Been reading up on all the free to play games, was curious about what was the first game too actually do it. And when did everyone start hyping it up?
Been reading up on all the free to play games, was curious about what was the first game too actually do it. And when did everyone start hyping it up?
I don't know about first but League of Legends and Team Fortress 2 are what brought it to prominence.
Still have yet to see anything that tops DotA 2 in terms of balance or value.
The free-to-play model originated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, coming from a series of highly successful MMOs targeted towards children and casual gamers, including Furcadia, Neopets, RuneScape, MapleStory, and text-based dungeons such as Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands.
Oh wow yeah games like Neopets, runescape, maple-story and dragon quest kind of started a "trend" however popular they may of been, however the whole concept of "free to play" has been around for years! even earlier than those games, free games to play on your browser and on cheapy websites have always existed!
Free games have existed since the birth of the internet at least, but since even before then really. Not exactly the same concepts employed by games like League of Legends or Dota, but free games have been distributed for a long time.
As far as the modern definition goes.... I don't actually know. I guess games like Neopets or Runescape would have been some of the first.
There were free type-in games printed on magazines in the ZX Spectrum age (1980s)
For the youngsters: the developer (usually one kid) would send the source code (about 100 lines) to the publisher, they would print it integrally in the magazine and the readers could compile and play the free game by typing the whole code on their computer.
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment