Free Realms: Guesstimating monthly revenue using the 89/10/1 Rule

I think the 89/10/1 rule came from another FTP/RMT developer's presentation at GDC. I recall listening to or reading something about it and the 89% included people that registered and never played the game.
If I was to take a guess at the breakdown it is probably something like.
50/39/10/1, where 50% of the people register, play a few minutes and quit.
There is no way the 90% of active players are going to play the game free, never buying pets, never doing the locked quests, never playing the locked professions.

This is a info site about MMOs. Free Realms is doing really well and expanding the MMO market to a younger audience. Why wouldn't Massively be writing about it, it is news.

IMHO, a lot of the interest stems from the mainstream MMO producers slowly testing the waters of different free to play business models.

When you look at games like this and the claims of success (I say claims because nothing is really documented) of Runes of Magic and other free to plays who have for the mostpart had very good technical launches and offer gameplay quality on par with most pay to play games, the recent experimentation by Turbine with DDO and the fact that last year the CEO of Turbine said he would like to do this with LotR. That interview was posted here on this site - IMHO they are testing the model with DDO first to see how well it is received...if DDO blossoms, you can bet LotR will follow.

Contrast that with the long, long string of traditional monthly subscription games which have nothing but a history of failing to live up to expectations, server merges and shutdowns and are plagued by poor technical launches and I think you can see where the industry will trend too.

The business model is changing. On the other side, the forumla of the MMO seems to be changing also. Grinding on "10 rats" is out and diverse gameplay styles seems to be emerging.

That sort of 'rule' is only applicable to active users. You're applying it to registrations, which is not at all the same thing.

Quote from Gnova:
"I think the 89/10/1 rule came from another FTP/RMT developer's presentation at GDC. I recall listening to or reading something about it and the 89% included people that registered and never played the game.
If I was to take a guess at the breakdown it is probably something like.
50/39/10/1, where 50% of the people register, play a few minutes and quit."

That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Stop useless trolls now with the brand new 500,000 years-old BRAIN POWER! You can take advantage of this product for the cost of ONLY 3 MEALS A DAY! Try BRAIN POWER now and see the difference!

Interesting article, and Gnova is of course correct that the 89% includes the folk who aren't playing regularly or may never even play again.

I'm intrigued if the physical TCG is an additional boost or actually a burden; so far as I know the TCG market is still in a slump, but I have to assume their calculations showed they would make money - unless their plan has only ever been to break even/make a small loss just to get Free Realm merchandise out there to draw people in.

By "spend extravagantly" I think they mean more than $30. There are a lot of people who spend hundreds a month on free to play games. I used to do it myself, when I had access to my Dad's credit card :D Actually I spent almost $1,000 a month on it for three months, there were just so many outfits and things to buy for me and all my friends :D Plus you have to buy all the "boosts" to make some of those games less grindy.

My first month of Free Realms I spent about $70, the only reason I didn't spend more was that their cash shop was still pretty limited. You can buy one single weapon that will last from level 1 to max 20 in a job without any other weapon upgrades to buy. There just wasn't enough to spend on.

SOE's new development model seems to be:

Step 1, build mirrors. Given that the developers are very incompetent, it may take awhile for them to realize that mirrors aren't black and non reflective.

Step 2, pump in a lot of smoke

Step 3, ???

Step 4, Claim to have "killed" WoW

I think that the fact that "RMT Realms" hasn't expanded their servers since the initial one after their release despite claiming to have doubled their "subscribers" since then tells the tale.

Sure, claim to give something away and millions WILL sign up for it, if out of curiosity for no other reason. Here is what I think is more realistic than the "89/10/1" rule.

It's more like 70/25/4/1.

70% will register, try it, and never come back.

25% will leech the free stuff for at least a month or two before quitting to be replaced by more churn through.

4% might pay for a couple things or a subscription for a brief time, then quit.

1% will be the hardcore "I will buy trading card game loot lottery cards, here, Smed, have my wallet" types where they will derive 90% of their actual revenue.

In the end, they get a game with revenue figures along the lines of a game with 50-100K in subscribers, but to keep shoveling in enough stuff to keep them interested will probably require in the end more development cost than it's worth.

The leechers will cost them more money than their "potential" to buy stuff is worth in lag and server dead load they will add alone.

The problem I see is all the dead weight they have to carry along in order to get that 1% that will actually provide them with significant revenue.

Plus, this is SOE we're talking about. There never has been a line of dishonesty they've been afraid to cross. They WILL exploit their players to wring every penny they can out of them. Just wait until they start obsolescing stuff you paid for with RMT on purpose so as to get you to go back and buy more.

You guys oughta get jobs at Arthur Andersen.

Though even those numbers show yet another mediocre performance by SOE.

I bet they're still counting those of us that signed up, played for 5 minutes and haven't played since. Concidering station still lists me as active with Free Realms...

Like many have said, registered users means nothing, because we don't know the retention rate.

The only F2P game that I know off that gives good numbers is Second Life, they give Monthly Unique Users Repeat Logins, which means every person has to login at least twice a month and they remove newly registered users for that month.

Now that is something substantial, but I guess most F2P's are afraid to publish these kind of numbers.

Another good number is peak concurrent users, alot of asian F2P's give these.

Registered users can mean anything, but certainly not subscribers or active users.

Cyberwiz,
mmodata.net