That game was designed to look as good and play as well as traditional video games from Electronic Arts or Activision Blizzard, but be distributed and played online in real-time. The game is connected to and essentially played off of Trion Worlds' servers and can be updated at any time. Rift now has more than 1 million paid users.
Trion Worlds is announcing that its strategy game End of Nationswill be free to play, as many social games like Zynga are. But unlike casual social games, End of Nations is a video game-quality free-to-play game, says Lars Butler, CEO of Trion Worlds.
But free-to-play, virtual goods-based games have been associated with casual, relatively simple social games, so will hard core gamers play them? Butler says yes. He cites other recent successful titles such as Riot Games' League of Legends and Wargaming.net's World of Tanks.
Butler says free-to-play is the right model for this real-time strategy tame. But that doesn't mean that model will necessarily work for other games.
End of Nations is also the first third-party title launching on Trion Worlds' platform. The game was created by Petroglyph Games, who previously created Command & Conquer. Butler says more third party titles will be launching on Trion Worlds. Trion Worlds recently hired Dave Luehmann, who previously was general manager of Microsoft Game Studios working on the Xbox, as its vice president for 3rd party development.
End of Nations is preparing to launch later this year.
Trion Worlds is backed by investors Comcast Ventures, DCM, Time Warner, Bertelsmann, Rustic Canyon Partners and Trinity Ventures.
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