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Permalink Reply by Alex Carrington on October 4, 2008 at 10:12

Agreed.

All associates for Gem Lifestyle have been told that all the company needs when it launches on the 1st Nov 08 are FREE players.

We are not searching for paying players from the outset, just as many free players as possible.

The promotion of the site by word of mouth ( social networking ) will then help grow those numbers.

Then, as per your blog Kevin, we should ( all going well ) have conversion from free to pay to play..

Especially for all the Casino type games, the conversion from free to pay to play is going to be critical.

I'd be interested in info or stats for conversion on skill games ( Chess, Backgammon ) as opposed to Casino
type games.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Flood on October 4, 2008 at 15:00

I would like to hear more about your property. My experience is with Bingo and Poker specifically. Games that are inherently social are the ones most likely to see the most upside from a large free play offering. The individuals playing with each other will communicate about the property and build a consensus about the trust worthiness of the property. Some of the information I have as far as conversion with and without a free play pool is confidential. I am still an advisor to the online poker company that did employee the free play strategy based on my recommendation. With that said I suspect that any gaming property would be foolish to force someone to immediately belly up with a credit card. It is just counter intuituitive if you think about. I also has experience with an online casino game developer that did use free play but only as a taster. You had limited points to use as free play. That was good but really not enough. Operators that launched with these games with no online brand recognition failed from a busy perspective. I think this was due to the trust factor. You need time to build brand and trust free play is a good way. Once you have the free play pool the trick is converting them. THis will be a subject for another blog in the future.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Carrington on October 26, 2008 at 15:14

As an add on to this conversation about free play.

I've been informed that when Gem Island soft launches on Nov 1st. ALL games will be free for the whole of November 08.

So a whole month to get players on board to get used to 3D enviroment etc.

Yet I will still get paid commissions based on amount of free players join ?

So your recommendation has certainly been used by this company.

www.gemislander.com

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