Q&A: GameTribe on microtransactions

It seems everyone these days is announcing a massively multiplayer online game. After the huge success of current favourite World of Warcraft (which at last count had 9.3 million subscribers), developers know there's gold in them there hills.

But, while hundreds of games struggle to find success in an increasingly competitive market, others are trying out different approaches. For example, NCsoft does not charge subscription fees for its massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars. Instead, it makes money from sales of add-on expansion packs, which are released roughly once every six months.

In Europe, a new portal called GameTribe is also trying something new: A portal to a selection of different genres of MMOs, all of which are free to play, in which the company makes money from microtransactions in the games--for example, on new costumes, weapons, or cars.

The site currently offers three games in its portfolio: Kicks, a street-soccer game; Kong Kong, a racing game for kids; and Dream of Mirror Online, an online RPG. Two more games will be added to the list before the end of the year: Dekaron and Infinity Online.

GameSpot caught up with the CEO of Game Media Networks, Laurent Malek, to talk about its latest venture, and what he believes will be the future of MMOs.

GameSpot UK: Tell us about GameTribe.

Laurent Malek: GameTribe has the ambition that it wants to become the destination for gamers in Europe. Our positioning is very clear: It's a free-to-play gaming hub where you can download the games for free. It's based on the model which has been a phenomena in Korea, which is item-based, where you can either grow your character or buy some decoration or functional items, and some skills as well, and this is a common thread for all the games that we have.

We are bringing to Europe mainly games that have been developed in Korea and also China, but we localise them and we adapt them to the European culture and taste.

We have money, which is called kash, [but] you can register for GameTribe and play the games for free. If you want to buy items, you have to credit your account, and then you can use it for whatever micropayment you want to make in whatever game.

GSUK: Tell us about your games.

LM: The first game we had when we launched was Kong Kong Online, which is a racing game. It's really kids, maybe with their parents, who would play this game--it's very easy. It's still in open beta, and the gaming experience is quite short. For me, it's a bridge game between casual gaming and MMO gaming that you play online.

The next one is a sports game called Kicks Online. We want to be positioned as a brand as cool for teenagers, and Kicks Online fits into that well, as it's a street soccer game. This has now launched commercially and will be the first game where you can actually buy items, but if you don't want to, you can still play anyway.

Then we have an RPG game, which was launched in Taiwan, called Dream of Mirror Online. We will be launching the open beta by the end of the month.

And we will have, by new years, two other games. Dekaron (in the US it's called Two Moons) is really for experienced MMO gamers, and is distributed by Akklaim. The second is Infinity Online, which is more a player-versus-player action game. I also just came back from Korea, and we're also looking to offer an FPS.

We want to offer a broad genre of games.

GSUK: How do you think this will work? What research have you done?

LM: The Korean model has been very successful, and more and more games are not subscription-based anymore and are moving into this item-selling model. We are paying the price of being the pioneer in this environment in Europe. We are really at the beginning of this venture. We also bet a lot on community management because we also believe that community management will be very important for us. We called it GameTribe for a reason--Tribe means community.

GSUK: Could you give me some examples of prices?

LM: For buying kash, five euros is 500 kash, 15 euros is 1550 Kash, which is a three percent discount, so the more you spend, the bigger discount you get.

Let's look at an example--now, I've done this for you guys at GameSpot UK--the English jersey in Kicks Online. So the English jersey, if you want to get it for free, from experience in the game, you need to spend 3,250 skill points for seven days. Otherwise, if you don't want to spend the time doing that, you can buy it in kash for 154 kash.

GSUK: So how can you get stuff through skills and not spending money?

LM: You have to play. It depends on the game how long for--the more you play, the more experience points you will get. In Kicks, when you buy items, you also get some skills attached to them. So with the English jersey, you might get plus one agility, or plus one short shot. If you want to increase these attributes, then points in terms of experience are more important. In Dream of Mirror, you will have items you can only buy through experience, and items you can only buy with kash.

GSUK: What are you intending to do about gold farmers?

LM: It is more a problem for games based on subscription. The actual problem of trading on eBay has found an answer, in a way, by the creation of the free-to-play item-based model. Instead of paying on eBay with no guarantee for an item, you can buy it directly from the hosting portal.

GSUK: What do you think about other models like Guild Wars, which have no subscription but release expansion packs every six months?

LM: I think we are all experiencing new things, and we are looking at many models that have been successful. Whatever other people are doing, we have been monitoring it, and if it can be done with us as well, we will try it.

GSUK: What are you doing to localise the content for Europe?

LM: For example, in Kicks Online, even though the engine is made in Korea, even the characters were customised. We will have events which will relate to events like Easter in Europe, which is not celebrated in Asia.

GSUK: So do you think that the subscription model is dead?

LM: I think the subscription model is very strong still in vertical games like World of Warcraft. We are not a vertical game, we are representing five games. So I think this is the right model for us. I think, looking forwards, that the micropayment concept will be quite a popular one, as it gives the flexibility of the consumer to give whatever he wants, he can spend whatever he wants, he doesn't have to spend a fixed price. We want to democratize the MMO game, we want to make it open to more people, instead of leaving it as a niche.

GSUK: How many languages will GameTribe be in?

LM: At the beginning we are starting with English and French. But we want to be multilingual as we go forward.

GSUK: Sony said in a panel that it had found that when they offered nonsubscription models that people ended up paying more. Do you think that will happen?

LM: It's too early to say, but I do know that this is true; people do end up paying more, but on the other hand, you have less people spending.

GSUK: There are tons of MMOs out there--how are you going to make your portal stand out from all the other wannabes?

LM: I think the most important thing is going to be the games--it all comes back to the content. The content is key--you can be very brave at making your brand known, but if the content is no good, and you don't have new things all the time, like patches for your community, then people will leave.

I come from TV, and I could make the parallel of Sky TV: We have the platform, which is GameTribe, and there is different content. And I think we will see very fast which of the games will be the star.

GSUK: Are you planning more games?

LM: We'll see. At the moment, we are launching five games and there is a lot of work to be done. But, we are looking at several other games, and we would really like to add an FPS to the mix.

GSUK: Thanks for your time.