Raph's Website » Kingdom of Loathing is doing quite well

Kingdom of Loathing is doing quite well

July 30th, 2007 (Visited 3198 times) Tags:

I chatted for a while with the folks at Kingdom of Loathing while at Comic-Con. These guys are determinedly indie: they sell merchandise, but they do it just about at cost. For income, they mostly rely on donations for the premium items, but they don’t engage in what most of the industry would call a real microtransaction business.

And it’s working for them, at least at this scale. Some stats, slightly lower than usual because of the usual summer doldrums:

slightly over 1.4 million accounts registered (ever)
194,007 accounts currently existing (inactive accounts are purged after 60 days, unless we’ve received a donation from that account.)
1,050 accounts registered on Saturday
38,267 accounts played on Saturday
72,931 played last week
118,286 played this month.

Outside of the summer, they said they usually see more like 140-150k a month.

If you haven’t checked out KoL, it’s worth looking at as a great exemplar of the “web-based MMO” — the quasi-virtual world made to be played entirely via the web, rather than a screen-eating immersive experience.

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Tiny Subversions wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

So, Raph Koster just posted some intriguing stats about Kingdom of Loathing. In speaking with them, he discovered that they’re pretty much entirely funded by donations, but they didn’t make clear what percentage of their user base has donated. However, we do have some data that enable us to make some educated guesses.

Scott Cohen Live wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

and give me a more relevant example of their system’s use in the game space, but all I could find was a casual games company called Dreamquest Games. 10. Donations Clocking in at last on the list is of alternate revenue streams is player donations. Raph Koster recently blogged about meeting up with the Kingdom of Loathing guys at ComicCon in San Diego. Raph reported that while KoL’s revenue is “definitely indie,” their primary revenue stream of player donations is a sustainable one.

Casually Hardcore devlog wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

s blog found “real” stats (realer than mine) so I’m changing the blog to discussing purely indie game dev topics and random technical issues. Kid MMO stats Voice vs. Text argument NPD gamer study My favourite web game - Kingdom of Loathing! Casual games from investor POVs

Grand Text Auto » Comic-Con of Loathing wrote on July 30th, 2007 at 11:08 am:

[...] I should check out APE. In the meantime, Raph Koster actually learned some interesting things at the KoL booth — while I just had my sunburned picture [...]

Avian Gamers Network :: View topic - Random Game-related posts wrote on July 31st, 2007 at 5:00 am:

[...] Interesting stats on KoL activity. Well, interesting for my purposes anyway . Don’t see too many stats for web based mmos._________________My little project… [...]

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Kingdom of Loathing's Stats wrote on July 31st, 2007 at 7:08 am:

[...] the industry would call a real microtransaction business.”Anyway, you can check out the data here:Kingdom of Loathing Is Doing Quite WellBear in mind that most of the accounts are free. I have no idea what the percentage of accounts that [...]

Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games « Free To Play wrote on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:23 am:

[...] Donations Clocking in at last on the list is of alternate revenue streams is player donations. Raph Koster recently blogged about meeting up with the Kingdom of Loathing guys at ComicCon in San Diego. Raph [...]

Massive Update: Weekly MMO News news from 1UP.com wrote on August 2nd, 2007 at 4:22 pm:

[...] Website - Kingdom of Loathing is Doing Quite Well. Raph reports on the enormous success this quirky title has managed to carve out for [...]

Ezin said on July 30th, 2007 at 11:54 am:

A few things about those stats. As I recall accounts are not purged if they’ve had the item that’s received for donating (Mr. Accessory) in their inventory at any point. So the people that actually donated is significantly less.

It also wouldn’t surprise me if half the active accounts are meat farmers (meat is the currency) given there’s a widely used program out there that automates it.

That said the game is certainly worth playing at least once. I don’t really play any longer due to the game taking too much time (the lag is very annoying). The game has quite a bit of humor going for it, although the combat is quite bland with all the interesting decisions happening between combat.

Patrick said on July 30th, 2007 at 2:35 pm:

Interesting that their numbers slump during the summer, I’d have though the opposite.

Raph said on July 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm:

Everyone’s numbers slump a bit during the summer.

Justin said on July 30th, 2007 at 6:31 pm:

I’m curious as to why that is (the numbers slump).

Are you aware of any research or articles I can read to learn more about the numbers of MMOs?

Currently desiging a parental friendly web interface for my future projects, and I’m interested in the numbers associated with age groups during summer months compared to winter months. Just something I’d like to provide users with. If you know of any…

In response to the actual post…
I played that game about 2 years ago and it had a great blend of humor in it. My only problem is I am not a fan of systems that limit my play to a set number of turns. Defeats the purpose of playing in my opinion. Great web-based MMO otherwise.

LSK said on July 30th, 2007 at 6:33 pm:

KoL is definitely worth playing during non-laggy times. The best feature, definitely, is the ability to play it on a smartphone with internet access.

Grimwell said on July 30th, 2007 at 7:40 pm:

Why do they slump? It’s that whole ‘outside’ thing combined with ‘warm’ =)