Posts Tagged ‘EverQuest’

Second Life’s second life? Former EA exec Rod Humble takes on CEO role

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

San Francisco, CA based Linden Lab has announced the arrival of the new CEO, former EA Play label executive Rod Humble.

“Rod is a great new leader for Linden Lab,” said Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life. “Second Life has become a consistently large and profitable business with a thriving virtual economy built together with its passionate Resident community. This has always been a big, long-term vision, it is still early and there is enormous opportunity for growth. With Rod’s fresh insights and deep experience in creating and leading the development of fun, intuitive, immersive entertainment experiences that have attracted massive audiences of loyal users, he’s the right leader to understand what makes us special and bring the next level of growth to Second Life.”

Humble comes to Second Life with over 20 years of industry experience under his belt. He’s worked on more than 200 games, and most recently headed up the EA Play label. If the Play business unit sounds vaguely familiar, you’ll remember that EA’s best-selling PC franchise game of all time, The Sims was borne from this group. That’s not to say, however, that Humble has experience solely in the realm of life sims, as Humble was also the VP of Product Development with SOE under the EverQuest banner. And if these two accomplishments alone weren’t enough, Humble was also ranked #2 in 2009 on Edge’s “Hot 100 Game Developers.”

“Joining Linden Lab is a very exciting opportunity,” said Humble. “I have a long standing interest in the how the boundaries of society and economics change as communications evolve in new ways. Second Life is unique: it sits at the intersection of virtual worlds, avatars, and human contact. The Residents and developers of Second Life have built something very special, I am honored to join the talented team at Linden Lab to help expand this new frontier.”

An interesting move by Humble, as Second Life has surely taken a few beatings over the past few years. With his Sims experience, and a dash of EverQuest here and there, your humble author truly believes that Humble might have some interesting surprises in store for the virtual world that started it all.

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Turbine seeks microtransactions manager

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

With more and more Western development companies starting to see the light, or at least investigate and test the waters of microtransactions, 2009 looks like it might very well be the year of RMT and/or MTX.  More and more western developers simply can’t ignore Nexon’s run away success, doubling and tripling revenues from the previous year.  SOE is a prime example with the recent EverQuest and EverQuest II introductions of items available via an in-game shop, not to mention ‘home’.  EA is still working hard on microtransaction based Battlefield Heroes, and now Turbine is recruiting for a new position.

Despite recent staff cuts, Turbine’s Westwood, Massachusetts office is currently recruiting for a “microtransactions/e-commerce manager” who’s job responsibilities will include “delivering and maximizing the revenue derived from Turbine’s micro-transaction-based in-game store.”

While Turbine has kicked this idea around in a number of interviews, they’ve never given a truly concrete answer, but this job ad certainly hails a new direction for Turbine. 

While the Eastern market has a tendancy to lean on the ‘pay to pwn’ style of play, offering players superior items (mainly weapons and armor), this concept hasn’t really taken off in the Western market, where players like a more balanced play style, but do support cosmetic and non-stat enhancing items.  Turbine has played a lot of cards right in the past, and it would be a mighty stretch for them to botch this kind of deal.  If anything, I’m willing to bet the farm on the fact that Turbine is obviously going to respect the market that they’re working in and only offer cosmetic upgrades.  Then again – I may be entirely wrong, which, I hope for Turbine’s sake, I’m not.

Turbine’s responsibilities for this microtransaction/e-commerce manager include:

 

  • Deliver sales and drive growth in monthly in-game transaction amount and frequency through merchandising and price/product mix optimization
  • Recommend and implement in-game store offerings and promotions
  • Use web analytics tools to optimize store layout, flow, and user experience
  • Develop product catalog and roll-out plans for new product offerings
  • Provide detailed reports and analysis of sales, traffic, and in-game merchandising
  • Create and deploy email promotions to drive players to the in-game store
  • Work with product development to balance the in-game economy and ensure that revenue driving game features and items are available to players
  • Keep abreast of competitor and micro-transaction/e-commerce practices
  • Identify short and long term product initiatives and opportunities for meeting goals and driving revenue

 

 

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Microtransactions enter center stage at E for All

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

The E for All expo wraps up today in Los Angeles, but not before microtransaction based games got their fair share of attention.

Top tier titles such as EverQuest, WoW, and EVE Online all have their own ingame economies, but the E for All expo gave free-to-play, microtransaction based titles a chance to shine.  Nexon American’s marketing manager Meghan Myskowski wouldn’t exactly release usage patterns since 2005 for their groundbreaking title Maple Story, but she did say that the game spearheaded the microtransaction movement in the US.

“Now, people are used to paying for virtual items,” said Myskowski. “Virtual life has changed substantially.”

Another spotlighted game is Mindark’s Entropia Universe.  Originally launched in 2004 as Project Entropia, they now have a registered user count clocking in around the 800,000 mark, with only about 40 percent of users registered in the US.  MindArk says that since it’s inception, approximately $400 million worth of transactions have occurred.  Entropia’s in game currency, the PED has an exchange rate of 1:10 – $:PED.  However, in game items do not see a real wold conversion factor, in so much as a special coat may cost $1700 (and at that real world price, it had better have a Gucci label attached to it).

MindArk is already making preparations to raise their profile by implementing the new CryEngine 2 , which promises even more photorealistic game play.  The CryEngine update is expected to release in early 2009.

President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, Joseph Olin says, “Most people playing in these persistent world environments are building their character. In E.V.E., third party brokers trade currencies in virtual worlds. Nexon has shown across all of their games that if you have the right balance of in-game economies and real world value, consumers are happy to spend some money there.”

Olin’s position on the business model as a whole is slightly biased towards producers and not players.  “Interactive entertainment companies are looking for ways to monetize their investment. The changing nature of PC entertainment software distribution, and the advent of console entertainment systems, has changed what software entertainment companies can do. You can’t sell boxed entertainment anymore. And people who are playing games aren’t always playing them on PCs anymore.”

Not just relying on microtransactions in MMO’s, Olin quickly turns his attention to the rise of music based games, specifically the microtransaction  model in Guitar Hero and Rock Band.  “Downloadable content and microtransactions for console based games are on the rise–look at Guitar Hero and Rock Band, where people anticipate downloadable Tuesdays, and you see huge numbers, half-a-million people downloading a song.”

Summing up the industry Olin adds, “consumers have so many different paths and choices to make, that the traditional business model of the consumer buying from a store, those walls are crumbling because everything is in real-time, and everything is connected.”

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Sony says yes to console MMO’s: Microtransactions and all

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

SOE exec John Smedley gives a thumbs up to future Sony MMO developments to be available on PlayStation consoles.

The giant elephant in the room, other wise know as Blizzard, which has been dominating the MMORPG scene since World of Warcraft’s launch 4 years ago, could begin to feel some heat from the Sony side of life.  Sony is looking to successfully position full blown MMO’s on the PlayStation console.  Smedley and company are looking to see which profile of gamer would be willing to pay for subscriptions, or better yet, micro-transactions for Sony’s upcoming free-to-play games including Sony’s much anticipated upcoming Free Realms.

“We’re actually one of two companies in the world that’s ever done a console MMO. We had EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2 – still operating. It and Final Fantasy XI are the only actual MMOs,” says Smedley.

“We introduced a trading card game to our EverQuest and EQ2 players and they got the idea of microtransactions very quickly,” explained Smedley. “We put it in there in a way that wasn’t harmful to gameplay and it actually gave them a benefit, so that’s how we’re going to convert existing players. Getting a console player to pay for a subscription, I think that’s an interesting question.”

Smedley also predicts that the underlying technology that is now in place to allow for simultaneous console and PC launches of new games will introduce an entirely new group of gamers to console play.

“We have advantages that others simply don’t being in the Sony family. For us, the opportunity that we see on the PS3, and potentially the PSP, is something that we can’t pass up on…. I would say that we would be one of the early adopters on [bringing MMOs to consoles], and we plan on becoming one of the dominant players in the MMO space on consoles. We see that marketing coming; we think it’s there now, so we want to get a good market share there.”

Maybe Smedely is correct.  Personally, I’m more of a PC player, but have often been intrigued by the merging of PC play with console convenience.  I’ve played a few of my favorite PC games with an Xbox 360 control mod, and have to say, the living room comfort sure does beat endless hours at the desk.  If Sony is successfully able to port an MMO to a console (targeting and casting controls aside), AND get console players used to the idea of microtransactions, this could have the potential to unlock a number of possibilities not only for Sony, but for the industry as a whole.

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