In an interview with Eurogamer, Chris Taylor, CEO of Gas Powered Games stated that free to play ‘fremium’ games are the future of PC gaming. Currently hard at work on Age of Empires Online, he said he’s done with paying USD$50 for games. “When I have this experience, where I can get a 'freemium' game that's incredible, huge with arguably hundreds of hours of free gameplay, why would I go to the store and spend $50 in the old model?”. He further adds that with so many games and developers trying this model out, it is absolutely the future of PC gaming. “To me it's the future. Absolutely it's the future. If I had to make any prognostications about the gaming industry, that's the easiest one I will have made in 10 years. This model is coming. It's here to stay. It's good on every level” he said.
With this model, development studios can constantly be updating the game with new content every month(instead of breaking up teams to work on the next big project). There’s certainly many new games that are free to play(and more to come) and I think League of Legends is the only game that has got a good revenue model. I have issues with Age of Empires Online because of its level progression(but you can pay to start at a higher level) and how it does unit unlocks. But I’m expecting more studios making free to play variants of their big triple AAA game(Battlefield Play4Free and the upcoming free Call of Duty game are an indication of this). I’m not sure what to think about this trend. And it’s not about making games online as boxed games can have online components as well(and often offer a much better experience). I think this is mostly because studios are trying out this new approach of developing games. Developing traditional games is extremely costly and sales have not been great for many mid tier studios. However, I’m not a free to play game convert… yet.
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