The basic rule of free-to-play is 0-1-100 - let them play for free, make it easy to spend $1, make it possible to spend $100. Data from Social Gold shows why getting that first dollar is quite so...

PlaySpan released its regular survey on spending on virtual goods a couple of months ago. I have only just got round to looking through and thinking about the results. It’s worth declaring the survey’s innate skew upfront....

The Virtual Goods Forum over the past two days has been packed full of useful statistics. The most useful came from Vikas Gupta, CEO of Social Gold, and I’ve embedded it below. The key takeaways are that...

How much is the online games industry worth? It’s a tough question, and is plagued by a difficulty of definitions. For example, Inside Social Games estimates that only half of the $1.6 billion they forecast to be...

In an epic fail of scheduling, I will be speaking at the Virtual Goods Forum on Wednesday 23rd June on Feeding the funnel: finding the levers to turn users into profits. Casual games are a funnel. You...

I was at the Games Gone Wild event in London yesterday (good attendees, format needs work). I heard a fundamental misconception about virtual goods and entertainment purchases repeated a couple of times. “Consumers who enjoy playing free...

I spend a lot of time talking to games developers about downloadable content. And they always say “We’re going to make bonus levels and maps and sell them as downloadable content”. Which is a terrible idea. it’s...