Some see Verizon as a stodgy telephone company and others see it as an evil empire, but the company is earning props from one cutting-edge group of customers. Gamers are applauding Verizon’s new PlayLinc service and online community Web site, games.verizon.com.

“PlayLinc is the perfect solution for gamers wanting to control their game experience without paying a lot of money for game servers and voice servers,” said Jason Baker of GotFrag.com, in his PlayLinc review. “It is easy to use and built by guys who have set the standard for back-end server software in the gaming industry.”

In fact, Baker said, “This has to be the most useful product for gamers since the invention of the mouse.”

Chief among the benefits of PlayLinc, which is tied into AOL Instant Messenger, is access to free public servers, which allows gamers to launch their own multi-player games and easily invite their friends in through an AIM buddy list.

In fact, the only real complaint of gamers trying the beta is that the service is too good to be true.

“Absolutely amazing, but I feel they are going to price it once the final is ready. [There is] no way they can’t be losing money with all the free servers,” wrote one GotFrag.com community member.

But as Jason Henderson, games product manager for Verizon, assured that anxious gamer in a later post, the company does intend to keep the servers free. Its business model is based on advertising--gamers see an ad in the 45 seconds or so that it takes games to set up--and on establishing a relationship with the gamer community that will translate to Verizon’s bottom line in other ways.

One reason, Henderson said, is that gamers are the “perfect storm” of broadband customers--they are always eager for more bandwidth, relatively price insensitive and able to do much of their own tech support, making them high-value, low-cost customers.

Verizon’s strategy goes deeper than just luring gamers onto its high-speed access services--FiOS and DSL--within its region, however. The PlayLinc service is just as likely to attract customers outside the Verizon local service footprint.

“Verizon Wireless has already grown the brand nationally--people think of it as forward-looking,” he said. “Gaming is a very large industry in terms of young valuable viewers. All the research is pointing to the fact that younger people are watching less TV advertising, so it behooves you to have a portfolio that has TV advertising but also other kinds of advertising.”

In other words, Verizon can sell advertising, and potentially much more, to young people who are gamers, without having to first sell them broadband service.

“If you were a cable user, we still want your business using PlayLinc,” Henderson said. “We have the opportunity to get the eyeballs of a Time Warner cable user. We don’t even need to necessarily convert you--now we have other ways of talking to you.”

And that conversation is taking place in a format that young people, in particular, understand.

“This is very similar to iTunes--you set up a service that is essentially free, has enjoyable things about it and makes it easier to buy things online,” Henderson said. “I listen to podcasts on iTunes all the time, and occasionally I see something I want and buy it.”

Inside Verizon’s footprint, its gaming services are a differentiator over cable, he added.

“Certainly if you are in a place where you can choose between a cable provider and Verizon with DSL or FiOS, it differentiates us for several reasons,” Henderson said. “None of the cable providers have anything like this in terms of a network infrastructure play that benefits gamers. If you are a FiOS user, the experience gets better. If you are a cable user, the experience is good and it puts in your mind that Verizon knows something about networks.”

For existing Verizon customers, the gaming services drive up the demand for higher speeds, and thus the company revenues, he added.

PlayLinc works by providing an online, multiplayer experience for gamers who have first bought the game software for their computers. They can go online, set up the free server space, use AIM to invite their buddies in and have their own multiplayer game environment, without having to first set up and buy server space.

“If I go to BestBuy and buy Battlefield 2, then take it home and load it on my PC, I have the option to jump onto public servers--computers with up to 32 people at a time are playing games,” he said. “The problem is it is difficult to find a server that suits my taste. They are either owned by someone else and access is blocked by passwords or they are public servers where I play against some 14-year-old who kills me right away. Or I can get a group together and throw some money in a pot and rent our own server online for $100 a month--that’s ours, but it only plays one game.”

PlayLinc provides free server access for multiple games, enabling people to launch their own online server and throw it wide open or send invitations to friends via AIM and block out others, Henderson said. PlayLinc also enables consumers using game consoles--Xbox or PlayStation2, for example--to link up over the network and play against each other, something that today is only available through a for-pay service such as Xbox Live or by carrying a console from one player’s house to another’s.

PlayLinc joins Verizon’s portfolio of gaming services, which includes Verizon Games on Demand, a family of products with three packages--big value, family, casual user--and Verizon Arcade, a free Web site at Verizon.net that has free online games.

“We are trying to develop a portfolio of products that has content that appeals to different kinds of product users,” Henderson said. “And there is definitely more to come.”

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