Few surprises came out of AOL's anticipated announcement Tuesday that it was going to start charging premium prices for games. Citing similar pre-E3 announcements from ISPs and gaming networks, AOL reiterated the belief that gamers are willing to fork out for premium games. But in AOL's case, those games aren't hot "twitch," or action titles, but more mainstream fare such as card games, puzzles, strategy titles, and Tetris.
"We're not geared towards hard-core gamers. We're looking at the mass market, casual and social game users," explains Dean DeBiase, CEO of as WorldPlay Entertainment, AOL's games subsidiary formerly known as ImagiNation. "Head-to-head, blood-on-the-screen games don't appeal to them."
WorldPlay will be offered as a premium section within the Games Channel on AOL for US$1.99 an hour, and will be distributed by ISPs EarthLink and AT&T WorldNet. WorldPlay will also distribute five Engage games, and is pushing itself as "social gaming," eager to direct players towards chat rooms and commerce areas.
WorldPlay isn't the first gaming network to offer premium sections to boost its revenues: Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone, for example, announced its new "premium" games on Monday: two online-exclusive twitch games that can be subscribed to on a monthly basis. TEN and mPlayer are anticipating similar moves. But whereas services such as the Gaming Zone and mPlayer offer card and strategy games for free, and focuses on twitch action titles in their premium areas, WorldPlay is asking its users to pay for games like bridge, gin, and hearts, and will initially veer from twitch games.
"Yes, the shoot 'em games are definitely what's in vogue right now," says Mark Mooradian, games analyst with Jupiter Communications. "But AOL is playing into its strengths: It doesn't have an incredible low-latency network yet. And gaming services are finding that 50 percent of usage is gameplay, the other 50 percent is chat, which plays into AOL's business model. As far as their concerned the chat on card-based games gets very expensive and it's something they're happy to do."
AOL's strategy isn't exactly revolutionary, however. The once-popular GEnie service offered an identical "premium" games plan that offered card and multiplayer games for an additional cost beyond its regular service fees.
Meanwhile, AOL is lauding this change as leading the online gaming industry toward a standard of per-hour charges, using its position as the heavyweight of mass-market distribution as leverage. Although mPlayer recently went the other direction in terms of user fees, making its basic games area ad-supported, DeBiase of WorldPlay insists that "other people are also going to knuckle down and start involving the consumer in terms of usage fees."
And while critics have been looking at AOL's new "premium" strategy as the end of its flat-rate pricing, anticipating that other sections of AOL may also be switched over to premium plans to generate additional fees, AOL officials were quick to dismiss the rumors.
"We're absolutely and totally behind flat-rate pricing," explains Barry Schuler, president of creative development at AOL. "At the same time ... games is a different animal, and we're bringing added value to people who want it."
