The rise of the ??? gamer

Runescape, Puzzle Pirates, and others are taking advantage of a trend of gamers that are not casual (there is nothing casual about the commitment of an MMO after all) but are not hardcore either (free to play, like to play via the web). So what are these gamers called?

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a report on Runescape. For those familiar with Runescape, the article is a pretty basic rundown: knights and dragons world, terrible graphics, gameplay that is anything but casual, but it's in a browser and is free to play so people love it. It has more users than World of Warcraft, and the rumors are that Insight Venture Partners has spoken with some potential acquirers at valuations in the range of 9x revenues, over $500m.

But Runescape and their incredibly dedicated twelve year olds are only part of the story. Back in Korea, The Land of the Video Geek (as the NY Times called it) there games like Fantasy Westward Journey and  Legend of Mir II that also beat out WOW with variations on the same formula. Come back stateside again and you are starting to see a global trend -- RuneScape is consistantly one of the top searched-for games on Yahoo, and MMOs dominate the charts at CNET's Download.com. Fully half of the top ten downloads are MMOs, and seven of the top ten are online games.

 

Every single one of these games is free to play, and the best of them have mastered a few other more subtle elements as well. But the key trait seems to be aiming at an audience that we don't even have a name for. I spoke with a guy from Parks Associates at AGC recently and he likes to split things even finer, and perhaps he has a point. But for the gamer who:

• requires free to play
• spends an average of $8-18 a month on virtual goods per game
  
• values the social aspects of the game highly (this is not Solitaire)
• spends long hours of gaming, with sometimes complex, deep gameplay

What do we call them?

Comments

[Nabeel Hyatt]

Raphael just pointed me to

http://www.twitchguru.com/2005/09/09/which_gamer_personality_type_are_you/index.html

Where Mark Raby defines the major gamers as Casual, Social, Moderate, Addicted, and Hardcore. I imagine this group would fall into social, since the online, community component is so key.

[james mcdisi]

First instict -- screw the names. But I guess it is important when you are trying to describe a goal for the game, and you want to describe the type of gamer it is made for.

Then I think Online gamer is the best - it is the key component to all these games. I understand that overlaps some with casual gamer -- but all these overlap *some*.

[Runescape Guide Master]

As a site owner with a Runescape fansite I can certainly say that there is a massive trend towards these virtual world games.

I also play them alot myself.

I know from my own stats that Runescape is incredibly popular and very well searched.

Now look at sony launching Vanguard, though it is a little buggy it will become very big also, but not as big as runescape as runescape is free to start with after all :).

Regards