e-Games titles go commercial

Maverick game publisher e-Games Philippines, the free-to-play gaming portal, has announced the long-awaited commercial release of their two biggest titles, RAN Online, the action-packed modern day MMORPG, and O2Jam, crowned as the most-played music game in Asia. Both games are scheduled for commercial launch this Friday.

e-Games recently signed an exclusive partnership agreement with The Philippine Star Group to collaborate on a vast array of content and marketing opportunities on behalf of The Philippine STAR broadsheet, its news and entertainment portal, Philstar.com, and the e-Games’ home portal and game sites. Both e-Games titles, RAN and O2Jam, have received a lot of attention and interest since their closed beta phase in November of last year, due in large part to their adoption of the "free-to-play" business model. Under this model, the game session itself is free with no monthly fees, unlike most pay-to play or P2P games.

In Asia, RAN and O2Jam are among the biggest item-based or IB games, in which revenues are generated through online item shops. In these shops, players can acquire several in-game items to enhance their gameplay experience. To do so, e-Games provides optional IB shopcards through select partner internet cafes and retail stores. These cards, once converted, give players an assigned value in the form of e-points with which to purchase items. According to e-Games COO and President, Steve Tsao, "the games have been in open beta since January 24, and the March 31 release signifies the end of the old school year and the beginning of a new one, at least in the school-themed RAN world."

According to the games’ Product Managers, Paolo Olbes (O2Jam) and Loris Luakian (RAN Online), the commercial launch will receive the backing of an aggressive and ambitious marketing campaign. Said Olbes, "O2Jam is a really good game, and I believe we will exceed expectations come commercial launch. There’ll be a lot of new updates and items come commercial launch." e-Games also plans to make good on its promise to deliver local OPM tracks for O2Jam. "(We’ll) be releasing new avatar items and skill rings, and include songs from local bands such as Cueshe and Solace." Besides the in-game enhancements, e-Games will embark on an O2Jam Campus tour at the end of summer, as well as hold its first ever 4v4 "band" jam tournament.

Summer is regarded as an industry low-point by most market analysts, citing the fact that most gamers no longer have allowance money to spend on their gaming habits. However, because of the free-to-play model, Tsao is confident their games will not suffer through the annual summer gaming drought. If anything, demand should soar, he says. "The number of users has been picking up steadily, with no sign of letdown... The players love the games, we have a lot of support to the point that we’ve had to order more servers in order to handle the demand."

"The open beta has really exceeded all our expectations," added Luakian. "We’ve had over 250,000 unique registrations in about a month. The open beta has really given us confidence that we have a great product that the Filipino loves." Luakian promises the commercial version of RAN will include several new items as well, such as the infamous Oblivion Potion (which allows players to reset their stats) soon after the launch date. There will also be in-game events, such as an Easter Egg Hunt at the tail end of Holy Week and "RANbulan," an inter-café tournament.

Heading into their stretch run, Tsao remains undaunted in his belief that both O2Jam and RAN will be as successful locally as they have been in neighboring countries. "Yes, absolutely. Our games are generating over 10,000 CCUs (concurrent users, or the number of players playing the game at any given point) and growing at an exponential rate every day. What we know for sure is that the Philippines loves its games, and they love our games, so it’s our duty to give them what they want, to keep them loyal; because in the end, we’ll go wherever the gamers take us."

e-Games will also be launching its avatar-based community portal, Dreamville, on the commercial market.

Both RAN Online and O2Jam can be downloaded at e-Games’ home site, "http://www.e-games.com.ph/", or their respective sites, "http://www.ranonline.com.ph/" and "http://www.o2jam.com.ph/" e-Games is an operating business company of publicly-listed venture firm, Intellectual Properties Ventures Group "http://www.ipvg.com/."