Dave Georgeson, senior producer at Gaia’s free-to-play casual MMO zOMG took the stage yesterday at the Austin GDC, laying out his three tenants of free-to-play success – Make it fun for everyone, get users so interested that they want to buy, and ultimately, make the purchase easy.

Fun

“The first thing you need to do is identify your audience, then own it,” he said. “…If you don’t do that, you’re missing a very critical step. Get that core right and then figure out the other things. Good things happen when you nail the niche.”

Knowing your audience was key during Georgeson’s talk, but particularly in the development stage. Reflecting on Gaia’s growth, Georgeson stated that Gaia Online originated as a go-to location for artists and fans of anime. Gaia quickly realized that this niche had tremendous potential, and appropriately built a business model around it.

Growing slowly over the past half decade, Gaia has been adding features gradually, and has developed a “20 ring circus”, all with the focus of keeping current users engaged, all the while continuing to pull in new users. Their free-to-play MMO zOMG, which launched in 2008 is just one piece of the much larger Gaia Online puzzle.

Georgeson urges free-to-play up and comers to continually market to, and engage users with current games and upcoming teasers, something Gaia is committed to rolling out every two weeks. “Do everything you can to get your customers excited, so they never want to quit. If players get bored, there are a million of other things for them to do. Don’t wait three or four months to roll out a big feature with nothing in between,” said Georgeson.

And this engagement doesn’t stay just at home. Gaia also takes the interaction off their home site, and communicates with the community via a myriad of social networking platforms including forums, Facebook, and Twitter.

Buy

While Georgeson admits that only 10 percent of your user community will actually make the leap from non-paying to paying, games developers should “Accept it,” but overall aim to entertain everyone. In other words, although there’s 90 percent of your audience that aren’t going to pay a dime, they are very critical to a title’s success, because they keep that 10 percent interested in, and continuing to play (and pay) the game.

“If you don’t have critical mass in your MMO, then the people who are willing to buy won’t stay,” he said. “When you put together features, build things that entertain everyone. Players like to buy anything that promotes self-expression, a sense of belonging to the community, and anything that lets users get to an end-goal faster or easier,” Georgeson added.

Moving this point forward, Georgeson urged developers to look beyond just the sale of virtual items. In-game shortcuts such as time savers, name/server changes, and premium features should be on the list of “for sale”. Whether the newly exposed to the free-to-play model North American market will accept these pay options is yet to be seen, but looking down the road is the fastest track to success.

Ease

Third on Georgeson’s “Must Do’s” list is making it easy for users to pay. He urges all developers to implement multiple forms of payment, and these payment options will not cannibalize each other. “There are a lot of payment options in the world. If you can, utilize them all. If you can barter with chickens, then do it.”

And while we’re not quite finished with the chicken bartering monetization module, fatfoogoo does have just about every other form of game, virtual world, and/or social networking monetization and payment option available. Check out what we have to offer in the solutions section, and let’s talk!