Bidaux, Thomas (ICO Partners)

Thema: "State of the Market: Free to Play games in Europe"

Thomas Bidaux started his professional career in online games more than ten years ago at France Telecom, within the GOA team. His department grew from a one-man team in charge of the first French MMORPG La 4ème Prophétie, to the European organisation in charge of the most successful MMORPG on the market at the time, Dark Age of Camelot. In 2004, Thomas left France Telecom and Paris to set up the European subsidiary of the online game giant NCsoft in the UK. As the Director of Development for the company, he managed the team responsible for bringing several major MMOs to the European market, including Guild Wars and City of Heroes. As a participant in the NCsoft Global Portfolio Steering Committee, he led the company's efforts to expand its game portfolio with European-based development through various third party deals and the creation of a Brighton-based studio. He also headed the European team evaluating the group's global projects. In April 2008, he founded the consulting agency ICO Partners. ICO guides independent developers seeking to enter the online games market, and provides local expertise to foreign online games publishers entering the European market. For the past 10 years Thomas has been an active participant at many industry events, sharing his expertise and working on democratizing the development of online games in Europe.

Summary of presentation:

A new market is emerging all around the world. Free to play games, online, multiplayer games available for free and monetised through a premium subscription or sales of virtual items, originally came from Asia. Over there, the model has been very successful, to the point that it currently dominates the PC Gaming market. That new model has been around in Europe long enough to tell if works. This lecture will cover the market of the Free 2 Play games in Europe, the key successful games, the ones that are known as well as the ones less known in the industry.