Some people believe that the free-to-play market is the future of online gaming, but despite the recent free-to-play switch of games like The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest II, and Dungeons and Dragons Online, few free-to-play titles can offer the same quality and as much content as their subscription-based counterparts. Luis Paulo Dobreira wants to change that and has founded the Free-to-Play Gamer Movement to encourage more publishers to join the free-to-play market.

The goal of the movement is to push for higher quality free-to-play games, including already established top dog of the industry, World of Warcraft. The movement also wants to push to re-define games that label themselves as free-to-play but restrict a lot of the content without paying, making them little more than over glorified demos. Two of the key Mission Statement points are as follows:

• Change the games that define themselves as free to play and yet block almost the entire game, acting like a demo version. It is understandable that payments can unlock content, but, for example, monopolize a game that has 100 cities and only allow to play freely in one town or only up to level 9, when there are 80 levels to achieve… This is not our definition of Free to Play.
• End with the games that sell in-game items that disrupt the entire balance of the game. In those cases the player with the most items wins, so it’s just not fun and a lot of players end up giving up on the game and making it fade into oblivion. In-game stores should sell items, yes, but aesthetical or others that won’t give unfair advantages to any player.

I think we can all agree that better quality free-to-play games are a step in the right direction and Turbine has certainly showed that they have a working model that can generate revenue and allow a degree of free access, while at the same time developing regular updates for the game. What do you think? Is free-to-play the future of online gaming, or are we likely to have more of a hybrid-style system for top tiered games ala Turbine?

You can learn more about the Free-to-Play Gamer Movement and how to join on its official website.