Funcom has been mainly associated with its big budget Age of Conan MMO lately but, as the project exposes its limits, the company has sought to also develop other projects that can complement it. Funcom is seeing a lot of growth in the market of the free to play MMO and it has at least two projects in development at the moment.

One of the free to play projects mentioned by the developer is set to be playable in a browser and is targeted at what the company describes as a “gamer demographic.” 14 people are working on it. The other game is based on Java, is aimed at a younger audience, and has a 17-member team involved in the development project. The studio has not talked about the themes of the MMOs or the development schedule.

Funcom is saying that games like Travian, Club Penguin, Wizard 101 and Free Realms will see a bigger than expected rise in the coming years, producing more revenue for their publishers through micro-transactions and advertisement. Funcom is interested in making free MMOs using “smaller budgets and faster development.”

This will allow it to create games quickly and will make the company able to test ideas and push along those that are successful with players early on, creating niche experiences for smaller segments of players.

Funcom has a three-tiered plan to “to innovate core business and build new ones.” In tier one, we find big budget MMOs like Anarchy Online and Age of Conan, which still have quite a few subscribers; tier two is made up of the upcoming The Secret World and free to play MMOs that will be launched in the near future; tier three consists of other long term projects, both subscription-based and free.