Running from enemy gun turrets, tanks and fighter planes is nothing new for players of "Battlefield," a franchise that fired its first shot in World War II but has since tackled Vietnam and modern combat. Its most recent tour of duty, "Battlefield: Bad Company," has sold 1.6 million units worldwide since June.

The next war "Battlefield" has waged, however, is a guerrilla assault on the free-to-play games business model. The game's publisher, Electronic Arts, is the first major U.S. videogame company to launch a free-to-play game, and it unveiled user statistics on its pilot game, "Battlefield Heroes," Thursday.

Redwood City, Calif.-based EA said "Heroes," which has operated in a private beta for the past three months, had 10,000 invited players that logged a collective 16,000 hours of game play in the last month. The company also said it plans to invite hundreds of thousands more players in the coming months and expects to officially launch "Heroes" by the end of the year.

Ben Cousins, executive producer for the "Battlefield" franchise, says the interest in the title has been overwhelming. A cartoony take on what has traditionally been a gritty shooter, "Heroes" focuses solely on the multiplayer matches that have made the franchise so popular. When the studio announced a contest for invites to the game, the site received some 8,000 posts in two days that ultimately crashed the "Heroes" site server. Currently, the "Heroes" site has 170,000 registered users and a quarter million page views a day.

As a free game, "Heroes" will tap into banner advertising and sales of virtual goods, such as helmets, parrots and guns, for its revenue. EA declined to share its financial expectations for the game, but Cousins says that as long as 5% of players are spending money (which in other titles works out to $10 to $15 a month per player), it'll keep the service going.

EA's jump into free-to-play games is the result of a trip the "Battlefield" team took to Seoul to consult with Korean free-to-play publisher Neowiz about adapting the franchise for the Korean market. Based on that trip, EA decided to experiment in the West. "It's seen as an icebreaker setting up the business for Electronic Arts," Cousins says. "It's a lot of investment--defining the infrastructure for a free-to-play game--and testing the market. A lot of major publishers are going to be watching us and checking out our level of success."

Cousins say EA is treating "Heroes" like a start up. The company hired folks without any videogame experience to work on the title, including people from the Web and gambling worlds, in the hopes of creating a sticky social network of game players.

That's because social networks are where younger players live these days, Cousins says. "Heroes" is meant to capture both teenagers and the older gamers who have abandoned gaming. These players, he notes, might be a 10-year-old kid who can't afford games but owns a laptop, a professional who doesn't have time for games, or people who don't have the skills for existing multiplayer shooters.

Cousins sees free-to-play games as a strong future model for the industry, but "it's not going to replace packaged goods or subscription massively multiplayer games."

And if nothing else, with the average match lasting only five minutes, it will give folks a new reason to use their work computers during their lunch hours.

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