F2P Jobs: Runescape Developer Hiring Website and UI Designer
I don't imagine we have too many artists reading f2p.biz, but if you are that guy or girl you might want to check out Jagex's latest job posting. Seems they're looking for a designer in Cambridge to do the following:
We are looking for a talented web designer to join and help create websites that will be viewed by millions of people each year.
With over 1.1 million paying subscribers to our online game, RuneScape and a further 6 million other active players visiting the website regularly, you will be responsible for designing the site they visit to play our ever-popular game.
Seems like a cool opportunity for a designer who wants to be on the cutting edge. If we had you at hello, go ahead and send your resume here. Tell them F2P sent you.
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The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs
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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