WELCOME to the Free to Play Gamers Movement!

What can you do to join the F2P Movement?

1. Join the mailing list and don't hesitate to participate
2. Join the Facebook F2P Movement and invite your friends.
3. Send your ideas via Facebook, Email, or Forum (coming soon)

HELP US TO JOIN ALL THE GAMERS!

We want to reunite all the free to play gamers around the world. That is our goal and we need your help to do it.

• Invite your friends: send invites to all your Facebook friends from the function "Suggest to Friends" (in the facebook page menu under our logo). Help us make F2P Movement go viral.

• On the web: link to our group on Facebook, on your blog, your website, in forums, on Twitter, on YouTube, on MySpace, in your MSN status, etc... Be creative and share your ideas.

• In the streets: tell all your friends, co-workers, neighbors, schoolmates, etc…


Free to Play Gamers Movement ("F2P Movement" for short)

We believe and support that the free to play games model, instead of the paid subscription model, is the most viable form of gaming with future, especially in Massively Multyplayer online games (MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft), bringing more benefits for both the developers/publishers and the players.

The Free to Play model is constantly growing and has proved to be a real success. Western game developers have already begun to recognize the system's benefits: the top online RPGs, such as Everquest II, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online have all made the leap towards the free-to-play model. A new report from DFC Intelligence forecasts that the market for English language client-based free-to-play (F2P) games on the PC is expected to grow from about $250 million in 2009 to $2 billion by 2015. The F2P market has been firmly established in Asia for many years.


Why the creation of the Free to Play Gamers Movement?

Just as previously mentioned, we believe that free-to-play games represent the future and truly wish that the existing games make a drive towards quality, but also that more and more pay-to-play and subscription based games follow on those footsteps, both current and upcoming games. However, we want to make sure that free-to-play games head in the right direction so that they can be really successful and get better with time.

Sadly, some publishers even go to the extent of advertising their games as free-to-play to get some important hype, while their games are actually pay-to-play with a short trial that is over rather quickly. This aggressive marketing leads to a bad reputation to the free-to-play market, resulting in deluded and disappointed players. If more and more publishers/developers go along these lines they will be killing what once was an extremely prolific genre.


Current benefits of the F2P Movement

• Connect:
Connect with players around the world with the same tastes in games as you.

• Become Part of Something Bigger Than Yourself:
The strength of the community can make a difference and really change things.

• Broadcast Your Voice:
Your opinions matters, they will be heard, discussed and shared.

Future Benefits

• Access to a forum dedicated exclusively to Free to Play Games, with several new features for users to interact.

• Access to Closed Beta Games and virtual items for your favorite games.

Key Objectives and Mission Statement

• We all know there are thousands of players in the world of free to play games, but the goal is to bring all of them together in one place and join forces and expertise. One player's opinion hardly matters, but the strength of a community makes all the difference. Help us reach millions of gamers.

• Previously paid games like Everquest II, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online already jumped into the free to play wagon. One of our goals is to bring more quality multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft to the free to play model. (Blizzard already said that Free-to-play World of Warcraft is a possibility, so let’s make them hurry up with a decision).

• Confirm that there is a market for developers to invest more in Free to Play games and thus increase their quality standards, especially in new games.

• 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.

• More quality instead of quantity.

• Better service and better solutions for hackers, spammers, and bots.

• Less grinding and more in the way of actual content.


Why are Free to Play Games the best choice?

• Flexibility:
The free to play model is not just about playing without spending money, but instead giving players the flexibility to choose where to spend, when, and how they want to do it. Obviously a game needs to be profitable to evolve, but, unlike the paid subscription games in which we are forced to pay a monthly fee or number of hours to play, the free to play model allows you to enter the game immediately, enjoy it and have the option to buy virtual goods or upgrade to a subscription package that opens additional playing content, allowing the player to control how much he wants to spend. This method has proved a success and everyone benefits. It simply makes no sense to be forced to pay for hours that we will not use.

• Anti-addiction:
"Gaming addiction" is the hot topic of media discussion, When you’re not paying a monthly subscription for a MMO, you no longer feel the obligation to get "the most for your money".

• Bring Your Friends:
Community is always what makes or breaks a multiplayer game. No matter how good the game is, it's the other players that keep someone in the game. It's much easier to join your friends in a free to play game than a subscription based one, since the free to play games are readily available for download to anyone, without fees or obligations, easing those who have never played this kind of games.


About the Founder:

Luis Paulo Dobreira is 28 years old and lives in Europe - Portugal. He is a passionate about video games and accompanied the birth of the free to play games market from the very start. He used to work as a video editor and director on one of the most important sites for video games in Portuguese and is currently the founder of the recent and already successful Portuguese games portal PlanetaJogos.pt, amongst other projects.