Kingdom of Loathing is doing quite well
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.
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.
Interesting that their numbers slump during the summer, I’d have though the opposite.
Everyone’s numbers slump a bit during the summer.
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.
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.
Why do they slump? It’s that whole ‘outside’ thing combined with ‘warm’ =)