When Nexon’s Min Kim took to the podium at the AGDC this week, he first asked the audience a rather logical question: “How many of you here are interested in developing a free-to-play title”?  Approximately 70 percent of the willing and able audience raised their hand.  Fair enough, when you want to get into the game, who better to turn to than one of the experts?  Kim took the question a bit further, by asking, “And how many of you have played Maple Story”, a few hands amongst that 70 percent sank.  Kim ventured one further and asked about Kart Rider, and only about 20 percent of the hands stayed in the air.

Kim jovially scolded his audience with, “The first step to developing free to play MMOs is to play the games. People think they know how to make these games, and yet they’ve never played a FTP MMO before. I think it’s really irresponsible.  If you can’t do it, get an intern to do it and tell you what it’s like.”
Talk about a swift kick in the pants as a wakeup call for developers.  And rightly so.  Basic business sense dictates that you’ve got to know a bit about the industry you’re looking to enter, and a thing or two about what your competitors are doing.

Kim continued on into his talk, speaking to the misconception that free-to-plays are sub quality titles in the North American market.  Pulling some fantastic data from his Nexon magic bag, Kim provided audience members with 2005-2007 North American numbers.  The results speak for themselves:

Nexon America Revenues

• 2005 – Approx. $650,000
• 2006 – $8.457M – with the addition of paypal as a payment method
• 2007 – $29.334M – with the addition of Nexon cash cards in major retail stores

While Nexon and many other developers and publishers hail from Korea, Kim sees the future of free-to-play in Western titles.  We’ve seen this happen in other places like China.  The big games now are from Chinese developers. I think the same thing will happen in the West, with Western-developed titles.”
And while most Westerners view free-to-play titles as casual or n00b gamers only, Kim is quick to point out the gross misconception, “We don’t make games for non-gamers. We make games for gamers that are accessible to non-gamers, and that’s a big difference.”

Developers looking to produce a quality free-to-play should be visiting and playing a wide variety of in play free-to-plays.  And not just play, but head to the milk house as well.  “…try out and study all the shops. There are tens of games out there that are free to play. I think if you visit those shops, see those games, I think you’ll take one piece of learning from each one.”

Warning producers of common pitfalls, Kim also points out, “Don’t have all your items and categories pegged out. Make sure you have a fun game, first.” 9 times out of 10 the ideas you’ll have at the beginning will be wrong. The players will tell you what they want to buy.”  Another warning comes via the gaming lifecycle and time-limited play, “It’s not about shareware. Expansions and content are generally free; it’s all about extending the lifecycle so you can continue to sell items, or subscriptions. Do not lock players out of real content.”

Towards the end of his talk, Kim also spoke to the new and incoming gamers, and how to treat them.  He admits that Koreans have not been the best at this procedure, and how he envisions the western markets doing it a bit better.  “This is something Korea hasn’t done well and I think something that North American developers could do a lot better. And that’s carefully building the initial experience of free to play. It’s incredibly important is to protect those new players. Veteran players will spank a new player who just happens to wander in, so make sure they start in a safe place where they won’t just get headshot 15 times.”

While this is certainly not Min Kim’s first public address regarding free-to-plays, and probably won’t be his last, the AGDC audience was a bit warmer to the topic than previously seen.  The question of does free-to-play have a place in the market is dead.  Obviously it does.  With Nexon’s Combat Arms receiving (dare I say it?) recognition and a nod from ‘core gamers’, EA jumping into the pool and id Software bringing a free-to-play offering to market, it’s no longer a question of “should we?”, but rather “how good, and how fast can we make one?”  The day and age of each top tier developer/publisher with a quality free-to-play is rapidly approaching.  How many of these developers have the necessary experience to monetize this title via micro-transactions?  Who better to speak to than fatfoogoo, because There’s Money in Your Game.