Free-To-Play Equals More Profit?

[Xienen]

No, Break Blocks isn't going Free-To-Play. Break Blocks is still on schedule for an Early Adopters launch in about 2 weeks. I've been testing, tweaking, testing, and then tweaking some more. Obviously we won't be launching some perfected final version of the game, but it will certainly be a relatively balanced and hopefully user-friendly demo. I'll be spending every minute I can improving it until the content's all ready and we press the Launch button! In the mean time, I want to discuss an interesting game-related topic with you, if you'll indulge me.

I've read a good deal of articles discussing the free-to-play phenomena that's engulfed the Asian market over the past decade or so, as it's become a much more common thing in the rest of the world now, as well. I'm not sure if the idea started with the good intentions of giving customers more for less and getting more people to experience your game or if it's always had the intentions that I've been reading about recently; namely profit, profit, and more profit. We've got some ideas already flowing around for our next game(not that we are even sure there will be another game at this point) and our favorite idea could lend itself to this idea pretty easily.

This profit focus dominating the free-to-play market scares us, as we don't want to be seen as anything but what we are. We are gamers first and a business only second to that. If we made games just to make profit, chances are the games would be unoriginal and probably suck, as the creative process we put into the games would be cut short by the need to "maximize profit". We just can't operate that way. We do, however, love the idea of getting more players into our games; as our main driving passion is getting people to play and enjoy our games. If we can give it away for free and still manage to continue making games, it sounds like a win for everyone, right?

So I want to hear from you guys. What do you think of free-to-play? If we executed it with gamers in mind rather than "maximizing profits", would you approve of our next game being free-to-play?