Interview

Secret Exit's Kahrama: No reason to panic over rise of freemium

Considering name change to FreeExit though

Secret Exit's Kahrama: No reason to panic over rise of freemium
As the news concerning ngmoco's purchase of Freeverse is digested by the mobile gaming industry, it's been interesting to gauge the reaction of various parts of the community.

Given that Finnish developer Secret Exit was working with ngmoco before the publisher's change of business model resulted in a parting of ways, co-founder Jani Kahrama is magnanimous in his attitude to its acquisition of Freeverse.

"I have much respect for ngmoco, and it's good to see it following up its announcements with concrete steps," he says.

"Its current situation provides the money and development resources to pull off freemium on a wider scale, and we'll just have to see how it turns out."

The challenge of free-to-play

"It will be interesting to see if freemium content can capture an increased market share from regular paid content. This deal certainly won't make life any easier for traditional publishing models, but freemium doesn't apply well to all game genres and audiences so there's no reason for panic."

Of course, given the nature of the news - which included ngmoco raising another $25 million, on top of the $15 million it had already raised over the past 18 months - Kahrama did manage to raise a wry smile.

"In other news, we're contemplating changing the name of our company to Free Exit, and announcing our availability for acquisition for $25 million," he ended.

You can read further analysis of why the deal is good for Freeverse and ngmoco here.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.