be “none of the above”.

North American game companies are taking the same “partner and acquire” approach that they’ve used to achieve growth and purchase innovation for the last two decades. When done correctly, this approach pays off handsomely. Activision partnered with Infinity Ward to produce the first Call of Duty, then opted to purchase the developer for a meager $5M just before Call of Duty 1 shipped. Activision knew that when CoD became a big hit, Infinity Ward’s asking price would grow immensely due to their successful IP.

In another bit of foresight, Take Two bought Irrational in 2005 for just $8.2M. Last week, Irrational delivered Bioshock - the highest rated new IP in years. If Irrational were for sale today, their asking price would likely be 5-10x what they sold for.

But studios with already successful IP (or a track record that indicates their next game will be huge as well), command a larger acquisition premium than the aforementioned deals.

For example:

IP Acquisitions

• EA buys Maxis for SimCity for $125M
• Activision buys Red Octane for Guitar Hero for $99M

Track Record Acquisitions

• Microsoft buys Rare for $375M
• Elevation buys Pandemic/Bioware for $300M

But an even larger premium is paid for companies that couple good IP or a good track record with an online-only distribution model.

Online Acquisitions

• Disney buys Club Penguin for $700M
• EA buys JamDat for $680M

Why the higher acquisition premium? Because online-only companies such as Club Penguin, Shanda, Netease, etc routinely see annual profit margins of 50% or more.

Look no further than Club Penguin making $35M profit on $65M annual revenue.

By contrast, retail game sector margins have been in decline ever since the last big reduction in costs: the move from carts to CDs in the mid-90s. Development and distribution costs have risen so dramatically in the last two console generations that EA’s net income has declined 87% since 2004, Take Two has lost $90M total over the last six years (50M units of GTA sold and still a loss?), and Ubisoft and THQ are considered a profitability leaders at nearly 10% annually. *

So it’s no wonder that deals like Disney/Club Penguin and EA/JamDat have much higher valuations than their retail counterparts. They have a far better ROI.

But let’s get back to my point: the “partner & acquire” approach Western companies have traditionally used to internalize innovation will likely prove cost prohibitive as it’s being applied thus far in the virtual goods space.

Some of the recent virtual goods partnerships made by publishers include:

• Battlefield Online: EA, Neowiz
• FIFA Online: EA, Neowiz
• Counterstrike Online: Valve, Nexon
• Neopets Mall: MTV, Nexon
• Dead or Alive Online: Tecmo, Shanda
• Company of Heroes Online: THQ, Shanda

These are all great relationships, but they are bridging strategies primarily suitable for the short to medium term. The acquisition portion of these partnerships would be cost prohibitive. Which North American game publisher would be able to afford the acquisition cost of a Nexon or Shanda based on the latter companies’ very healthy margins and rapid revenue growth?

Let’s use Shanda and THQ’s most recent Q1 2007 results as an example.

THQ (Q1 2007)

• Gross Revenue: $139M (down 12% from previous year)
• Profit: -$10M (net loss)

Shanda (Q1 2007)

• Gross Revenue: $68.8M (up 61% from previous year)
• Profit: $58M

Western companies have huge revenues, but even huger development costs owing to their terrestrial products - resulting in little or no profits. Eastern companies have smaller (rapidly growing) revenues, huge profit margins from online only distribution and a big head start on virtual goods. This contrast holds more or less true for most of these Western/Eastern partnerships.

Shanda’s market cap today is $2B. It’s not far-fetched to assume their purchase price might be close to $3B. The only companies with that kind of cash on hand are EA and Microsoft.

While it could be a partial stock deal, why would Shanda would trade their high growth stock for low growth publisher stock? Any partial stock transaction would ultimately result in a higher overall purchase price.

Netease (NTES) has a market cap of $2.06B. The9’s (NCTY) market cap is $1.14B. Nexon is privately held, but with $235M in revenue two years ago, they won’t be cheap either. The point is, there aren’t many deals left among the virtual goods establishment.

The billion dollar question is: Where will these numbers be next year? Or in 2-3 years?

My gut says that in two years, North American companies will be “priced out” of acquiring a leadership position in the global virtual goods market.

To avoid this fate, big American publishers need internally developed/wholly owned virtual goods projects or partnerships with newer, smaller virtual goods companies whose acquisition costs are far below the big Asian players such as Shanda, Netease, Nexon, The9, NHN, etc.

So…

• When will we see early stage virtual goods startups acquired by game publishers in massively undervalued deals a la ATVI/Infinity Ward? Are the big publishers even capable of spotting these deals as well as venture capitalists? Companies like Conduit, Three Rings and Areae would be prime targets for early acquisition if VCs like Charles River and others weren’t already all over them. Venture capital’s eagerness to fund low risk/high margin virtual goods plays (and not high risk/low margin retail game companies) will drive innovation in the sector, ratcheting up acquisition costs for publishers are late to the party.

• When will we hear of internally developed virtual goods projects underway at major publishers? Perhaps EA and Ubisoft’s new casual games focus will bring about the next big Flash MMO or virtual world, but I can’t help but think most of their attention is still on on the try-before-you-buy $20 casual games, rather than F2P/virtual goods. Ironically, some of the biggest stateside-initiatives in free-to-play are coming from Asian companies like Sony Online (FreeRealms) and NCsoft (Dungeon Runners).

Until we see big American publishers announcing more than stop gap Asian partnerships, I’m concerned that the next generation of gamers - my cousins Brad and Kyle in London, Ontario - will be playing even fewer games from today’s North American publishing giants.

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Notes:

* For more of these numbers, check out the GAAP financials for big publishers using this link to EDGAR, then enter a stock ticker like ERTS to get to a 10-K form like this one for EA. Search for “statements” or “2004″ and keep going until you get a table with last five years or so, then check out the net income row.)

At last month’s Casual Games Conference in Seattle, I spent about 30 minutes chatting with Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings. Daniel told me an interesting story about how Puzzle Pirates, the hit Java MMO, has accelerated user base growth.

Puzzle Pirates utilizes few other distribution portals outside of www.puzzlepirates.com. But one site Daniel has had phenomenal success with has been Miniclip.com, the browser-based games portal.

In Daniel’s experience, a stunning 1 million out of Puzzle Pirates’ 3 million players have come via Miniclip alone.

Because Miniclip users are younger, they don’t monetize as well as other players. Daniel’s estimation was 1% monetization for Miniclip users vs 5% among the rest of the Puzzle Pirates user base. However, according to Daniel a secondary wave of word-of-mouthers join Puzzle Pirates shortly after each wave of new Miniclip users and the conversion rate among this secondary wave is much better.

I bring this up now because of this very recent Ypulse article, which contends that Miniclip has been the primary growth catalyst for games like Club Penguin and Runescape as well. A degree of influence not surprising given the “explosive growth” of the Miniclip.com site itself, as illustrated on this chart.

Here are some quotes from the Ypulse article:

Without Miniclip, it is likely that there is no Club Penguin phenomenon. The product launched in October 2005 and was able to eke out a base of about 25,000 users. A few months later, the game was posted on Miniclip and experienced explosive growth. By September, the product had over 2.6 million users. Runescape’s user base saw a similar, if slightly less dramatic, increase from a niche game to a multi-million user success.

With a core demographic of 10-24 year olds, Miniclip has built a portal with the power to instantly launch a youth brand. What network TV was for The Transformers, so Miniclip has been for Club Penguin. Great products can travel virally, but the task is a lot easier if the starting point is 30 million exposures.

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