Quote of the Moment: 'I think it's inevitable' for free-to-play to take over

First, it was that consoles are doomed, and now it's that the traditional pay-to-play business model is already on its way out entirely. Ben Cousins sure isn't one to care about making friends, is he? No, the head of ngmoco's Sweden studio cares more about demonstrating a point. Well, we're sure he also cares about spearheading a movement: the free-to-play (F2P) games movement.

It's one you either love or hate. But the divisive nature of this movement in the "hardcore" games space is what Cousins--and all other pro-F2P folks--needs to diffuse. We're not sure that making stirring, far-reaching predictions on the future of games is a way to diffuse the situation, but maybe it's a start. But Cousins's argument does seem to check out on paper, and it purely boils down to the economics.

"I think it's inevitable," Cousins told GamesIndustry International. "If that's where the money is then there will be intense competition from very big companies willing to make very big bets... The next generation of freemium PC games will be indistinguishable from AAA games."

Considering that games like FarmVille and Minecraft have reigned in millons upon millions of dollars, big-time game publishers and developers would be dumb not to at least try applying the model to traditional games. They're already doing it--just look at games like Team Fortress 2, a notoriously "hardcore" shooter game that successfully went F2P last year. Even if this is an exception and not a rule, someone has to try, right? And what happens when "someone" slowly grows into "the majority?"

Do you think F2P is destined to overtake the game industry? Would you even want it to be that way? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.