Free. That's certainly a strong word. The idea of being able to play games free and later spend money on them when you are fully engaged in the game sounds like a great idea. There are many ways to tackle this model, from a free demo offering a upgrade to the full game to the somewhat dreaded micro-transactions offering purchases for in-game items. You can deny it all you want, but the Free-to-Play practice is fortunately/unfortunately here to stay, and with that, a bunch of bad practices.
You see, while a lot of gamers frequently look down on Free-to-Play games, i LOVE the concept of them. Free-to-Play games allow me to try out games that I would otherwise avoid. And that's probably the best part about Free-to-Play games. But we all know that a lot of companies like money, and we all know that they need to cash on free-to-play games. So, they start following bad practice models that damage a lot of consumers and pretty much make the game unenjoyable with all of these road blocks. You can hear the names. FarmVille, Dungeon Keeper (Mobile), Candy Crush Saga, Ubisoft Freemium games (*Cough Cough*), EA Freemium games, and Final Fantasy All the Bravest, to name the few of games that seem to get a lot of flack for their freemium models.
I think Extra Credit's Videos cover this topic really well.
So, what exactly is the point of this topic? Feel free to talk about the general concept of Free-to-Play/Freemium games, and examples of good F2P games that motivate you to spend money because of enjoyament or games that suck your money out for pleasure.