Free Realms Hits 5 Million !!

Free Realms reached 5 million users !! Smed confirmed this at the GDC in his keynote. This game is slowly closing in on the juggernaut that is WoW, World of Warcraft. Here is the press release.

Tomorrow in Austin, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) president John Smedley will make it official. The company's free-to-play, kid-friendly PC game Free Realms has passed the five million registered users mark -- and surprisingly, it did so sometime last month, says Smedley.

The news of the game hitting the five million mark -- or rumors of same -- have been part of the game industry lexicon for so long, the milestone hardly comes as a surprise (although it is interesting to note the game tallied its five millionth registered user in August, not July as many game analysts had projected). Still, the accomplishment is a huge win for Smedley and the Free Realms team.

Since SOE released the game in late April, Free Realms has ramped on an exceedingly steep curve, adding a million gamers a month to its registered-user tally.

What might actually come as a surprise, however, is just how hard Sony Online staff works at maintaining the white-hot streak of customer acquisition. According to Smedley, kid-focused MMOs is not a segment for the laid back or investment-averse.

"This is a market where you have to stay fresh, and you have to stay ahead of the competition in a way that you don't have to do with your core MMOs," Smedley told VirtualWorldsNews.com this evening.

Smedley (right) calls the under-13 market which gravitates to Free Realms' unique style of cartoony, adventure-heavy gameplay and questing "definitely a tough market."

One where you need to be proactive as a marketer, unafraid to allocate resources, and constantly on the leading edge as an advertiser, he adds. "You have to be willing to spend the money and stay with your investment," Smedley says.

Smedley, who has been SOE's president since 2001, gives the impression that while he's up for the challenge of maintaining Free Realm's pace, it wasn't fully understood just how committed he and his SOE colleagues were going to have to be to do so.

"Because kids' mind hare is so constantly inundated with new games, new things on TV, it's literally necessary to remind them [about the game] on a daily or weekly basis," Smedley says.

The competition for mindshare, which he is says is on the rise, is mostly other games.

"On TV you see a Free Realms commercial immediately followed by a Wizards 101 commercial, immediately followed by a commercial for Disney's ToonTown or Club Penguin. You see this huge, dramatic amount of advertising for kids and it's definitely something you have to stay on top of."

Part of the problem is the ease of attracting kids. "It's so easy to get kids' mindshare," he emphasizes, "they'll quickly go from one thing to the next. It's definitely a very, very different marketing experience than it is for the rest of our core games."

One element of the business which Smedley believes gives Sony an advantage over other game makers competing for the same audience is the degree to which SOE analyzes gamer data.

"We've instrumented literally every single aspect of Free Realms in ways that few if any game has ever done," Smedley says. "We report every click every person does when they register." As a result of that focus, the team of five full-time data crunchers found (earlier in the launch) that 40 percent of the people registering were opting out on one particular screen. It seems that asking a 10-year-old for his or her birthday was a showstopper. "Ten-year-olds don't know what their birth year is," says Smedley.

But those tweaks are behind SOE now. For Smedley and the game's live team, now it comes down to building on success. First, there's ongoing research: "We are constantly bringing kids into our usability lab and product focus lab…on a monthly basis we have a bunch of new kids coming in."

Then there are brand extensions, which Smedley isn't shy about talking about. Of course, Topps has the Trading Card Game license, but Smedley hints at larger deals yet to be inked. "We are talking to some different manufacturers about working with us on plush and a few other toy lines," Smedley says.

And there is the leveraging of lessons gleaned from Free Realms that can be put against other, new games from SOE. "We have other games in this space that are coming next year." Built on the success of Free Realms, yes, but different games completely, Smedley says.

For the record, Smedley and SOE are releasing some interesting user data tomorrow as well, specifically the top five marketplace items:

1. Free Realms Digital Booster Pack
2. Humongous Health Potion
3. Skeletal Hoodie
4. Humongous Replenishing Potion
5. Humongous Energy Potion

And the game's most popular jobs:

1. Brawler
2. Pet Trainer
3. Demo Derby Driver
4. Kart Driver
5. Chef

Additionally, Smedley updated some of the game's demographics, stating 67 percent of players are male and 33 percent are female. "We were shooting for more females, but that's way better than the MMO audience which is [typically only] 15 percent female," says Smedley. He added that Free Realms stats show females outpurchase males by a 30-40 percent margin, and that 51 percent of Free Realms gamers are under 13, with around 75 percent under 18.


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