Following the Internet proliferation which cultivates human’s multimedia entertainment-especially in terms of digital games-electronic games have emerged as an important option for leisure. However, as the popularity of individual games has been surpassed by that of online games, in the epoch of online games, it has become so important that such a prevailing type of entertainment has covered all age levels. Despite the fact that several previous studies regarding online games are focused on development, marketing and strategy management, the researchers of those studies mainly used paid games as their subjects. In other words, quite little research effort was given to evaluating the operation of free online games. To bridge the gap between the amount of academic effort in paid games and free games, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the performance appraisal of six Taiwanese companies that offer free online games. By analyzing their investments of critical elements, this study probes the issue whether or not Taiwanese companies in free online game industry have achieved high efficiency.
