Honestly, upon first hearing this my first instinct was to cringe, I don't especially like the idea of being nickled and dimed while I am gaming, but the truth of the matter is that in most cases, the companies that use these marketing methods are just as interested in having you as a return customer as any other gaming company. My experience with League of Legends was extremely positive in terms of the free experience, yes you can spend a few dolalrs and unlock the newer heroes, but the people who choose not to are still able to play those characters through either the weekly assortment of random heroes that all players are able to choose from (ensuring that everyone gets to play the entire roster eventually), or by earning points by completing matches and unlocking the hero that way.
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| This sucker will run you 25$USD |
World of Warcraft recently removed the time period on their free trial offer, essentially making World Of Warcraft a Freemium game now considering that you can pay for in game content using real money through the blizzard store (though nothing that affects the actual game-play, as Blizzard has stated that they do not want players who spend extra money to have a leg up on players who simply pay their monthly subscription)
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| Another purchasable mount for World Of Warcraft |
And of course I'm sure many of us are aware that Valve recently switched Team Fortress 2 to the freemium model, apparently a brilliant marketing move as I haven't seen the servers as full as they are right now in months.
All said, I'm a fan of properly implemented Freemium, whether simply offering more items or powers to players at a fee, or offering a portion of your game for free and gating the rest with a fee, the whole model puts the power in the players hands to decide how big a bite they want to take of the game without having to invest completely right away. Decide you hate the game 10 minutes in? Great, good thing you didn't spend 40-60 dollars at the store for it and are either stuck with it or in the awkward position of driving back and needing to return it.
There are some dangers inherent in the system that I will talk about in another post, but I think that what's important to take away from this is that the Freemium model itself is not inherently bad, but it has however been abused by several rather large companies in the past and I feel as though that has sort of given it a bad rap. Anyway folks, that's it for tonight!
