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The Future is Now

Jon Wood Posted:
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MMORPG.com's Jaime Skelton uses her blog this week to urge both the media and the gaming industry to slow down in their acceptnce of the encroachment of the F2P business model into the Western world.

Jaime Skelton

With all the buzz this past week about Lord of the Rings Online going free to play, I've been excited. LotRO is a personal favorite of mine, so seeing some extra life injected into it (along with the chance to be able to drop in without a subscription) is something I'm looking forward to. As public conversation grew, it branched away from Turbine's decision itself, and more to the “free to play transition” of the market, something most gaming journalists and writers seem to happy to accept.

Sometimes, however, the media needs to turn down the volume on the PR hype, hop off the bandwagon, and ask the same questions the community does. Someone needs to ask, “why?”

“The future is now” is often used to refer to new and favorable trends as being the way the market will adapt; it's saying, “This new thing happening is going to take the world by storm and become the standard.” It's a predictive phrase, implying the current state of affairs is evolving by leaving one idea behind to adapt to another. It's also popular propaganda used by marketers, lobbyists, and others who wish to convince the masses that “this new thing” is the trend of the future. For instance, take Nexon's E3 theme, “The Future of Free,” which not only implies their games are an evolved model of free-to-play, but also that “free” has a place in our future.

Read The Future is Now.