MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh reports from CES on Free Realms, SOE's microtransactions game for Tweens to Teens.
Free Realms is SoE’s foray into the Tween to Teens market and the world of micro-transactions. It’s an MMOG with virtual world elements. It’s fun and games, growing roses and grooming penguins, playing ninja and building tree-houses – what do I mean by that? Free Realms has four different game-play components to it. There’s the combat aspect, building, pets and mini-games. Targeted at families rather than just the 8 through 17, Free Realms promises broad content and depth of content. Their goal is to have parents playing with their kids. To have enough content to hold someone for 3 minutes as well as 3 hours in short easily handled chunks of time.
SoE had a video of some actual game-play at CES showing us all the different aspects of the game. To begin with, they will have two playable races. Humans and Fairies. Fairy? I queried. Laura Neviaux, Director of Global Brand Marketing at SoE showed us the buff, punky boy fairy that was developed with input from young boys and teens. “We created this look from a lot of input, to get the type of Fairy that young teens would play.” She started off by showing the FaceBook™ style Free Realms profile that many young people are familiar with these days. Here, the player can check their pets, their jobs, “To Do List,” collections (earned trophies), friends, other social networking interactive windows and parental controls.
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