I'm curious how others feel about freemium gaming. I feel like the model often is bashed by "hardcore" gamers, but if a game was crafted in a way that the payment model does not interfere with game progression, is well-balanced, and the game itself is fun and completable without paying a cent where is the harm?

I understand that current implementations of the freemium model often leave a lot to be desired, as many companies that employ it currently are thinking only of profits and often do so at the expense of making an enjoyable game... but if the right balance is met I think freemium could work in a lot of interesting games in the future in more diverse genres (not only MMORPG or community-driven ones).

Also, do you consider the freemium model to always be a form of DRM? How about a free to play base game with paid DLC? Could such a thing ever make its way to GOG?

Opinions, please!

[url=http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free#source=fba639b0-ae4d-49b0-9d5d-addb27823f4b:c6cbd5e3-7eae-4cc3-94b7-119c8d412f99&position=6&sort=!airdate]Me not like freemium.[/url] Overall I doubt you will find much love for it here.
To be fair, I don't it if it done as in Path of Exile, where you can play for free and items you can buy are only cosmetic and doesn't hamper progress.
But I don't mind those mainly because I don't care about them but truth is, they are still aimed at fairly small percentage of playerbase who are willig to spent big money on them, so they are really not that different in purpose from worst games. Fairly big reason is that they are wrapped around fun game, so people don't mind it that much. If the game is bad (or if it is pay-to-win) people obviously mind much more and complain but in essence it is still the same attempt to make fortune on people willing to dish out big amount money they would not spend on "normal" game.
So to say it simple, I don't like it, and would prefer standard pricing model every time.

Was going to drop the same link here. Oh well, I guess I can go to bed now. :P

The harm comes when a good game goes offline permanently like Ridge racer driftopia, a game I liked and enjoyed more then Ridge racer port for PC..

Online DRM'd games gives game developers a monopoly and games the public has dumped overwhelming amounts of money into will be confiscated permanently. The law need to be updated to force online games into libraries and open source when they go offline permanently but I don't see that happening given how corrupt the system is and how stupid most people are.

Go look at freespace 2 open or descent 2

Descent 2 XL (with updated 3D models)

http://www.descent2.de/d2x.html

Freespace 2 SCP (updated user created models, mods levels, etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

Ridge racer driftopia offline.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ridge-racer-driftopia-shutting-down-august-15/1100-6420645/

I would simply ask you a question, go look at all the MMO's and broken games because of the server code being created with purposeful defects / taken hostage (that's what a server back end is).

Games in the 90's like Unreal, Quake and Descent 3 game with dedicated server software that you owned and people who owned fast internet connections all over the planet could run their own servers and matchmaking just fine. Go get a copy of UT2004, or an older copy of Quake 3 (not quake live) if you disbelieve this. We're losing the ability to own our games because the gaming masses are tech illiterate and doing massive harm to the future of gaming. Nowhere is this more apparent in riot's league of legends, where they are selling ice to illiterate eskimo's (skins) for a game you never own. When one day League of legends goes offline all that money just disappears.

Since most of mankind is tech illiterate and not very bright they are being taken advantage of by the criminal half of mankind.

I have mixed feelings about it. I like it because it reminds of the old shareware days. Being able to play a good chunk of the game before you shell out your money is nice and it's easy to get friends on board to try it when it's free for them to try.

What I don't like is their pricing models. $14 usd for a character that would take 3 hours to unlock but $1.50 for a guy that would take 36 hours to get. I find myself wanting to spend the money on an item but I have to constantly figure out the cost benefit and if I'm wasting money.

When you compare to the cost of AAA games + season passes it adds up. So I have no problem spending the cash but everything feels like it is twice the price to make up for accounts not buying items.

As for is there a place for it on gog I would say not. Simply most freemium/f2p are based on playing off servers hosted by a continually growing game.

Unless gog can get old discontinued games like PSO or matrix online. Oh happy days that would be.

Actually i could make this interesting, considering that paid dlc is here to stay, what do people think of paid games with microtransactions, BUT, WAIT A MINUTE, in the same way that Mass Effect 3 did it, free maps but with those optional misterious paid boxes that give armor or weapons.

Obviously i would prefer neither (as you are going to say) but considering that mp games get their community divided with the paid dlc's maps i wonder if it wouldn't be better if they put the dumb cosmetic stuff and the pay-to-unlock weapons as paid and release free maps.
I think that Plants vs Zombies multiplayer game does that and people are ok with that.

I loved ME3 multiplayer but hated those boxes. Friend dropped 35 dollars to try and unlock Geth jug. He did not. We really wanted the option to buy or spend points to get the guy we wanted. It would have been worth 10 dollars per character then.

I like free to play games that give you the chance to get everything (except for certain cosmetic things) without paying or having to farm for 2 years. I understand, they have to make money, but having to pay to access a certain part of the game, which is pretty important (im looking at you, The Old Republic), takes the fun out of it. I mean, I don't care if someone pays to have their character advance quicker, as long as you can advance freely up to the same point. I do support things like shortcuts and cosmetic stuff to be sold to players.

Too much stigma, I imagine kick-starters will receive the same ire in a year or so.

Truth be told the free-to-play model has found it's equilibrium, simply check out Neverwinter Nights, DC Universe Online, Rift, Star Trek Online, Planetside 2, Archeage etc, etc, etc and see for yourself. With these, you go in knowing that you will spend time or money or some combination of the two to progress but, all content is available to you.

As stated earlier, Path of Exile has done it right. Love this game.

As for the others... I love playing MMOs, but have no money, so when I was wanting something WoW like w/o the sub fee, I looked to Rift. It was all sorts of sunshine and rainbows and fun until I went to go do one of my favorite things from my WoW days: play the auction house. It was then that I found out I had to pay to be able to sell anything on it. OR I could just save up a billion platinum and buy into it, but that would take forever. I was so mad. And then I looked further and found that you could essentially buy most of the rare drops. My next favorite thing from WoW was hunting and selling rares. So this was not feasible. meh.

When I learned you can just buy all the things, I wondered, what the hell is the point to playing then if you can just buy everything you need? ? I'm serious. Who finds it fun stomping around in supposedly rare armor that you can buy if your wallet is thick enough? When I heard AC: U you could buy the best sword right away, I wondered, "why the hell even play the f-ing game?" What fun or sense of accomplishment can you possibly get by having everything handed to you? People who do this are cheating themselves out of a great experience found in good games.

WoW was fun b/c you saw people with those SUPER rare drops and you knew it probably took them a long time to farm them. Yes, they could have bought it at the AH (or online, tisk, tisk), but typically I think (naive me) that most people worked for 'em. And even if they DID get them via AH, they were probably scouring the pages for them. And so what if they did buy them on AH? by buying them in there instead of through the company, they allowed for an actual economy to develop in game.

Once I get some cash flow going again, I'm probably gonna hang my hat with the "F2P" and go back to WoW. Though ArcheAge looks damn interesting.

It actually didn't bother me, if anything it was the level cap that messed up the game since it made it harder to play in the higher levels.

But EA fixed that (the random boxes) on PvZ Garden Warfare, apparently you only buy the coins packs (you can get them in game anyway) for cosmetic stuff with little impact in the gameplay (kind of TF2), but i didn't played it so i don't know.

There is no Freemium game that is fair with the players, almost -if not all- devs of them are greedy people who only wants to take all the money of the players' pockets.

That's because there is a huge descrepancies at times between what you get for a given game on mobile vs the same game ported to PC - both in the price and content (or lack of to justify the difference).

And then there's Path of Exile :-P That's why you shouldn't speak in absolutes you know.