F2P Harbinger: FREE is the next Long Tail
Back in May, Chris Anderson, WIRED editor-in-chief and author of 2006's much-buzzed-about "The Long Tail," announced his next book. Due out in 2008, the book will be titled "FREE" with any one of the following subtitles:
1) FREE: The story of a radical price (zero)
2) FREE: How $0.00 changed the world
3) FREE: How companies get rich by charging nothing
4) FREE: The economics of abundance and the marketplace without money
5) FREE: The past and future of a radical price.
Having read Chris's original Long Tail article in WIRED and being subjected to endless recitations from his book over the last year, I'll wager a guess that "FREE" will be equally influential. Chris is writing "FREE" not only about games, but from a pan-industry perspective - which means by this time next year boardrooms the world over will be dreaming about how they might make more money by giving away their product free of charge.
Since October, Chris has started using a "free" tag in his blog posts, which gives us a glimpse into the type of content that might be included in the book. It's worth checking out.
On a related note, I found an interesting post entitled "There's No Money in The Long Tail of the Blogosphere" over on Read/Write Web today. It makes the excellent point that the long tail benefits the aggregators of long tail products much more than it does the makers of said products. Although the "products" discussed in the article are blogs and their associated authors, you can see the parallels for games.
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NPD Group: 91 Percent of Kids Online Gaming is Free
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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Kart Rider Open Beta Begins in North America
Start your engines!
Finally, the game that captivated Korea - where a third of the populace have played it, allegedly - comes to North America.
From Pimp My Wii:
KartRider’s open beta will be open to anyone with an internet connection and the need for speed. With several distinct characters to choose from, open beta racers will compete on a multitude of elaborate race courses ranging from the smooth asphalt of Zoomtown to the scorching sands of Desert Drift. The open beta will additionally provide testers with two different karts, numerous paint and license plate modifications, a scenario/story mode, and a useful ‘My Garage’ feature. The ‘My Garage’ feature included in open beta allows users to hang out with friends, modify and show off karts, and try out new items if racers are in need of a pit stop.
Open beta testers can also enjoy different single and team race modes including item mode, an anything-goes mode featuring the use of creative items used to gain an edge, and speed mode, a test of driving skill focusing solely on speed and drift. While item mode racing often results in humorous exchanges and unpredictable outcomes, speed mode rewards drivers for their drift technique. By combining the elements and weapons of a fantasy racer with the precision of drift, KartRider blends an optimal balance between racers who prefer either the spontaneity of item use or the driving skill required by drifting.
Head over to Kart.Nexon.net to see what the hype is about.
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