Just heard that Dusty Welch and Chris Archer, ex of Activision and the CoD franchise, have recently launched a new studio U4iA Games. Apparently they will be working on a new F2P "social" game.

I found this quote from Archer, the studio's CCO, talking abt his new venture: "We founded U4iA Games to satiate our passion for creating new IP and game experiences while honing in on the industry's sweet spot,"

Say what? I hope he didn't stay up all night thinking up that quote.

My next fave quote from him is this one: "Many studios are making casual games for a core audience. We're making core games for a social audience."

These guys have also done Doom and Guitar Hero aside from CoD. They've described the new title as "Hardcore freemium, first-person social game." It's due for release in 2012 and they've got about $1.5M in the kitty as seed investment.

Way to not tell us anything useful guys...I'm sure this is just a precursor to the awesome communication you will have with your intended, but not divulged audience. You have learned much from Activision young padawans.

http://www.u4iagames.com/U4iA_Games/Welcome.html

The reason they're not telling us anything useful about the game(s) is that they're building the monetization model first.

To start, you figure out what kind of "free to play, pay to win" structure suits your hypothetical FPS, as a means of creating and maximizing demand for paid content. Next, you tune microtransaction prices to your players' marginal willingness to pay, so it's all aligned as closely as possible with the demand for gameplay advantages and customization.

Then you build your game around that framework, release it, and continue tuning towards that "sweet spot" where you can nickle-and-dime your customers into perpetuity. In that model, metrics become the be-all and end-all of game design. All those "new AAA experiences" are going to be data-driven, focus-tested amalgamations of stuff that's already been done.

That's what social gaming is all about. It's also the reason CoD Elite and Battlelog exist, and the reason CCP caused a riot in Eve Online. The major business players in gaming see this type of revenue generation as the future of the industry.