PAX 2008: Outspark

In a recent talk at Leipzig, Acclaim’s Dave Perry called “free-to-play” games the future of the industry. While that remains to be seen, certain companies have dived head first into this philosophy and business model. One of those companies is the San Francisco-based Outspark. This company, founded in 2007 with a staff of forty, has published four free-to-play online games and has a fifth on the way.

We sat down with Ryan Olson, Marketing Coordinator, and a couple of other Outsparkers at PAX and discussed their games as well as the free-to-play model.

At Outspark, they believe in giving away the core game and charging for additional services, the “complete experience” as they like to call it. Let players get a taste for free. If they like it, they’ll bite in and fully savor the experience. Their focus is on a younger market, mostly in their teens. The parents might not feel comfortable paying a fee month after month, but five bucks every now and then is less of a problem. The point system used for these micropayments, “Spark Cash,” can even be acquired using prepaid cards for those players without access to a credit card. Your Spark Cash can be used for items and other perks that are not available to non-paying members. Most of these are purely aesthetic, but some do confer new powers or stats.

One area where Outspark’s games differ from others in the MMO field is in the treatment of items. Many of the items found in their titles are temporary, lasting somewhere between a week and a month. This lets players decide exactly how much time and money they want to invest in the game. For instance, if a player had a weekend where they wanted to play pretty heavily, but knew that they had to work the next week, they could purchase a nice seven-day item to use for that weekend.

Like the other companies in the free-to-play field, about five to ten percent of Outspark’s players actually end up paying for items. They seem to be fairly pleased with this, but are constantly looking for ways to improve profits. When I asked about in-game advertising, they responded that it had been considered, but they would only include it if it made sense. They may insert billboards in the snowboarding game, Project Powder, but would never do something like that in their fantasy games, Fiesta and Secret of the Solstice.

While at PAX, I took a closer look at three of their current titles as well as the upcoming multiplayer FPS, Blackshot.

Project Powder

Project Powder is a multiplayer snowboarding title, less 1080 and more Mario Kart. The controls are simple, you use the arrow keys to move and other “modifier” keys to perform tricks. To finish the race, you need to fill up a “boost meter” by performing elaborate tricks. Naturally, RPG elements have been included to allow for some extra character customization. There are three basic characters, you pick one and unlock the other two as you progress. A “Trick Tree” allows you to allocate points to certain skills, and items can be enchanted with ores.

There are several modes to keep players from getting bored, and each mode also has a team variant for up to eight players. Single Race is pretty self-explanatory, you simply have to finish first. Battle Mode lets you fight with other players. The winner is the last one standing (boarding?). The developer favorite (and I suspect that players agree) is the Coin Mode. In Coin Mode, the victor is the player who finishes with the most coins. Some coins are worth more than others, and brown coins will actually decrease your total. Rabbit-shaped coins give you items, which you can use to mess up other players. Every hill has a lot of nooks and crannies to explore, which is necessary if you want to collect the most coins.

Fiesta

Fiesta is a 3D fantasy MMORPG with an anime-inspired art style. In many respects, it is basically your typical MMO. Players team up, beat monsters, and try to find better gear. Fiesta does have a couple of cool features to set it apart. One such feature is the “mini house,” a mushroom-like dwelling that a player can summon when they need to rest. While in cities, users can set up their mini-house as a shop and sell items to other players through it. As a result, Fiesta’s cities have a thriving player-driven marketplace. In an upcoming update, Outspark actually plans to allow players to use their mini-house as an actual dwelling. They will be able to decorate as they please and allow other players to enter, similar in some respects to Sony’s upcoming Home.

One other interesting feature of Fiesta is the level of GM interaction. The large GM staff does far more than resolve the occasional player conflict, they take an active role in providing an awesome experience for the userbase. The GMs run special events every few hours, many of which advance the actual plot of Fiesta. Even when not running special quests, they are active and visible to help players with their needs. As a result, some of the GMs have developed their own fanbases. One GM in particular has a special loincloth, called the “man thong.” Every once in awhile, the developers put the “man thong” on sale for a few hours (once was for that GM’s birthday), where it inevitably sells out.

Recently, players were given the ability to get married in the game. Getting married grants a happy couple all sorts of benefits, including the ability to teleport to their partner (and vice-versa). Married couples also get a special pet and a permanent stat boost. The level cap was also recently increased to 89, which should keep high-level characters happy for a little while.

Secret of the Solstice

Secret of the Solstice is Outspark’s other fantasy RPG. While Fiesta is more of a casual experience, Solstice is aimed squarely at the hardcore market. The closest comparison would probably be the Korean giant Ragnarok Online. In other words, it’s a 2D grindfest. Players have a ton of options for building and customizing their character. There are over twenty classes and thousands of items that you can use to outfit your adventurer. If you want to experiment or just get bored, you can even change your class at certain points.

The GMs in Solstice are also heavily involved in the game world. They have the ability to turn NPCs into puppets and use them to influence events around them. One popular recent event involved a creature called the Moonbear. The Moonbear gives special quests to players, but only if the players wear a bear suit (panda suits don’t count). Players who complete all of the Moonbear’s requests are granted some pretty nice rewards. The Outspark team even hinted that they are working on some real-life bear-related prizes for some of those players.

Blackshot

Blackshot is Outspark’s newest title, a multiplayer shooter. While all of the typical FPS modes will appear, the most interesting feature is a PvE bunket mode. You take on the role of a soldier trapped in a bunker that is under siege by terrorists. You must work with a team of one to three other players to deflect wave after wave of enemies. Your bunker has its own health bar, and you lose if that bar empties. To foster social interaction across all modes, there is a Partner feature where you can specify a certain player as your partner. You will always know if they are online and will easily be able to join them. There will also be other special bonuses from playing with a partner, but those have not been specified yet. A CG trailer can be found on the Blackshot website, but Outspark couldn’t show any gameplay just yet. The bunker mode sounds pretty intense, and it will be interesting to see how well Blackshot does against EA’s upcoming free-to-play Battlefield Heroes.

If you want to try any of their titles, just log on to their website and download the client. You will need to sign up for an account, which persists across all of their titles. Over the next couple of weeks, they plan to relaunch their web portal with new features and better integration across all of their titles.

Outspark has only been around for a year, but their publishing portfolio is already pretty strong. The free-to-play market is still in its infancy, and it remains to be seen if Perry’s prophecy will come true. Free-to-play was certainly a big topic at the Expo, with several companies announcing plans. The guys at Outspark seem confident that they can carve out a healthy slice of that market, and I think they’re in a pretty good position to do so.