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Linden Lab's Second Life, Jagex's RuneScape, and Three Rings' Puzzle Pirates are some of the most popular online games, as are Habbo Hotel and World of Warcraft. For instance, Habbo Hotel has more than 7 million monthly unique visitors, while Runescape has 900,000 paid subscribers and upwards of 9 million monthly visitors. Such numbers for smaller game developers make the properties very desirable and also the competitive targets of industry giants, who want to control the expanding online game market, as do the 'indie gamers.' For instance, Marc Frega created The 4th Coming, and licenses the game to Internet service providers. The small ISP operators have signed up about 100,000 subscribers, and each pays a monthly fee. Mr. Frega is paid subscription royalties, but he says the game is not a financial blockbuster for him. However, he and other small game developers want to challenge such titans as Electronic Arts and others. Online gaming is the way to do so, and developers are creating new games, while investors try to gain from a market headed for a sea change. Among topics covered are predictions for the value of the market in 2011, background on the emergence of the market, stiff competition in the market, smaller developers who have obtained venture capitalist (VC) funding, and differences between online and traditional game developers.
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