Well, it kind of depends.
As a player, I've rarely played freemium games- Temple Run is the one that stands out the most, and that's ancient at this point. If I can get a whole, enjoyable game, for free? That's a great proposition, in theory, for me as a consumer.
But, I'm never going to pay for the extras.
- I'm beyond the point of caring about cosmetics in online games.
- I'm the kind of person that archives and stores lots of old game. I like long-term retention and retaining access to games as long as possible. Hence, I like to buy/own/backup games and save files.
- Pay-to-play: When a game decides it doesn't want me to play it (without forking over more cash), that's really not going to fly with me.
- Pay-to-win: why would I ever want to subject myself to this?
- Loot-boxes: really, this is gambling. It should be legislated as such.
And, what's more, I really don't like to contribute to the ecosystems of these games in the first place.
And furthermore, most of these transaction implementations usually come at the detriment of actual gameplay or game experience.
I don't like it at all. But I read at gamasutra that freemium (free to play) games account for 11% of games in the appstore, but make 90% of the money on the appstore.
This is really the problem, IMO. It's about the kind of person/game developer you want to be. Human beings have exploitable psychological weaknesses- I don't want to live in a society where actively preying on those weaknesses is encouraged. Freemium games are designed to take advantage of "super-consumers" who make 90% of the purchases, essentially exhibiting addictive behavior. The vast majority of us won't be affected- but just like with any drug, just like with gambling- there's going to be some percentage of the population that winds up addicted.
Maybe it's irrational, but I don't want to profit from somebody else's problem like that. I want to create experiences and tools that
serve users, not exploit them. I don't want to develop things that sap people's initiative and agency. And it's a problem with so much technology today- what is
best and most
useful to the user in the long term != most entertaining or addictive. These technologies are being engineered to extract as much value from
you, in the form of your time/attention and money, as possible.
And there's a fine line, right? "Fun" games are
also "addicting" games. If you made the best roller coaster in the world, and a select group of people just really liked riding that thing, to the detriment of their wallet/personal lives, should you feel morally conflicted about what you've done? I think I personally would. Like, if they were just always super happy to be on that thing, and if they made great shared experiences with friends, and they gained new perspectives or felt new emotions because of my roller coaster masterpiece, then maybe I've done a good thing. But if they're just on it just to be on it, because they crave it, because I engineered every curve and turn and color and sound and interaction to make it so, and they don't enjoy it so much and just they wish they could stop, but still feel compelled to keep riding my rollercoaster...
So, there's a tradeoff. As a society, it's probably a good idea to look out for one-another by limiting the profit-incentive from addictive experiences, lest somebody figure out how to addict
us. One way to do that with games is the traditional games model: you're allowed to charge a set price for a game. If it's addictive and fun- great! If it's not, too bad- but at least it removes the incentive to engineer the experience in such a way as to exploit/charge people
indefinitely.
I'm really interested in seeing what comes of the legislative approaches coming out. Nintendo just pulled some games from
Belgium because of bans on these exploitative pay-to-play/win models. Meanwhile,
Mario Kart Tour has something like four or five different microtransaction currencies.