Jan. 1, 2010, was the date that “Dungeon Runners,” a free, online role-playing game, was to be shut down. As the world focused its attention on the end of a decade, countless players were witnessing the end of their world. From May, 2007, to just a few days ago, a tiny, digital universe existed where thousands of gamers could log in and play with thousands of other gamers to their hearts’ content. Now it’s all gone. Snuffed out of existence. Never heard of “Dungeon Runners”? I’m not surprised.
Free, massive multiplayer online games are all over the Web. They’ve been an unbelievably hot commodity in places like South Korea and Japan, and they’ve slowly caught on here in the States. Quick, try and name the most popular game people are playing online. Thinking “World of Warcraft?” Not quite. How about a game so popular that even my mom plays it: “FarmVille” on Facebook. It’s estimated that “FarmVille” has 73.8 million players online daily, worldwide. It took “World of Warcraft” about four years to hit 11 million players; “FarmVille” has only been around since June, 2009.
If you want to go even bigger, there are games like “MapleStory” from a South Korean outfit called Nexon. Although it exists in another version for the North American market, when you combine the different versions you start getting a number greater than 100 million. Then you start running into games much lower on the food chain like “RuneScape,” “Wizard 101,” “FusionFall,” “ToonTown Online,” “Club Penguin” and a bunch of others I haven’t even heard of with dozens popping up, brand new, nearly every day. The number of players runs from around 1.8 million to 10 million-plus.
By now you’re probably wondering where these developers are getting their money if the games they’re producing are all free to play, right? These games rely on a model known as micropayments, or microtransactions — small fees paid for in-game items or perks. When you create a new character, eventually it’s going to need some new clothes. Then you need a place for it to live, furniture, pets, etc. Other games will charge for weapons or access to larger areas of the game. Some games limit your character’s level, number of spells it can memorize, etc. Instead of charging one lump sum for access to everything, the developer keeps a steady stream of income by updating the game with new items and charging players for them.
All of these items cost trivial amounts — somewhere between a few cents to a few dollars. They rely on the same principal that grocery stores use when they stick low-cost items in the checkout aisle. You’ll never miss 99 cents on a stick of lip balm, so you buy it. Now, multiply 99 cents by about 10 million buyers on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis, and it’s easy to see where the money is coming from. In some cases, a $15 monthly subscription would seem cheap compared to what people have paid for items that don’t actually exist. I don’t care what you do for a living; right about now, you’re probably thinking, “I’m in the wrong business.”
Don’t quit your day job just yet, though. This is a highly competitive market. “Dungeon Runners” fizzled out after about three years, shut down because it was “unprofitable.” In other words, for whatever reason, not enough players were paying for access to the in-game perks being offered. That’s a stiff reality. Unfortunately, the game was so forgettable that I completely forgot it was even being turned off. I’d wanted to be there for the end, I wanted to watch it happen. Instead, I missed it. What was it like in those last few moments, up until the host went down and the client software lost its connection?
I’ll never know, but at least I didn’t have to pay for it.
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