There are many possible futures for gaming, and the magic word 'free' orbits around a great many of them. It's the internet's fault, of course – this is a world that's become highly accustomed to getting what it wants whenever it wants, and without a pricetag.
On the PC especially, there are dual wars being fought against rampant piracy and punter-bewildering system specs. The answer, or at least an answer that's being toyed with of late, is free games – high on accessibility, low on technical requirements, and funded by a cocktail of advertising and micropayments for extra content.
Can free games pay?
It's a fallacy to think this is a new model. Kid/casual gamer-orientated free MMOs such as Puzzle Pirates, Neo Pets and Maple Story have amassed vast userbases and not insubstantial profits over the last couple of years. What's new is that the old guard of the gaming industry is sitting up and taking notice.
This year, we'll see the likes of EA with Battlefield Heroes, Sony with Free Realms and id Software with Quake Live all flex some free gaming muscle. Meantime, a new generation of independent developers are making a name for themselves with bold, inventive free titles – and the smaller teams (often just one or two people) means the potential to earn good cash is that much higher.
"I make most of my money from sponsors," says independent developer Edmund McMillen, co-creator of the award-winning Gish and currently working on Super Meat Boy for Wii and PC. These commercial outings are a rarity for him, however – mostly he designs experimental (and often controversial) free games.
That's not to say he doesn't make some money from them. "I could potentially make what some would call a living off of free games, but I'd still be stuck in this poverty line hole where I can't afford health insurance and a new car if my truck dies on me. I'm not the most business savvy person, but I usually find a sponsor I respect that's willing to drop a few K to basically put an ad for their site in the intro of the game as well as the title screen.
"Aside from the sponsorship, ad's do pay a little here and there, and there is always the prize money you get from NewGrounds and Kongregate [big free gaming portals]. I'm at a point where I feel like I have enough experience when it comes to game design to 'play with the big boys' when it comes to making downloadable console games."
Then there's Flashbang Studios, who've been delighting gamers recently with high-concept, high-polish games like Velociraptor Safari and Minotaur China Shop (must-plays for anyone with a sense of humour and a love of gaming).
Their reasoning for free gaming is a little different, as their designer Steve Swink explains: "Flashbang as a company has three faces: technology contractor, casual game affiliate and game developer. Arguably, game developer is the main face and is definitely the emotional glue holding the company together.
"We're all here because we love making games first and foremost. Unfortunately, that face has never been substantially lucrative. It is because of our contract work and our involvement in affiliate programs that we have financial stability. We can continue to survive making free games as we have been, provided we keep our other revenue streams open."
"As it turns out, keeping these revenue streams open crushes our fragile creative souls, so there are definitely plans in motion to monetize our games and position ourselves to focus solely on them. The plan is to set up a subscription service where players can pay a small amount to get extra features on our portal and within our games.
"The games themselves will remain free to play for the wild webs, but subscribers will get access to the maximum awesome."
It's that model that's behind Battlefield Heroes, EA's rethink of its best-selling team shooter series as a browser-based, casual gamer friendly cartoonish war. It'll be free to create an account and play whenever you want, but that way your character will look pretty bland and have only basic abilities. To change that, you pay. "Maybe you want the gold helmet and a huge moustache, or something like that", suggests DICE's developer Ben Cousins.
Alternatively, you can improve your character: "Let's imagine that the two of us are playing the game, and you're playing the game every night for four hours, you're levelling up your guy really fast, but I only play the game a couple of evenings a week. So maybe I'll buy an item which gives me double the experience points for a couple of days."
The trick is finding a balance between something that makes the folk who pay for it feel sufficiently special and also ensuring the folk who don't want to pay don't feel like they're on a back foot. They may not be paying, but there absolutely has to be a big, happy, word-spreading community in order to attract new players who might pay.
Sony's attempting a similar thing with upcoming MMO Free Realms, currently in closed beta. It's a colourful fantasy world aimed at children and casual gamers – while it might have the levelling and stat-boosting of something like World of Warcraft, it largely constitutes a series of mini-games, such as fighting, racing and match-3 puzzles.
It's a massive playground full of distractions, essentially, and its high polish, high customisation appearance could pull in a huge crowd. To fund itself, it's trying every trick in the book – adverts on loading screens, free bonus items sponsored by brands such as Best Buy, a paid subscription to unlock extra content, a real-world collectable card game and comic and, of course, micropayment items, notably character customisation stuff like haircuts, clothing and pets.
Is add-on content the only way forward?
Sony promise the free game will be high-quality and full-featured, but the sheer number of ways it'll be prompting people (kids, specifically) to spend money brings up a fundamental concern about free gaming in general.
Do free games have to noticeably badger its players to buy extra content in order to survive and, if so, at what point do they become annoyed or uncomfortable about it? On the other side of the coin is Quake Live, id Software's free, browser-based relaunch of its classic multiplayer shooter Quake III.
For now, it has in-game billboards and that's it. That's the sort of thing you see in paid games, so it's hard to balk at them. There are more plans in the offing, reportedly – paid-for character models and your favourite level maps from days gone by are the most likely bets. The question there is at what point a player thinks, "well, I can buy Quake III for a fiver and then download the other bits for free".
This is a very young form of gaming, and no doubt we're in for several years of trial and error before the perfect balance is found. Until then, traditional paid games aren't going anywhere - there's still something to be said for knowing your £30 buys you a complete experience. Then again, we're increasingly seeing 360 and PS3 games offering additional, and often very desirable, content for a few quid - so getting the initial game for free, even if it's a barebones experience, starts looking appealing again after all.
One additional hurdle for free gaming is the name, and the negative connotations thereof. "Our hope - and the basket we're putting our eggs in - is that 'free' will soon be disassociated with 'shallow' and 'cruddy'," says Flashbang's Steve Swink." For Edmund McMillen, 'free' is very much a positive concept:
"True creative freedom is the biggest appeal about doing freeware games. When you step into console dev, no matter how much you want to think you're totally indie, you're not. You're still at the whim of your publisher, they have the final say and if they don't like something you're going to have to change it to get it published."
So even if publishers turn free gaming into a distasteful minefield of paid bonus content and advertising barrages, there'll still be developers embracing the absolute freedom it offers. Free gaming, one way or another, is here to stay.