Over at Gamasutra there’s a very interesting article on F2P MMO’s and their earnings. Perhaps the most enlightening interview of the three is from Daniel James (CEO of Thee Rings Design, the company behind Puzzle Pirates) who gives some very detailed information on his game’s average revenue per paying user and the average revenue per user (ARPPU and ARPU, respectively). Basically, PP has roughly 7 million registered accounts and any given month roughly 10% (around 5000) are actually paying. Most F2P companies would happily post their ARPPU (in PP’s case it’s $50) which is typically quite impressive. When you factor in the ARPU, however, it brings it down (ARPU is around $1-2). Read the article and comments to get even more information — good stuff in there.

I think averaging $1-2 would be great — provided a large user base. Free Realms is one game that I really want to see some numbers on — having come from a major MMO developer that traditionally markets pay to play games (OK, they’ve had Planetside on freemium for over a year now, but that doesn’t count — no microtransactions taking place). When DDO makes the transition to F2P/Freemium, I’d love to see those numbers as well. The F2P field really does have some major room to expand in the western market, and it won’t be built solely on casual gaming. Downloadable content (DLC) is one of the signs of this, and games like Fallout 3 have been making good use of it to generate additional income (I tend to buy the DLC…).