Freemium Games

Freemium Games
The term ‘Freemium’ is a business model that offers goods for free but has premium content that can be bought. This premium content varies depending on what the ‘Freemium’ good’s is and the business strategy. Freemium Games are similar to Free-to-play games but offer more when money is pend on the game.

Freemium is a popular business method for digital goods as programs such as Skype allow people to download the software and talk for free across computers but you pay for computer to phone calls. The popular website Deviantart ( Online forum to post art) uses a Freemium method as you can join for free allowing you to post art and see others but if you purchase the ‘Premium Membership’ you can get access to extra settings and content.

Good Examples include the popular ‘Freemium’ Rune Scape (2001), the game is known for being a subscription based game but the game is free allowing players to play under restrictions. Premium content can be purchased to enhance the game play creating a game that is both available to players that what a simple experience without the cost and those who want to play a continuous game with full dedication.

Freemium games can also be related to Game Demos and trials. These are usually small sections of games made free and downloadable to get people to download the game to play and hopefully get hooked so that the will want to buy the game. In this scenario the Premium content is the full game. Its a marketing method that allows games to draw in a mass audience of all ranges to hopefully get a bunch that would buy the premium content rather than hoping that the advertisements for your game has worked effectively and people are willing to pay for the game.

Thanks to the boom in Micro-Transactions, Freemium games have dominated the games market as all platforms have ways of selling premium content. Micro-transactions have allowed for more variations of premium content of individual items that players can buy. This has increased the amount of games using Freemium business methods.

‘Freemium games on iOS and Android continue to dominate the app economy, now accounting for over 65% of all revenue generated among the Top 100 grossing apps in the App Store alone.’ - Jeferson Valadares.

Freemium games have a made a hugh impact of different areas of the gaming industry as they were the reason why Social games took off as people could play with each other for free and with such a large audience playing for free there will be people who want more and are willing to pay.


Freemium Games info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2006/03/my_favorite_bus.html#c15324948

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape

www.Deviantart.com

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/71993/Mobile-Freemium-Games-Gen-Y-Plays-but-Gen-X-Pays

http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/the-ten-best-freemium-iphone-and-ipad-games

http://freemium-games.com/