IGA co-founder Ed Bartlett

It's funny, freemium was a dirty word until Trackmania Nations arrived, and then people started taking notice. The next thing you know we had people knocking down our doors with free-to-play advertiser-funded game concepts.

Unfortunately most people failed to consider two key things. Firstly if a game is free, regardless of the quality of content on offer people just won't persevere if the game doesn't grab them immediately. Friction equals failure in free-to-play, simply because there is no emotional or financial investment compared with buying a retail title.

The second issue is that the growth of advertising spend is not linear in line with that of available inventory at this stage. So if you're getting $1 per user with 100,000 users, and you suddenly ramp overnight to 1 million users, that $/user ratio is going to drop significantly because the available advertising spend is a relatively limited finite amount for now.

With that said, it's still a fantastic model if you get it right. The smart people will work out a balance between free and paid - give away the game engine and some starter levels, build the reach and then monetise through advertising, branded content and micro-transactions.

There is still a lot of room for technical innovation and IGA in particular has some great ideas and new formats on the way, but I also think there is a huge opportunity for brands to get much more involved with games as a whole. If you look at some of the brand partnerships around the bigger film launches which tie into mainstream co-promotion, that kind of thing doesn't happen nearly enough in games.

I think there is also scope for some interesting stuff around transactions, particularly as game's transition to a more service-based model. Brands could help subsidise costs and services, which would be received very positively by gamers.

Of course the new cloud-based services like Gaikai and OnLive could also bring some interesting disruptive dynamics to the table that perhaps go beyond what the established console platforms are willing or able to do at this stage.

No, absolutely not, at least that's not our experience and we know they have been on many of the same briefs and plans as us. I can only speculate of course but me it seems to be simply a strategic move to cut overheads in areas where it's going to do them least damage, in line with other divisions they've closed recently.

There was a certain amount of confusion in the market between what they were doing with Massive and what they were doing with the Xbox Live platform. Ultimately I think they can probably still answer a significant percentage of briefs very nicely with Xbox Live.

Well for starters the economics have changed dramatically. In particular the payment of sizeable advances to publishers, which was never going to be sustainable, is a thing of the past now the market is established.

The industry is much more stable now. There is a standardised common currency for advertisers and agencies, a good understanding from developers and publishers on what is required regarding inventory generation in their games, and the market continues to make headlines and break records which gives brands confidence that they are involved with something which has longevity and reflects positively on their products.

I can't say too much except that I plan to get back closer to my roots in development again. It's been incredibly inspiring working with so many of the leading developers and publishers, however it's hard sometimes not to get frustrated with the missed opportunities. I also still really miss the buzz of putting out a new game. Things have taken a quantum leap forward since I was last involved in development, and frankly I'm like a kid in a candy shop at the thought of getting stuck back in.