Free To Play currently has an interesting interview with NCsoft's Dallas Snell all about the business model of Dungeon Runners. Of particular interest is the following excerpt, wherein Snell explains to Free To Play's McElroy Flavelle about the decision to make Dungeon Runners free:

The decision to resurrect Dungeon Runners and make it a free to play game (versus a full retail MMO) came from NCsoft CEO Robert Garriott and Chris Jung, the former ArenaNet General Manager, who operated out of Korea at the time and therefore had early expose to the free to play model. Chris is back in Austin now and looking to push NCsoft further into casual MMO development, replicating the success of Korean companies like Nexon.

There’s been speculation that NCsoft chose subscriptions as the primary revenue model in Dungeon Runners due to a belief that North American players preferred that model to microtransactions. However, that was not the rationale for the subscription decision. Instead, Dungeon Runners’ optional subscription fee was chosen simply because a microtransactional model wasn’t yet set up in the Dungeon Runners code base. To remedy that, the team is currently working on getting microtransactions running within Dungeon Runners before the game is launched in Korea.

And interestingly, according to the interview, the business model and concurrent content distribution resulted in Dungeon Runners having a higher percentage of paying users than comparable online games. The complete interview is a good read for anyone interested in the business model that's ever on the rise to dominance in online games and worlds. Snell also talks a Web 2.0 development philosophy, wherein Dungeon Runners is used as a proving ground for new concepts on the development side, as well as being a low-barrier entry point for new gamers that may cultivate their interest into other NCsoft products.

Another key highlight from the interview? Looks like NCsoft will begin unveiling in-game ads soon too, perhaps even as an alternative altogether to subscriptions.

[Via F2P.biz]