From Shadowbane to Child’s Play: KingsIsle’s Todd Coleman on Wizard101

The MMO Gamer: You mentioned during your demo your two bell curves, the two primary age demographics which were children and then parents playing with their children, or at least, we hope it’s parents playing with their children. [laughing]

Todd Coleman: Actually we’ve seen a fair number of adults who don’t have children who like it as a game, and they’re in it just for the simple I enjoy games and it’s fun.

A lot of them have actually said that they don’t choose between Lord of the Rings and our game or between WoW and Wizard101.

Instead, they’re playing in addition to because it’s a fun, casual break because some of these other games can be almost like jobs for a lot of people.

The MMO Gamer: The point I was going to bring up was, just in the brief demo, I noticed a lot of references that the average kid wouldn’t get-like the owl in the opening who replies to a statement with “Oh really?”

It kind of struck me a bit like the show Animanics, or even Ren and Stimpy, where you watch it when you’re 6 years old and everything just flies over your head, but you watch it 15 years later as an adult and suddenly it’s a whole new experience.

I was wondering: how intentional was that? Did you specifically design it to be simplistic enough for the kids to handle it, yet there’s enough going on there that the parents won’t be bored out of their skull at the same time?

Todd Coleman: Yeah, we absolutely did. In fact, the example that I use most often is Pixar. Pixar movies, they tend to bake into the storytelling, into the script that they work on two levels.

So you’ve got kind of slapstick humor, and some burp jokes and stuff like that and it’s very approachable.

The art style’s very friendly, it’s very engaging, but then there’s another layer in there of humor that is baked in specifically with the realization that there’s going to be adults who are engaged as well and they’re going to go, “That’s pretty funny. You don’t get that yet, but I get that and I think it’s pretty funny.” So, yeah, it was absolutely intentional.

The MMO Gamer: So you’ve been out for six months now, and you’ve just passed the million user mark?

Todd Coleman: That’s actually a little dated now, we did that about a month ago, so – and we’re on an exponential curve, so we could do another announcement any time. The game is growing by leaps and bounds.

The MMO Gamer: That’s quite a phenomenal success rate for six months…

Todd Coleman: Yeah, we’re really excited about it.

The MMO Gamer: …particularly in this genre.

Todd Coleman: We also, I mean, start to finish on the game was only 3½ years, with a team of – a core development team of, I think, about 30 people and then we have core tech team also providing technology libraries and doing tremendous architectural work. And then, obviously, operations and IT and stuff like that.

A relatively small group, experience makes a huge difference. I make a joke all the time that we know at least one path through the minefield because Shadowbane hit every mine along the way.

The MMO Gamer: Those are numbers that, generally, a traditional subscription-based, box on the shelf MMO wouldn’t have seen by now. Or, if they had seen them, they would have been pared back to 250,000 already due to attrition.

Do you think the free-to-play model has been the key to your success? Or do you think that, if it had been a box on the shelf for 50 bucks and $15 a month, you’d still be past the million user mark?

Todd Coleman: No, we wouldn’t have hit that without free-to-play.

Free-to-play is a very different model from retail boxes, WoW may be an exception to this, but you come out and day 1, you get all these sales. And that is effectively the highest number users you’re going to have, because the next day, you start losing and you bleed and you bleed and you bleed and, eventually, you put an expansion pack out and then hope that pops up a whole new curve like the last one, only a little higher or at least equal to it.

So, you’re fighting a war of attrition the entire time. FTP is not like that, at least it hasn’t been for us. Every day we get more people coming in, and the game is sticking up or keeping a pretty good chunk of them.

So our loyal fan base of subscribers grows, our number of people spending micro payments and buying areas one by one by one, that’s growing. And then the number of peak players grows and then the number of free trial players grows.

And then, we still have people that signed on back in September when we first launched that are just deciding now to become subscribers. I mean, it’s crazy. It’s a very, very different model.

Instead of that kind of peak and drop off, it’s a growth curve that just goes up and up and up and up and up. So, it’s very, very different from my experience.

And, of course, all those million, they’re not all paying customers, but a significant portion of them are and, if we continue with this growth curve, we will end up – the number of core subscribers and customers on a monthly basis, will be significant enough that nobody would scoff at it.

I already, personally, think we’re to the point where it’s definitely respectable and, if it continues growing at this rate, it’s going to be pretty phenomenal. It’s a really cool thing to see.

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