Pay to Play or Free to Play Games: Which Do You Prefer?

While pay to play games are on the rise, and companies like EA generate monthly revenue through these pay to play games. There is another side of this coin there are free to play games, which are also available to the end user, so which do you prefer? Which business model do you think is better?

Some of the advantages to pay to play games,

* Constant updates or at least you would hope they update frequently after all that's what you pay them for!

*Server reliability, one would hope that these servers are reliable considering they are costing us a fortune just to be there.

*Monthly fee's tend to keep out other countries and limit the player base to US and UK based countries.

So what are the advantages of Free to play games?

*Free to play games require no monetary commitment only some of your personal time.

*Wider audience from many different countries because of the pay for more or special treatment structure ingame items can be sold for real world cash or in game premium items.

* More intense competition and the potential to be more profitable then a monthly fee by allowing unlimited micropayments to build up your character and be the best.

Disadvantages to Pay to Play Games,

* Monthly fee structure which prevents all but the most avid of gamers from getting involved.

* Pay to Play can cost nearly as much as your cable bill every month and if you are spending that much time on it it may be worth it but why pay for cable then?

* If you fail to make your monthly commitment by it's deadline you risk losing your character and all information stored on it.

Disadvantages to free to play games,

* Chinese and bot players gold farming just to make ends meet back in their home country.

* Competition with bots for grinding areas.

* Potential addiction to being the best causing you to spend more then if you simply paid the monthly fee to play.

Conclusion,

So you have seen the ups, and the downs, or at least the way I take them. In the comments section feel free to debate on which business model you prefer. My personal preference is the free to play games, but then I don't often have a lot of money to spend on a game, so the addiction with being the best has as of yet to make my wallet fat with cob-webs, but it would probably not surprise you to know that my wallet has always been full of cobwebs, and so my opinion may be slightly biased in this regard. I will be monitoring the comments, and happily commenting myself this story unfolds.

Ever wanted to be a part of the story? Now is your chance. You will find the comments section at the far bottom of this page. Come back frequently to watch this story evolve based on your comments.