Rebecka Coutaz reports from browsergames forum in Frankfurt, where sessions and discussions demonstrated that there is still a wealth of opportunity in the free-to-play games market.

Philip Belhassen, our CEO and co-founder, and I attended bgf2010 (Browsergames Forum) in Frankfurt, Germany, over the weekend, where Philip was invited to do a session entitled “The Challenges of 3D games development – how to ease the pain”.  The session went very well and it was good to see the major German publishers and developers in the audience.

The program at the forum was very intense during the two days and we tried to attend as many sessions we could in between meetings. All the major German online publishers were present: Bigpoint, Gamigo, Gameforge, Innogames & Travaingames, but also PlayDom (recently purchased by Disney) and 6waves were all there, discussing the future of online gaming (free-to-play vs pay-to-play, web browser vs client-based games) and all of them agreed that the gold rush of the free to play games are not over yet. Today 10% of the players generate approx 90% of the revenue. These ‘whales’ (expression coined by Zynga) only spend about two hours per week playing, yet they are ready to pay a lot of money to buy new items, powers etc to be able to compete with the players that can play 20-30 hours per week.

The online publishers also agreed that, thanks to Facebook, a new kind of player has appeared who is used to playing games in their browser, and that these gamers are now looking for far more advanced gameplay and more sophisticated graphics then before. The advice to developers here is to focus on the audience, be smart, not to make games too complicated and to pay a lot of attention to detail. Online publishers at bgf2010 also agreed that while their main focus has been on online games only up to now, they will go cross-platform to extend their markets in the coming year.

So the conclusion is, don’t hesitate to make free to play games, there is still a wealth of unrealised potential – and really think cross-platform!