Grey Area's Eric Seufert explains the three pillars of free-to-play economics

Jim Bob | 11:13 - 27 November 2012

Hard to argue against the importance of retention and an ongoing revenue stream. Would have been nice to see more practical tips on how to actually bake those into a game. The importance of downstream marketing seems to be a red herring though as none of the top grossing games require such tactics. Would be interesting if Grey Area could provide quantitative data to support the importance of this but maybe their user base is too small to draw anything conclusive.

Jens Lauritzson | 21:38 - 22 November 2012

Interesting reading. I find it fascinating how the industry all of a sudden think that a business model that only converts 5% of the users to paying customers can become dominant. The focus seems to be on how to maximise the spend of the 5% rather than try to figure out how to monetise the 95% that play these games but never pay. At Flexion we spend most of our time on trying to increase conversion from free to revenue-generating gamers. So we know that only 5% will pay for in-game features and our experience tells that that twice as many will pay to own the game. Are these the same gamers though? How many would prefer to earn credits through offers and how many would simply prefer to play with ads? I think this discussion is missing the trick. Of course we should look to maximise each spend curve but we need new models to attract the people who are not on it. Ideally, all these models should be able to co-exist in order for us to maximise conversion and also total spend or LTV.