In my opinion, the quality of free to play games has drastically improved in the last few years. Maybe I was too young to really notice all of my options a while ago, but looking around me now, there seems to be a wealth of fantastic opportunities for enjoyment, all for the low, low price of the space on my hard drive.

It feels like it wasn’t that long ago that the only free games I played were incomplete demos, or flash games on a web browser. Admittedly they were fun, especially years ago when new games for me were fewer and farther between. However most of the time I felt they never quite matched the quality or size of triple A titles. Also hogging the family computer got me in trouble regularly, which kinda sucked after a while.

Needless to say, I’m fairly older and more independent now, and long gone are the days that Newgrounds and Miniclip are my only sources of free gaming entertainment. As I have grown up, it feels as though free to play games have as well.

There is a slew of high quality, fully fledged free games to choose from on clients such as Steam, that honestly feel like could be on store shelves.

My gateway into this whole new realm of gaming? Dota 2

While I’m not such a big fan of it anymore, a few years ago I was a raging Dota 2 addict. Coming home from high school and jamming to some Dota with some friends was a pretty typical afternoon, and was one of the only games I played for several months (and is still my most played game in my Steam library, despite not touching it in almost 3 years).

Dota 2, is of course, a free game. It was the first free to play game that really showed me that free to play games can in fact be as great and large as a game costing $100.

From there I began to explore other options, and I came across other great games. Team fortress 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, all some of the biggest games in the world, all incredibly fun and entertaining, and all completely free of charge.

Obviously the fact that they are free is great in and of itself, but what I appreciate more is the accessibility of it. They are free, hence the only barrier to trying it out is hard drive space and waiting for it to download, minuscule in comparison to monetary payment. This means if I want to play it with friends, we can. There is no looming financial wall standing in the way of our fun.

On top of this, all of the fun is completely natural. Maybe this is just me, but sometimes when I buy a new game, I almost feel as if I need to get my moneys’ worth of enjoyment out of it. The idea of spending money on a game, and that I won’t play or enjoy it is the worst, and is usually the reason I don’t buy many new games. This means that some of the enjoyment could be contrived, or forced in a way. With free to play games there is no investment, and no pressure. If I don’t enjoy it then I don’t lose anything from it. Hence there is no forced fun, and that makes the experience all the more satisfying, and as I said, naturally fun.

Perhaps my only problem with free to play games is the abundance of microtransactions. Sure, they are very prevalent in paid games as well, no doubt about it, which isn’t a surprise. Neither is their appearance in free games, I mean, they have to make money somehow, and microtransactions are a great way to do it, so I’m not necessarily bitter about it. Another thing which makes them so much more tolerable is that they usually relate only to cosmetic items within the game, such as skins and emblems etc. which have no real impact on the game, and which I have no care for. So most of the time they aren’t a bother. But as anyone can agree, when microtransactions actually influence gameplay and/or progression, or when they are ‘pay-to-win’, that’s where I become annoyed and disheartened.

Nowadays, I tend to stay away from MOBAs because of the intense competitveness around them, and stick to more casual free games such as Brawlhalla and Toxikk, among others, which I can jump into, with or without friends, and just have a blast. As usual, I am very much looking forward to what the future holds for free to play games, and the good times that await with these advances.

But these are just my thoughts, and I would love to hear what you think. What are your thoughts on free to play games? Are there any in particular that you have enjoyed? Let me know in the comments, and if you enjoyed this post, be sure to give it a like, it’s free and it just makes my day. Until next time, stay beautiful 🙂

End note: Authored by Genesis & Locikll for Psilink Gaming & MediGamer Blogs, Redistributed, and edited for Steemit officially