The primary advantage that freemium offers over premium is a low barrier to entry. Not just low but zero, in price at least. As Dan Ariely has shown in Predictably Irrational (and I will write up soon), we...

If free-to-play becomes the dominant business model for platforms that encourage longer play times and less 'snacking' (such as consoles or PC), how can rich, 8+ hour single-player narrative games (such as Half-Life 2, Tomb Raider or...

Being generous is ideological with me. I believe that if you are generous to your players, they will be generous to you. Call it Karma. Call it goodwill. Call it what you will, I believe that there is...

There are so many stats bandied around for F2P games, it can sometimes be difficult to choose which ones to track. We don’t currently use ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User) in the GAMESbrief spreadsheet, but...

An evergreen game never reaches the point where the play can’t carry on if they wanted to. A game that is predominantly driven by narrative or by the experience will always be harder to turn into a...

The most successful free-to-play games don’t punish their players. Everyone makes progress, just by turning up. But a dedicated player, who keeps trying to learn and improve, is rewarded with increased complexity. Make sure you build complexity in...

Activision recently launched a revival of a 30-year-old IP with a paid iOS version of Pitfall. They have taken a Paymium approach, combining a 69p up-front purchase price with IAPs. The game has consistently been in the...