Ouya hires 'Free-To-Play guy'

Ouya has announced it has hired well-known industry columnist and game designer Tadhg Kelly as its new "Free-To-Play guy," in order to improve free-to-play monetization on the platform. Ouya's storefront mandates a free-to-try version for all titles, and the marketplace has also, perhaps not coincidentally, experienced an (arguably) lower than ideal conversion rate of free customers to paying customers. Kelly's job, in part, is to enhance the free-to-play experience on the console. "There's a lot of awesome games both on and wanting to be on Ouya, and some of those want to do so in the sell-your-virtual-hats sort of way," Kelly says in an introductory post on Ouya's corporate blog. "I'm here to help them figure out how." Kelly adds that he is also working alongside developer relations lead Kellee Santiago to improve Ouya's relationship with second parties, as well as being engaged with general outreach on behalf of the company. He can be followed on Twitter at @tiedtiger.