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NOTED: Philippines Company IPVG eyes online game develoment

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:29:00 -0800

What's good for Korea, China, and the US is good for other countries as well. Philippines company, Intellectual Property Ventures Group (IPVG) is apparently looking into developing its own online games, according to Inquirer.net.

There is a pretty healthy market in the Philippines for online games, so it is not surprising that companies would want their own titles - the current royalty rates for a licensed game can be quite high - I've seen 40 percent of revenues (colorful confirmation welcome ) and guaranteed minimums for popular games.

NOTED - 18 Million Philippine Gamers & Other Online Game Info from the Philippines

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:55:32 -0800

Like everyone, people in the Philippines are worried about the economy and the game industry is perceived to be pretty resilient. Some interesting numbers:

- 18 million Philippine gamers.
- Games cost as little as P20 (around $0.41) per hour at an Internet cafe (I assume this is the rate to play at the cafe).
- Revenue per month per user is P200 ($4) to P600 ($12.25) - may drop in 2009
- Players often subscribe to 2 to 3 games concurrently
- 9 million are subscribed to games from IP E-Games.

A. Barbara, L. Lorenzo (2008), "Local online gaming industry seen to remain resilient even with slowdown", http://www.gmanews.tv/story/135571/Cheap-access-to-keep-RP-online-gaming-sector-resilient-in-2009

Dupe Cheat leads to roll back of RF Online by Level Up in Philippines

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:48:03 -0700

RF Online (Rising Force Online) is being rolled back in the Philippines due to a severe dupe cheat that has resulted in 500% currency inflation in the game (both the game's internal gold as well as the currency purchased by players), according to hackenslash.

Level Up, the Philippines licensee of RF Online, decided to roll the game back prior to the time of the exploit because they believed that it would take them a year to unravel the specific exploits. Players will be given two weeks of premium subscription time as compensation for their lost game time, experience, and items. It appears the game uses the free-to-play model with a subscription option that accelerates experience & such. Dupe exploits are particularly damaging for free to play games as... that is where the money comes from.

The game was developed by CCR in Korea and there are 70,000 players in the Philippines.

Apparently, the cheat came from a third party (outside the Philippines). CCR worked closely with Level Up to identify the exploit and block it. Their first plan was to find the cheaters, purge them, and then clean the economy up, but the massive scale of the problem led Level Up to roll back the game.

The company did a great job of responding to the problem. They moved quickly, made an initial plan, adapted to changing circumstances, and, once they had determined their course of action, communicated clearly with their players. The response from the players is apparently pretty positive (see blog from one of the Level Up GMs and the official annoucement).

(Thank you for the lead, Frank)

Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom Shutdown - End of A Contract?

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:16:00 -0700

Licensed Online Games are tricky.

There has been a bit of controversy over Disney's decision to shut down its Virtual Magic Kingdom (see Raph Koster's blog and elsewhere). A key, but perhaps forgotten, fact in all of this is that the Virtual Magic Kingdom was developed by Sulake Corporation - the creator of Habbo Hotel.

The service was launched just about 3 years ago (ALMOST EXACTLY 3 YEARS - see Wikipedia)... which makes it quite likely that a contract has come to an end and one, or both, of the parties did not want to pay to keep things going.

There may be a couple of things going on. Sulake is certainly bigger now and may not be interested in contracted support for a project like Virtual Magic Kingdom that may be competing with Habbo Hotel for company resources OR now that Disney is much bigger and more serious about online games, they may want to maintain more control over their virtual world projects OR it may simply have been a matter of money.

An interesting side note is that the Philippine operator of Khan Online is shutting down due to lack of developer support. They are providing incentives for players to roll over to one of their other games.

As there are more and more virtual worlds and social networks operated as licensed entities or under contract, there are going to be more and more situations like this.

Developers and operators need to think very carefully about their "exit strategies" and termination clauses for these online services. Code escrow, buyout clauses, cost escalation guarantees, and other factors should be considered up front.

Community Content in the Philippines - Player Created Content or Real Localization

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 03:37:12 -0700

The Philippines version of Ragnarok Online operated by Level Up! is adding a "community" developed episode for the game.

Whether this is true player-created content or simply the ultimate in localized content using an internal development team is unclear. This kind of support should be increasingly important as MMOs and other online game services expand in the global market.