Coming off looking greedy is a result of poor game design and poor IAP implementation. And it's all too common since this type of model is still in it's infancy in the US and for most iOS App developers. This concept of designing a great game that is a blast to play with no ceiling to hit and allowing IAPs that are optional yet fun for your fans is exactly the concept that we are moving forwards with at our studio for all future releases. And even though it's hard to comprehend, you actually don't loose money by going free. Going free actually makes it easier to make money. Consider this: the average free game gets 50x more downloads than the average paid to play game. (It's a generalization of course... but a decent guideline). So, instead of trying to get .99 from every person who downloads your game on blind faith, you are now trying to get .99 from 1 in every 50 people who download your game and actually enjoy it. A much easier task! Or, to put it another way instead of .99 from every person who downloads your game, you are now trying to get .02 from every person who downloads your game for the exact same amount of money! That's something that even just putting in advertisements could easily cover if your game is decent enough. The users get a great free game, and the devs still make the same money. It's a win-win! I wholly endorse F2P! It just makes sense.
This is just my observations as a gamer, so take it for what you will. It may not all be correct, but I'm not trying to make any claims as as expert or anything like that. I'm not so sure I'd say freemium is the way of the future, but it's sure not going to disappear anytime soon. While US gamers may be less familiar with the model, it's been around for awhile and there are companies that have had success with it. The major benefit to the freemium model is that it allows for price discrimination (insert "wahhh, I heard in school that discrimination is bad" here). I think a lot of people don't realize just how beneficial this is. Tons of companies put in effort to find ways to legally price discriminate (sales, student discounts, movie tickets at different times, etc) and for good reason too. I find that the freemium model is usually used for cost-based games rather than quality-based ones. (Of course, this is subject to change as more developers explore the possibilities.) I think oftentimes it's because the dev team is small, and therefore can't compete with the large corporations. Another reason could be that the market is such that they need the player base, but wouldn't be able to obtain the critical mass of players without it being free. An example would be the MMO market. Other than WoW and a select few others, many of them are F2P because they'd have no players otherwise, and nobody wants to play an MMO which is a ghost town. Another example could be the Facebook simulation market. I'd imagine that market to be on the fickle side considering how easy it is to find a new clone which is very similar in gameplay. Because of the above, it's very likely that I'll never play a freemium game which later on I look back upon nostalgically and say "that game was so great". But then again, it's not really a big deal. I had fun while playing it; The devs possibly made a few bucks off of me; Everyone is happy. It's not like every dev needs to make every game a classic in players' minds. If people like the game, and the devs were able to profit from it, then I would consider the game a success, even if the game is completely forgotten in a couple years.
Paid or Freemium isn't so much the dichotomy for me as is pay once or pay forever. Freemium is just fine with me, so long as the benefits I pay for are mine forever. If you want to offer me new characters for extra money, I tend to buy them. If you want to offer new maps, same thing. What I don't like, is feeling like I'm just renting a game. I don't like being sold consumables, especially if they're necessary. I don't play games where they are. I don't pay to speed up a game timer in your "ville" clones of which I do play one (Raise the Village - because I respect the concept). Generally, I'll buy your IAPs so long as I only need to do so once. I won't pay for continues. I won't pay for bullets. Make IAPs permanent and you'll more often than not get my money. Furthermore, I'm anal about completion, so if you have multiple permanent IAPs, I buy them all if I'm going to buy one. I buy every map, every expansion and every permanent IAP available for a game. I can't cherry-pick. You want to monetize me, multiple, permanent IAPs is the way to go.
For your sake, do NOT download Pocket Legends or Star Legends. You will be in a heap of debt after buying everything they have to offer. Out of curiousity, what do you guys think of what Naught is doing with their game and IAP? The first 5 levels are free, and for .99 you can unlock the remaining 15. Does that seem like a fair trade to you? Would you buy those levels?
I wouldn't consider games with level packs as free to play or freemium, just as I wouldn't call a lite version of the game a free to play game, since you don't have unlimited play without spending money to unlock necessary content. Now, if you could only play the one puzzle and then run out of energy and need to purchase to unlock more energy, then that would be more freemium in my mind.
