Rovio board member and GM Oskar Burman tweeted some very interesting info this morning. In very stark terms, he gave us a statistic that on a basic level explains why free to play exists and why it is on the rise. It showed the Mario Kart sales statistics over the last 23 years and compared them to the download number for Angry Birds Go(Free) for the last 2 years. 106 million for Mario Kart and 130 million for Angry Birds Go.

If you have hung out around Touch Arcade much, you know we love video games of pretty much every major category, origin, make, model, and creed. Much to the chagrin of those who like to discriminate, we judge a game by comparing it to the rest of the market rather than judge the market itself. Any market that thrives is going to make adjustments to remain healthy and from my perspective, a developer at some point needs to be a business person too. We have seen in recent months developers that produce premium content falter and founder not due to the content of their game, but to the paywall their games sit behind. Free to play games, meanwhile, have a major stigma with a small but vocal faction of gamers who want to experience content at a specific pace and for a specific price. Why do developers flock to the F2P model? Do they hate gamers? No, I don’t think that is true at all.

That tweet is a startling statistic. As a child of the 80’s, the king of cart racing has always been Mario, and in many ways that will never change. But I cannot discount the fact that it is fully possible and even probable that the face of cart is no longer our intrepid plumber, but a squad of irate birds intent on exacting revenge on smug pigs. Angry Birds Go has had almost 30% more exposure in 2 years than Mario Kart has had in the last 23. Comparing sales to downloads is a little bit of apples and oranges, but it does speak to the fact that more people have played one than the other.

So, to those of you who cannot stand the free to play model, I get that it’s this relatively new and foreign thing. There are definitely bad and predatory games that exist within, but I would argue that is true of every genre and marketing structure. This statistic we have seen, and this article serve to show the positive side of what F2P offers the gaming world. If nothing else, F2P has become THE vehicle to expose gamers to genres like cart racing. On some level I can relate to the vocal minority that is against the F2P pricing structure. It is easy to lament the lack of premium pricing in big name iOS games, but if nothing else a game that can get that much exposure commands respect. F2P games have such a resounding reach, we should be encouraging the developers that can create fantastic content in this content platform and help shape the future of this vehicle.